Approach

How an engagement runs

Paid discovery first

Two weeks, fixed fee, €6,500. We read the code, the logs and the interface contracts, and we talk to the people who get woken when something fails. The output is a written document: the interfaces that exist, what each costs to run, and what we think should change, in what order. The client owns the document and can take it to another firm. Some have. The document was still correct.

Then fixed scope

Build work is quoted fixed from the discovery document: scope, price, dates. We do not sell open-ended time and materials on builds. Support and smaller changes run at a day rate of €1,150, billed in half-days, with a note of what was done.

Documentation is a deliverable

Every mapping ships with a written specification: fields, transformations, error behaviour, and who to tell on the other side when something changes. If the documentation is missing, the work is not finished, whatever the interface is doing.

Handover is the point

We hand over to the client's own people in working sessions, not in a PDF attached to a final invoice. A good outcome is the client not needing us. Several of our longest relationships are a few days a year, which is how it should be.

What we don't do

• Staff augmentation. We do the work; we do not lease people into someone else's team.
• Fixed-price bids without discovery. A price given before reading the logs is a guess with a signature.
• Taking over an interface we cannot see the logs for.
• 24/7 on-call. We answer between 08:00 and 18:00 CET on working days, and we build interfaces that can wait that long.
• Reselling licences. We recommend software; the client buys it from whoever sells it.
• Rewriting a working system because it is old.