Business · Engagements
Four arrangements, and the terms are the same in all of them.
What differs is the shape and the commitment, not the discipline. The same senior people do the work in every one, and the terms below do not change with size, sector or model.
In short
Four arrangements: a fixed pack, a rolling retainer, an embedded squad, and a standing advisory. What changes is the shape and the commitment. What does not is the terms — scope written before work begins, re-scoped in writing before work continues, and everything transferring on completion onto your own accounts.
Why four
Most firms sell one shape and reshape every problem to fit it.
Which is efficient for the firm and expensive for the client, because the mismatch does not show up until the work is underway.
A firm that only sells retainers will find a reason your problem is ongoing. A firm that only sells projects will find a reason yours has an end. Neither is lying — they are describing the problem in the shape they can sell.
So we ask what shape the work actually is before quoting, and sometimes the answer is that none of these fit. We would rather have the ten minutes of friction than the quarter of mismatch.
01 · Fixed-price packs
One deliverable, one date, one end.
Defined scope, fixed end date. You know what arrives, what it excludes, and when — written down before it starts, and it does not move.
The narrowest thing we sell, which makes it the easiest to approve and the easiest to buy for the wrong reason. If the problem does not fit the scope, a pack will complete successfully and change nothing.
So we ask what would make this fail before we take it. If the answer sits outside the pack, we say so and point at a scoped engagement instead.
How it fails
The pack excludes the hard part
The scope is met exactly, on time, at the price. And the problem is untouched, because the actual difficulty sat just outside the line everyone agreed to.
Scope creep gets absorbed quietly
A small addition, then another, and the pack finishes two weeks late with nobody having agreed to anything. The client thinks they got extra; we think we lost a fortnight. Both are true.
It is bought because it looks small
On the call we ask what else you considered. If a pack is being chosen for its price rather than its shape, we would rather say so than take it.
02 · Managed retainer
Where the work does not have an end.
Rolling, cancellable, reviewed each quarter. For systems somebody depends on and nobody owns full-time — the monitoring, the exceptions, the small decisions that accumulate.
A retainer becomes a catch-all if nobody watches it. Small requests arrive that are not small, each one reasonable, none refused, and by month four the review is not happening because the hours went somewhere else.
So a change that alters what the system decides is a scoped engagement, and we say so when a request crosses that line rather than absorbing it.
How it fails
It becomes a catch-all
Every request is reasonable and none is refused, and the thing you actually bought stops happening.
Nobody reads the report
It arrives monthly, it is filed, and the first time anyone opens one is after something has gone wrong. The attention was bought and never collected.
It outlives its purpose
The team is ready, the system is stable, and it continues because cancelling it is a small task nobody owns. If your team has held the system for two quarters without needing us, we say so.
03 · Embedded squads
Senior people inside your team, on your tools.
Same board, same channels, same review queue, for a defined period. Not a vendor working alongside you — people in the work, subject to the same standards as everybody else in it.
Which is the whole difficulty. An embedded team drifts into being a second team almost by default, because a separate channel is convenient and a separate board is quieter, and by then the integration cost lands on whoever merges last.
So there is no separate anything. And if your process is genuinely too noisy to work in, that is a finding worth having rather than a reason to route around it.
How it fails
It becomes a second team
A separate channel for convenience, then a separate board, and within a month there are two teams with one product.
Nobody reviews them properly
Reviewers are reluctant to block an external, so the work is approved faster and questioned less. An external who is not being challenged is not being integrated.
It renews without anyone deciding to
The quarter ends, the invoice continues, and the arrangement stops being a decision. The most expensive failure, because it is comfortable for us as much as for you.
04 · Boardroom advisory
For the decisions that arrive between engagements.
A standing arrangement with somebody who already knows the history. Monthly, and the value is in not having to explain the context before you can ask the question.
The failure mode is drift. A decision is made, somebody asks whether we could just do the first bit, and within two months the sessions are status meetings about work we are doing. The outside view — the thing being paid for — is gone.
So implementation is scoped separately, always. If the answer is that we should build it, that is a different engagement and the advisory continues unchanged or ends.
How it fails
It drifts into implementation
The outside view is the product, and it cannot survive us being inside the work.
The preparation stops
Material arrives in the meeting rather than before it, so the session is spent reading. The advice that follows is worth what a first read is worth.
It becomes agreement
Over a year, familiarity makes disagreement socially expensive. An advisor who has stopped disagreeing has stopped being an advisor.
The terms
Identical across every arrangement.
These do not change with size, sector or model. They are what you can rely on before anything else has been agreed.
Scope first
Written before work begins: what is included, what is not, and what it depends on.
If scope changes
Re-scoped in writing before work continues. Never invoiced afterwards.
Ownership
Everything transfers on completion, onto your own accounts. Nothing engineered to require us.
If it will run long
You hear it in the first week, not the last. That is what a stated range is for.
Payment
Fixed packs and scoped engagements: half on start, a quarter at the midpoint, a quarter on your approval — before anything is handed over. Monthly arrangements: in advance for retainer and advisory, in arrears for squads. Thirty days to end a monthly arrangement, from either side.
Why the last payment comes before handover
You approve the work first — nothing is invoiced against something you have not seen. And nothing transfers until it is settled, which means neither side is asked to go first on trust. It is the arrangement that removes the awkward conversation rather than the one that wins it.
API and infrastructure costs sit on your own accounts so you can see them.
What happens next
From this page to work starting.
No procurement theatre, no discovery phase you pay for, and no proposal document that takes two weeks to produce.
A call
Thirty minutes. What needs to happen, who holds it, and by when. We say which arrangement fits — including when the answer is none of them.
A number, in writing
Within a day: the scope it assumes, the range, and the price. Reading it commits you to nothing.
You decide
No follow-up sequence, no second call to close. If it is a no, it is a no and we will not chase it.
Work starts
Usually two to three weeks out. First payment on start, and the scope is already agreed in writing before anyone begins.
Worth saying
We do not compete on price, and we do not discount.
A discount says the first number was wrong, which makes every number after it a negotiation rather than a statement.
What we will do is scope smaller. If the budget does not fit, the honest response is a narrower engagement that genuinely finishes — not the same engagement at a lower price and a quieter set of expectations.
Frequently asked
Answers before the call.
Which one do I need?
Usually the shortest one that fits. If you know what should be built, a pack. If you do not, a scoped engagement or a diagnostic first. The call settles it in ten minutes and we will say when none of them fit.
Can we change arrangement partway?
Yes, and it happens. A pack that turns out to be larger becomes a scoped engagement, re-quoted rather than absorbed. A squad that finishes early ends early.
What does it cost?
It depends on the shape, and we quote in writing after a short call. The same work costs differently depending on what it connects to and who has to accept the output, so a number on this page would need three caveats attached.
Do you do discovery phases?
No. If we need to look before we can quote, that is a diagnostic engagement with its own scope and its own finding — not an unpriced phase you fund while we work out what to sell you.
What if we want to stop?
Thirty days on any monthly arrangement, from either side, and no reason required. Fixed-scope work runs to its end date or is settled at the point it stops.
Who owns what we build?
You do, on completion, on your own accounts. There is nothing engineered to require us afterwards, and the handover is part of the work rather than a separate purchase.
Thirty minutes, and we do most of the listening.
Describe what needs to happen. We will say which arrangement fits, what it would take, and when none of them do.
Schedule a call