Service Overview
Some work doesn’t fit a retainer and can’t wait for a hire. You need a defined outcome, a firm timeline, and one person who owns it end-to-end. Project-Based Contracts are for the work your team shouldn’t have to steal cycles from roadmap to get done—architecture assessments, modernization plans, migration strategies, or technical due diligence with a deadline attached.
Every engagement starts with a written scope, a fixed fee or capped budget, and a named deliverable. Mid-project change orders are explicit, not implied.
Signals This Fits
- You need an outside voice to own a defined piece of work—not just advise on it
- A migration, rewrite, or modernization has stalled and needs a plan that survives contact with reality
- An investor, acquirer, or auditor is asking for technical due diligence your team can’t produce quickly
- You have a decision to make but lack the architectural baseline to make it
- You want a deliverable you can hand to the next team or the next investor without edits
Common Project Types
- Architecture assessments and modernization roadmaps
- Cloud migration strategy and execution playbooks
- API design, versioning, and platform-consolidation plans
- Legacy system decomposition and strangler-pattern sequencing
- Performance audits with ranked, actionable recommendations
- Technical due diligence for acquisitions, investments, or partnerships
- Post-incident architectural reviews that go beyond the blameless postmortem
How It Works
Step 1 – Scope
We co-author a one-page scope: the question, the deliverable, the timeline, the access I need, and what’s explicitly out of scope. You sign off before any clock starts.
Step 2 – Execute
I run the work with weekly status notes, an open Slack channel, and a mid-project checkpoint. No surprise invoices, no drifting deliverables.
Step 3 – Deliver & Hand Off
Final deliverable, a walkthrough with your team (recorded), and a 30-day follow-up window for clarifying questions. Your team can run with the output on day one.
What You Get
- A written scope with a fixed fee or a clearly capped budget
- Weekly status notes so leadership isn’t chasing updates
- The agreed deliverable—assessment, plan, architecture spec, migration playbook, or due-diligence report
- Recorded walkthroughs your team can re-watch and onboard new engineers with
- A 30-day follow-up window for questions after final delivery
Typical Timelines
Most projects run 4–12 weeks. Due-diligence sprints can be as short as a week; platform-scale assessments can stretch to a quarter. I’ll tell you up front if your timeline is unrealistic—not at the end of the engagement.