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Approach

Four stages, and the first is the one most firms skip because it is not billable-looking.

  1. Read what is there

    A week or so inside the existing system, the tickets, and whatever the last team left behind. We come back with what we found, including the parts that make the job bigger than you hoped. That conversation is better early than in month three.

  2. Agree a date and a cut

    One date. Holding it means saying out loud what is not in the first release, which is a harder conversation than moving the date and a much cheaper one.

  3. Build it in the open

    Working software you can look at, on a schedule you can predict. No demo-only branches. If something is late you hear it the week it becomes late, not the week it is due.

  4. Hand it over properly

    A runbook, the reasoning behind the awkward decisions, and someone on call for an agreed window afterwards. A handover that is only a repository is not a handover.

Things we will not do

  • Quote a date before reading the system it applies to.
  • Replace something that works because it is unfashionable.
  • Leave without writing down why it was built that way.
  • Put a number on a slide that we cannot show the method for.