Run · Stagnation
“We've been live two years and nothing's changed since launch.”
Launch got all the attention and all the budget. What nobody costed was the two years afterwards, which is where products are actually won or lost.
What is actually going on
The usual shape is that the build had a team and the aftermath didn't. Whoever built it moved on, the budget line closed, and the backlog became a document people add to and nobody reads.
Small changes stop being small. With no one who knows the codebase, a two-hour job needs a week of someone reorienting first, so it gets deferred, and deferring it is entirely rational each individual time.
Meanwhile the product stops matching the business. Customers ask for the same three things for two years. Competitors ship. Nothing is broken, which is exactly why nobody escalates it.
What we do about it
A team that keeps shipping after launch, on one monthly number.
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We take it on and learn it
Run it, read it, write down how it actually works. That first pass is what makes small changes small again.
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Things ship every month
The backlog stops being a graveyard. A retainer means there is always capacity, so the two-hour job takes two hours.
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You decide what matters
We bring what we see, you pick. No change requests, no quotes per item, no negotiation about whether something is in scope.
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And it stays watched
StackWatch on the logs, incidents staffed, so keeping it alive is not competing with improving it.
Where we have done this
Our average client has stayed five years, which only happens when the software keeps moving after launch.
See the case studies →Questions
What people ask next.
We did not build it. Can you still take it on?
Yes, that is most of this work. We read it first and tell you honestly what state it is in.
How much gets done in a month?
More than you would expect from the price, less than an unlimited team. We are specific about it every month rather than vague about it in the contract.
What if we only need this occasionally?
Then say so. A retainer suits products that should keep moving. If yours genuinely does not, we will tell you that rather than sell you one.
Also in Run
It's live, and nobody is watching it.
“Something broke overnight and we heard about it from customers.”
Every log line watched around the clock, with the incident staffed before your users notice.
How we handle it Handover“The one person who understood our systems has gone.”
We take it on, write down how it really works, and keep it running.
How we handle itKeep exploring