Agencies and outsourcing
You are paid to change a system you have never seen, on a deadline you quoted before seeing it.
A NEW CLIENT CODEBASE EVERY FEW WEEKS, WRITTEN BY SOMEBODY ELSE
Somebody else's codebase,
on your deadline.
Every engagement starts the same way: a repository from a team you have never met, no useful documentation, and a delivery date that was agreed on the basis of a sales call.
The ramp-up is real work that nobody pays for, and the estimate that made the deal is the commercial risk you carry for the whole project.
Where the unbillable
weeks go.
The first weeks of every project are spent reconstructing what the previous team knew.
You quote before you understand the system, and the gap between the two is your margin.
Everything the team learned is gone when they move to the next client.
What you ask on
day one of a project.
What is this codebase actually doing?
How long will this change really take, given what it touches?
What did the previous team leave behind that we are about to step in?
Which parts can we change safely and which need the client in the room?
Quoting a change on a codebase you received yesterday
You ask what the requested change would touch, in the client's own words.
The answer names the behaviors and the parts of the product involved, with the evidence.
The estimate is built on that, and the parts that need a client decision are identified before the quote goes out.
The quote reflects the system rather than the optimism of the person writing it.
A WORKED EXAMPLE OF HOW THE WORK GOES, NOT A CUSTOMER CASE STUDY. WHEN WE PUBLISH A CUSTOMER RESULT IT WILL BE MEASURED AND NAMED.
What changes when
ramp-up compresses.
Ramp-up compresses
The team starts asking the codebase questions on day one instead of reading it for two weeks.
Estimates get evidence
What a change reaches is known before the number is quoted, which is where the margin is won or lost.
The same team takes more work
Time recovered from ramp-up is time available for delivery.
Measured, and the same
whatever your size.
Team or Company
Team for a few concurrent clients; Company when several teams are running multiple client projects at once.
OTHER COMPANY TYPES
Solo founders · SaaS startups · Scale-ups · Enterprise product organizations · AI product teams · All six