/runbook · 4 steps
How an engagement runs.
Every build follows these four steps. Each one ends with something in your hands, so you can stop after any of them and keep what you have.
Diagnose
We sit with the people who do the work and watch how it gets done: the inbox, the spreadsheets, the handoffs. You get a short list of what's costing you the most, with numbers.
typical · one call plus two days
you getA one-page findings note with the costs ranked
we needTwo hours with the person who does the work today
Design
One page per system: what it does, what it won't do, what it costs, and how you'll know it's working. Nothing gets built until you've approved that page.
typical · two to five days
you getA spec with a price on it
we needOne decision-maker who can say no
Build
You see it handle last month's work before it touches this month's. We demo weekly and keep a decision log you can read. Every system ships with checks that confirm it did the work correctly.
typical · two to eight weeks
you getA running system with its checks and runbook
we needReal historical cases, including the messy ones
Run
Your business changes and the system has to change with it. Either we keep it running and watch the checks, or we hand it to your team with the documentation. You can switch later.
typical · ongoing, or one handover week
you getA system we monitor, or a documented handover
we needA named owner on your side
Four steps on one track: diagnose, design, build and run. At design, a one-page spec is written out, covering the problem, what the system does and won't do, its checks, the owner, the timeline and a fixed price, and the client signs it before anything is built.
What we learn while a system runs starts the next diagnosis.
who owns the system at the end?
Some clients own the software outright, repo and accounts included. Others hold a lifetime license to a system we keep and maintain. Either way you get the documentation to run it, and which one applies is written into the spec before we build.
advisory runs differently: one to three sessions and a written plan →
The first step is a thirty-minute call.