Before writing a line of code, we define what to build, why it matters, and how much it will cost, so your development budget goes to the right features.
The most expensive code is the code you build twice. Planning catches errors when they are cheapest to fix.
According to the IBM Systems Sciences Institute, fixing a requirement error after development costs up to 100× more than fixing it during the planning phase. TMS's business analysis process catches those errors before the first sprint begins.
Industry research consistently shows that 60–80% of project cost overruns trace back to incomplete or misunderstood requirements at project start. A structured discovery phase eliminates the ambiguity that causes them.
Eight concrete deliverables that give you a validated plan before any development investment. Take them to any team, or continue with ours.
A clear definition of the problem the product solves and who it solves it for, the foundation every decision is measured against.
Analysis of 3–5 direct competitors with identified market gaps and differentiation opportunities for your product.
2–3 personas based on actual market research, not assumptions, each with goals, frustrations, and behavioral patterns.
All functionality classified as Must Have, Should Have, or Nice to Have, so scope decisions are data-driven, not opinion-driven.
Functional and non-functional specifications, the document your engineers (or ours) build from, with no ambiguity left unresolved.
Phases, milestones, and dependencies mapped across a realistic timeline, so you know what ships when, and what depends on what.
Budget range and team composition required, grounded in real engineering constraints, not rough guesses from a spreadsheet.
Interface sketches for concept validation before design begins, cheap to change, fast to test, and worth their weight in avoided rework.
Six steps over 2 to 4 weeks. Each step builds on the last, and you see progress every few days, not just at the end.
Stakeholder interviews, business objectives, technical constraints.
We bring your team and ours into the same room, physical or virtual. We map business goals, user expectations, and technical constraints in real time, so nothing gets lost in translation later.
Market landscape analysis, benchmarking against existing solutions.
We analyze the competitive field, identify underserved segments, and benchmark existing solutions. You get a clear picture of where your product fits and what it needs to do differently.
User stories, use cases, acceptance criteria.
We translate workshop insights into structured requirements: user stories with acceptance criteria, edge cases documented, and non-functional requirements specified. Every requirement is testable.
Tech stack analysis, APIs, integrations, scalability.
Our senior engineers assess the technical landscape: which stack fits, what APIs are needed, what integrations are risky, and how the architecture scales. Decisions are grounded in production experience.
Lo-fi wireframes validated with real users or stakeholders.
We create lo-fi wireframes and validate them with stakeholders or real users. Concepts that don't survive validation get revised here, at a fraction of what they'd cost to change in development.
Final documents delivered, presentation and Q&A session.
All deliverables are compiled, reviewed, and presented to your team in a live walkthrough. You leave with a complete documentation package and a clear path to development, whether that's with us or someone else.
Eight areas where structured analysis turns assumptions into validated decisions, before you spend development budget on them.
We interview your target users, internal stakeholders, and subject matter experts to map the exact friction points your product will address. This ensures your development investment solves a real problem with measurable demand, not an assumed one.
We build personas from market research, not guesswork. Each persona captures goals, frustrations, and behavioral patterns that directly influence feature decisions. You end up with 2–3 personas your whole team can design and build against.
We benchmark 3–5 direct competitors feature by feature, identifying gaps your product can exploit and table-stakes functionality you can't skip. The result is a differentiation strategy, not a feature list copied from a competitor's website.
We classify every feature as Must Have, Should Have, or Nice to Have using a priority matrix tied to business value and effort. This gives you a defensible MVP scope and a backlog ordered by ROI, so the first release delivers maximum impact.
Our senior engineers evaluate tech stack options, third-party integrations, and scalability requirements against your budget and timeline. You get a feasibility assessment grounded in real production experience, not theoretical whiteboarding.
We map phases, milestones, and dependencies into a roadmap that accounts for risk and team capacity. You know what ships when, what blocks what, and where the critical path runs, before a single sprint is planned.
We translate the validated scope into a budget range and team composition. Estimates are grounded in real engineering constraints from 40+ senior engineers, so the numbers you take to your board hold up through delivery.
We create lo-fi wireframes and validate them with stakeholders or real users before design begins. Concepts that don't survive validation get revised here, at a fraction of what they'd cost to change once they're in production code.
The team that plans your project is the team that builds it. No handoff, no lost context, no translation layer.
The analysts who plan your project work directly with the engineers who build it. No translation layer, no lost context between planning and execution, the decisions made in the discovery phase carry straight into sprints.
BA & Planning at TMS is the starting point of a full engagement, not a standalone service that ends with a document. If you continue with us, the same team picks up the roadmap and builds it, no onboarding round two.
Experience across fintech compliance requirements, healthcare data regulation, SaaS growth architectures, and e-commerce platform integrations. Your analysis is informed by domain patterns we've already built and shipped.
40+ engineers with 7+ years average experience. Analysis decisions are grounded in real production engineering constraints, not theory, so the roadmap you receive is one that can actually be built on time and on budget.
Talk to a TMS business analyst, no commitment, no sales pitch, just a conversation about your project.
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Client Reviews
What clients say about working with TMS, from discovery through delivery.
From the very first day we could feel that the team lived our goals as their own. The discovery phase defined a feature roadmap that guided 18 months of development.
TMS guided us through a complex platform rebuild with clear feasibility analysis and prioritized recommendations at every step.