The shape of every Partners engagement is the same regardless of the discipline. A short call, a written proposal, a sprint, a handover. Four steps, no surprises. This page exists so you know what the next four weeks would look like before you spend any time on the first call.
1. Discovery call
Free. Thirty minutes. No pitch. You bring the operational problem. We cover what success looks like, the data and systems involved, the team on your side, and the constraints that the work has to respect.
By the end of the call you have a one-paragraph diagnosis written down in your own words. It is yours to keep whether or not we ever work together. The diagnosis is what allows us to write a sprint proposal that is concrete and binding, not a generic capability deck.
If at the end of the call we both think there is a real sprint here, we agree on a date for the proposal. If we don't, you have lost half an hour and gained a one-paragraph problem statement. That is a fair trade either way.
2. Sprint proposal
Within forty-eight hours of the call we send a single PDF. It contains five things, no more.
Scope. The one outcome the sprint will deliver, stated as a sentence. Not a list of features. Not a roadmap. The one thing that will be true at the end of the sprint that is not true today.
Price. Fixed. One number. Quoted up front, not estimated. The risk of overrun is ours, not yours.
Timeline. Week by week. What we are doing each week and what we need from you to do it.
Deliverables. What lands in your environment at the end of the sprint, who owns it, and how it integrates with what you already have.
Risks. What could go wrong and what we would do about each one. This is where most consulting proposals get vague. Ours don't.
You sign or you don't. No follow-up emails, no negotiation calls, no "let me check with my team" rounds. The proposal is what you would want a partner to send you, written so a busy executive can decide in one read.
3. The sprint
Three weeks is one sprint. For roughly half of our clients, that is enough to deliver the outcome they came for. Complex projects run two to five sprints, back to back, each one delivering its own outcome.
Week one is discovery and design. We diagnose the current state in detail and lock the system we are going to build. By the end of week one, both sides know exactly what is being built and how it will be measured.
Week two is build. Daily work on the system inside Partners. Your sprint sponsor gets a written checkpoint at the end of the week showing what was built, what is left, and any decisions that need their input.
Week three ships. The system goes live in your environment. We run a handover session with the engineer or analyst on your side who will own it from here. By Friday of week three, the work is yours.
What we do not do mid-sprint: change requests, scope drift, status meetings. Surprises are planned for in the proposal. The weekly checkpoint is the meeting. If something material changes, we say so in writing and we both decide whether to absorb it inside the current sprint or write it into the next one.
4. Handover and what comes next
Everything lives in your infrastructure. Code in your repository. Configuration in your secret store. Infrastructure-as-code, runbooks, and a one-day handover session with your lead engineer. We do not host anything for you and we do not keep anything from you.
After the sprint you decide. Three choices. Extend with a follow-on sprint, take the work in-house, or stop here. There is no auto-renewal. No ongoing license. No maintenance subscription. If you want us to keep building, you say so and we write the next sprint proposal.
The default is that the work belongs to you the moment the sprint closes. Most of our clients run the systems we build for years without us touching them again. Some come back for the next problem. Either path is fine. The shape is the same.
