Services · four tracks
What each track
actually produces.
The same four tracks as the overview, described at the level of the work: what is built, what you end up owning, and the point at which a different approach is cheaper.
Track summary
- 01
- Custom software
- 02
- Cloud infrastructure
- 03
- Data & applied AI
- 04
- Integration & support
01Track
Custom software and SaaS platforms.
When the work is specific enough that a general tool forces people into workarounds, and valuable enough that a spreadsheet has become the system of record.
Right buy when
The process has exceptions that matter: approvals, eligibility, pricing rules, regulated records, or several parties who must see different parts of the same case. Off-the-shelf software handles the common path; this track handles the path your business actually takes.
What is delivered: a working application with an administrative surface, a testable release process and a data model documented in words. What is not promised: a fixed feature count, a launch date before modelling, or a UI that will not need revision after real use.
Every board row traces to a written requirement and a test. Rows without an owner do not enter a slice.
02Track
Cloud infrastructure that can be rebuilt.
The test of infrastructure is not whether it runs, but whether a second person could recreate it from the repository on a bad day.
Ring 0
Preview
One environment per change, destroyed on merge. Where a reviewer clicks the actual thing.
Ring 1
Staging
Production-shaped, anonymised data, migrations rehearsed before they touch real records.
Ring 2
Production
Access by named role, deploys from the pipeline, rollback documented and exercised.
Ring 3
Restore
A backup restored into a clean account on a schedule, with the result recorded.
| Concern | What we put in place | How you verify it |
|---|---|---|
| Provisioning | Cloud resources declared in code, reviewed like application code. | Destroy a sandbox stack and rebuild it from the repository. |
| Access | Named roles, no shared logins, break-glass account sealed and logged. | Read the access register; remove a person and observe the effect. |
| Deployment | One path from commit to production, with the rollback step written down. | Watch a release, then watch a rollback. |
| Cost | Tags per service and environment, budget alert to a named inbox. | Open the billing view and attribute spend to a component. |
| Recovery | Backup schedule, retention rule, restore runbook. | The restore record from last quarter, with a timestamp. |
03Track
Data and applied AI.
Reporting is a product with users. It needs definitions, tests and a stated owner — otherwise two departments will present two numbers and both will be defensible.
Sequence
Source of truth first. Where a number comes from, what it excludes, and who may change the definition. Then ingestion, then transformation, then the surface someone reads. AI features come last, because they inherit every unresolved ambiguity upstream.
| Layer | Artefact | Failure it prevents |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Metric dictionary with owner and revision date. | Two teams reporting different revenue. |
| Ingestion | Scheduled loads with row counts, rejects and alerting. | Silent gaps discovered a quarter later. |
| Transformation | Versioned models with tests on keys, ranges and freshness. | A join that duplicates rows after a schema change. |
| Surface | Dashboards with an audience and a review date, or retired. | Forty charts nobody trusts. |
| Model feature | Input contract, evaluation set, human review step, off switch. | A confident answer with no route to challenge it. |
No feature ships without a manual path beside it. If the model is wrong, the work still has to be possible.
04Track
Integration and technical support.
Most operational pain lives between systems, not inside them: an order that exists in three places, a payment that posted twice, a stock count that drifts.
ContractsWhat each side promises
FailureWhat happens when it breaks
VisibilityHow a human finds out
SupportWhat is contracted
Support, plainly
Support is a written agreement, not an implied favour. It names what is covered, how a request is raised, what happens outside business hours, and how either side ends it. Response times are agreed per engagement and written into the agreement — this page will not publish a number we have not signed.
Next step
Scope before
estimate.
Send the task, the systems it touches and the deadline you are working to. The first reply is a set of questions, not a quote.