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PRC/ — How we work

Three phases, no mystery.

You should know what happens next at every point in an engagement, what it costs, and what you're left holding at the end. None of that should require chasing.

PHS/ — The phases

Discover, build, run.

01

Discover

Typically one to two weeks, paid. We map the goal, the systems, and the constraints — reading the code, reviewing configuration exports, or assessing the architecture as appropriate. You end up with a concrete plan and an estimate you can hold us to.

The deliverable stands alone. If you take the plan and execute it yourself, or hand it to another firm, that is a legitimate outcome and you owe us nothing further.

02

Build

Weekly demos and a visible backlog. Code in your repositories from the first commit, deployed through a pipeline that exists before the first feature does.

You should never be surprised by progress in either direction. If something is going slower than estimated you will hear it in the week it happens, not at the end.

03

Run

We operate what we build — monitoring, patching, improving — or hand it to your team with documentation that is genuinely sufficient.

Handover is designed in from the start: architecture decisions with their reasoning, runbooks for what breaks, and credentials in your possession throughout.

CMT/ — What you get either way

Commitments.

A cost before we start
Agreed in writing for a defined scope, or a clear ceiling for open-ended work. Cost depends on the work, so it is discussed per engagement rather than published as a tariff. If we cannot cost something honestly yet, we say so and propose a short discovery instead of guessing.
One person, accountable
The person who scoped it does it. No handoff to a delivery team, no account manager between you and the work.
Weekly visibility
A short written update every week: what moved, what is next, what is blocked. Short enough that you will actually read it.
Your systems, your access
Your repositories, your cloud accounts, your password manager. We work inside your world, and we never hold the only copy of anything.
An honest no
If the work is outside what we do well, or you would be better served by hiring, or the project should not happen at all — you will hear that. It costs us a sale and saves you considerably more.

FAQ/ — Common questions

Questions we get asked.

Do you charge for the first conversation?

No. The first call is us working out whether we can help, which is as much our problem as yours. Where a proper answer needs real investigation — reading a codebase, auditing a network, reviewing an architecture — that becomes a paid discovery, and we will say so before doing it rather than doing it for free and folding it into a proposal you have not agreed to.

How quickly can you start?

Small pieces of work, usually within a week or two. A retainer depends on current commitments — we take on a deliberately small number so that each one is genuinely serviced, so occasionally the honest answer is a start date a month out. We will give you a real date rather than a hopeful one.

What happens if the estimate turns out to be wrong?

Where we have agreed a scope and a cost, we absorb it — that is what agreeing a cost means, and it is the reason we insist on discovery before committing to anything non-trivial. If the scope changes, that is a different conversation and it happens before the work, not on the invoice.

Will you work with our existing team or vendors?

Yes, and we prefer it. We do not need to own the whole thing, and arrangements where we do the design while your existing provider keeps the day-to-day relationship often work best for everybody.

What do you need from us?

A single person who can make decisions, access to the systems in question, and honesty about constraints — especially budget. A budget stated up front lets us design something that fits it. A budget withheld to test us just produces a proposal we both know is wrong.

CTA/ — Start a conversation

Tell us what you're building.

Write a few lines about your project and you'll get a reply within one business day — including an honest view of whether we're the right fit.

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