Product and engineering guides
Planning guides for the people deciding whether to build something, grouped by the decision they help you make.
Most of these start with a question we get asked before a project begins: is this worth building, what should the first release cover, what breaks at scale, and how will anyone tell whether it worked. Each guide walks through one of those, with the trade-offs and the questions worth asking your team, not a sales pitch. Pick a topic below, or search for the thing you are actually trying to work out.
Latest guides
What Peak Season Revealed About Your Systems
Whatever your staff did by hand during peak week is your automation backlog, written by the people who had to do it.
How to Restart a Software Project That Stalled
What exists, what it would cost to finish, who owns it, and whether the scope or the team caused the stall.
Why Year-End Reporting Takes Three Weeks
Almost none of the three weeks is spent producing reports. It is spent reconciling systems that disagree.
What the Year-End Slowdown Is Actually Good For
Three weeks of low capacity is either lost or it is the only window all year for discovery, audit and the decisions nobody has time for.
12 Questions Before Renewing a Software Contract
Ownership, access, what the support retainer covered and what leaving would involve, before you sign another year.
Who Supports Your Software Over the Holidays?
Your service runs through the end of December even when your supplier is closed. Here is the arrangement to agree first.
Building the product for what comes next
We would rather deliver one product that holds up than three that have to be rebuilt. That standard is the same on every project, whatever its size.
Ali Boran GazelCEO