Home/Approach
Direct, senior, and nobody in between.
You speak to the person writing the code. That single fact removes most of what typically goes wrong in software projects — and it's why our clients tend to stay for a very long time.
How we work
Four commitments, kept on every job.
Understand the business first
Before a line of code: what the process actually is, where it hurts, who else touches it, and what the specification quietly left out. Requirements documents describe the happy path; businesses run on the exceptions.
Deliver in working increments
Software you can open and use, early and often. Steering a real system beats reviewing a document — people know what they want the moment they see what they don't.
Plain English throughout
Straight answers about progress, effort and risk, without jargon used as a shield. If something is a bad idea, or cheaper done another way, we say so before you pay for it.
Leave it maintainable
Source control, documentation, a repeatable build and a clean handover. You should be free to take the work elsewhere at any time — and stay because you'd rather not.
What you get
Ownership, in the way that actually counts.
Plenty of arrangements call the client the owner while making it impractical to leave. We'd rather the exit stayed genuinely open, so the relationship has to keep earning itself.
- Full source code, in a repository you control
- The database schema, scripts and migration history
- Documentation written for a developer who has never seen it
- A build and deployment process someone else can follow
- Standard Microsoft technology — no proprietary framework of ours in the middle
- Your data, in an open, exportable form, always
A typical engagement
Smaller jobs collapse several of these into one. The sequence matters more than the ceremony.
Being straight about it
The projects that go wrong are rarely the ones with honest problems.
Software projects fail far more often from unspoken assumptions than from technical difficulty. Someone assumed a rule worked one way; someone else didn't mention the annual process that only runs in June; an estimate given in optimism became a commitment by repetition.
So we'd rather raise the awkward thing early, in writing, when it's cheap. That includes telling you when a requirement is more expensive than it sounds, when an existing system is better left alone, and when the work you're describing isn't work we're the right people for.
It makes for less exciting sales conversations. It makes for considerably better projects.
Practicalities
The usual questions
How do you charge?
Fixed price where the scope is genuinely settled, time and materials where it isn't, and a retainer for ongoing support. We'll recommend whichever is fairer for the work rather than whichever is safer for us.
Do you work remotely, or on site?
Both. Most development is done remotely, but for discovery, testing and go-live there is no substitute for sitting with the people who use the system. We're Australian-based and work with clients wherever they are.
Will you work alongside our in-house IT team?
Frequently. Sometimes we're the whole team, sometimes we're specialist capacity for one piece of work inside an existing architecture, standards and change process. Both arrangements are comfortable.
Is there a minimum project size?
No. We'll happily take on a single report, an awkward query or a one-week fix — small jobs are often how longer relationships start, and they're a low-risk way for both sides to find out how the other works.
What if we already have a developer?
Then you may not need us at all, and we'll say so. Where we do add something it's usually a second opinion on a data model, help with a migration, or extra hands on a deadline.
What happens after the project finishes?
You get the code, the schema and the documentation, and you decide. Many clients keep us on for maintenance and enhancements; others take it in-house entirely. Either is a perfectly good outcome.
Sounds like the way you'd want it done?
Send a brief description of the task. The first conversation costs nothing and is genuinely a conversation, not a pitch.