Survey first. Then build.
Every engagement runs through the same four phases. The proportions change — sometimes the survey is a week and the build is four months, sometimes the survey is the engagement — but the order does not.
The sequence
Four phases. The first one is where most of the value is.
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Survey
We look at the live system with real traffic on it: analytics, server logs, the actual pages, the actual sending domain, the actual database. We talk to the people who operate it. The output is a plain statement of what is happening now, including the parts that contradict the brief.
This phase is deliberately short and fixed-price. It is also the phase most likely to change what the project turns out to be.
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Map
Findings become a sequenced plan: what to do, in what order, what each step costs, what it should return, and what has to be true for it to work. Anything we are uncertain about is marked as uncertain rather than smoothed over.
You can stop here. Some clients take the map and execute it in-house, which is a perfectly good outcome and one we would rather have than a project we talked someone into.
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Build
Work happens in short cycles against the agreed sequence, with something reviewable at the end of each one. You see progress on a staging environment, not in a status report. Changes to scope are priced and agreed before they happen, not discovered at invoicing.
Anything that touches production has a rollback defined before it ships.
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Hand over
Documentation, credentials, a recorded walkthrough, and a working session with whoever inherits it. We also write down what we would do next and what we chose not to do, so the reasoning does not leave with us.
If you want us to stay on for ongoing support, that starts as a separate agreement after handover — never as a dependency created during the build.
Ways to work together
Assessment
The survey and map phases on their own, fixed scope and fixed price. You get a written assessment and a sequenced plan. Most new relationships start here, because it is the cheapest way for both sides to find out whether we are useful to each other.
Project
A defined piece of work with a defined end: a build, a migration, a measurement rebuild, a deliverability recovery. Priced against the map, delivered in cycles, finished with a handover.
Retained
An agreed block of time each month for teams that want continuity — ongoing development, operational support, or someone senior to think with. Renews monthly. We will tell you when you have stopped needing it.
Advisory
Scheduled time with no delivery attached, for when the decision is yours to make and you want it pressure-tested first. Useful before a platform choice, a vendor contract, or a rebuild.
What we expect from you
Engagements go wrong for predictable reasons. These are the ones we try to head off at the start.
- One person with the authority to make decisions, available at short notice
- Read access to the real systems during the survey, not a summary of them
- Honesty about constraints we cannot see — politics, contracts, an immovable date
- Willingness to hear that the thing in the brief is not the thing that is wrong
In return: no surprise invoices, no work we cannot justify, and a direct answer when you ask whether something is going well.
Next step
Start with an assessment.
Fixed scope, fixed price, and a written plan at the end of it that is yours whether or not we do the work.