Product engineering · 8 months
Eight months of predictable delivery after a paid discovery
A discovery engagement that converted into sixteen consecutive two-week sprints without a reset in between.
- Consecutive two-week sprints
- 16Consecutive two-week sprints
- Unbroken delivery cadence
- 8 monthsUnbroken delivery cadence
- Discovery fed the build directly
- No resetDiscovery fed the build directly
The problem
The client arrived with an ambition rather than a specification. The usual outcome is a discovery phase that produces a document, a gap while commercials are re-negotiated, and a build that starts by re-deciding everything the discovery already settled.
What I did
I ran discovery as the first phase of delivery rather than a separate product: the artefacts it produced were the ones the build would actually consume — backlog, roles, and a cadence — so nothing had to be re-derived. Business analysis and design stayed one list ahead of engineering instead of running as a parallel project, which is what usually causes the handover gap. From there it was sixteen two-week sprints on an unbroken cadence, with change requests handled as an explicit client decision each time rather than absorbed silently.
How it ran
- 01
Discovery
Scoped to produce what the build needs — a costed backlog, named owners and a cadence — not a document that ends up unread.
- 02
Cadence set-up
Two-week sprints with business analysis and design running one list ahead of engineering, so nothing waited on a decision.
- 03
Delivery
Sixteen sprints on the same rhythm, each closing against agreed scope, with change requests surfaced as decisions rather than absorbed.
- 04
Handover
The backlog, the cadence and the decision record left with the client’s team rather than living in my head.
Other work
All case studies →- Aviation
Twenty days of discovery that priced a year of build
An airport group needed to replace a security-credentialling system under a sovereign compliance regime. Twenty person-days of discovery produced five approved deliverables and an effort envelope the fixed-price contract could stand on.
- Health tech
The estimate that covered a third of what the client thought they were buying
Two documents described two different products and both carried our logo. I stopped the contract, wrote the discrepancy register, and split the release into a fundraising build and a regulated one.
- Software services
What the projects actually earned, once someone put cost next to revenue
Margin was assumed to be about half. Reading revenue, cost and hours together showed a spread from a third to three quarters — and one project that had quietly overrun its ceiling without a change request.
Something similar on your plate?
Thirty minutes, no deck. I will tell you whether it is worth doing at all.