Approach
A written scope, a fixed price, and a list of what is not included.
Small public-sector software work usually goes wrong in one of two ways: the scope was never written down, or the person who sold it is not the person who builds it. Both are avoidable, and the way we work avoids them.
What a fixed price buys
Three commitments, in writing.
A price a buyer can approve alone
Engagements are sized to land under the micro-purchase threshold, so the decision sits with one person rather than a procurement cycle longer than the work itself.
An out-of-scope list
Written before the work starts, in the same document as the scope. It is the part that prevents the argument at the end, and the part most proposals leave out.
No handoffs
The engineer who scopes the work writes it, tests it, and hands it over. There is no team to brief, so nothing is lost between the conversation and the code.
How it runs
What actually happens, in order.
A small fixed-price engagement has no room for discovery phases. The sequence below exists to make the scope accurate before the price is fixed.
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01
A call, and a look at the thing itself
What it does, who depends on it, and what happens when it is wrong. If it is a spreadsheet, we want to see the spreadsheet — the formulas tell you more in ten minutes than a requirements document does in a week.
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02
A written scope and a fixed price
One page: what will be delivered, what it will cost, when, and explicitly what is not included. If the work will not fit a fixed price honestly, we say so then rather than discovering it halfway through.
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03
Build against parity
Where there is an existing process, the first target is reproducing its output exactly — including its quirks — before anything is improved. A rebuild that quietly changes a number is worse than no rebuild.
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04
Handover as a deliverable
Source, tests, and a runbook that someone else can follow. The test is simple: could a different engineer take this over next month without calling us? If not, it is not finished.
Fit
Work we turn down.
Saying this publicly costs a few inquiries and saves everyone the wrong engagement.
- Staff augmentation. If the need is a body against a seat count rather than a defined deliverable, another firm will serve you better and cheaper.
- Fixed price against an undefined scope. We will help you define it first. What we will not do is put a number on something neither of us can describe.
- Rewrites proposed before anyone has read the existing system. Sometimes a rewrite is right. It is never right as an opening position.
- Work that needs a team. One senior engineer is the offer. If the job genuinely needs five people, it is not this.
Next
Registration details and experience.
Everything a contracting officer or a prime's teaming lead needs, on one page.