A system that keeps earning after we leave
Shipping is the middle of the job, not the end. Every system goes live with monitoring, documentation and a 90-day warranty — and then you choose: we run it on a retainer, or we hand it cleanly to your team.
What actually happens
The phase most firms treat as an afterthought is the one your business lives with longest.
Go-live, instrumented
The system enters production with monitoring and alerts wired to your channels — not to a dashboard nobody opens. If something breaks at 2 a.m., it wakes the right people.
The 90-day warranty window
Defects in anything we shipped are fixed free for 90 days after acceptance. No arguing about definitions — if it doesn't do what the accepted milestone said, it's a defect.
You choose the path
Retainer or handover — decided by what serves the system, not what serves our invoicing. Plenty of clients start on a retainer and hand over once their own team is ready.
The system keeps earning
Either way, the goal of this phase is the same: software that keeps producing the metric it was built for — whether we're operating it or your team is.
Two paths, one standard
The engineering is identical either way — the only question is who operates the system day to day.
We run it and keep improving it
For teams that want the system's leverage without building an engineering function around it.
Your team takes over, cleanly
For companies building in-house capability — the handover is planned like a milestone, not improvised.
What ships with every system
These aren't retainer extras — they're part of the build's definition of done, whichever path you choose.
What we need from you
The operate phase is light on your time — but three things make it work.
A decision on the path
Retainer or handover — we'll recommend one based on your team, but the call is yours. It isn't final either: retainers hand over, and handovers can come back.
An operating owner
One person who receives the alerts, reads the reports and owns the system internally — even on a retainer, the system should have a name next to it inside your company.
Your channels, open
Monitoring and alerts go where your team already lives — Slack, Teams, email, pager. We wire into your stack, not the other way around.
The handover is the exit door — and it's always open
This phase is built so you can leave it. Everything a future team needs — code, records, runbooks, pipelines — exists in writing from day one, so ending the retainer is a planned handover, not a hostage negotiation. No lock-in by obscurity, ever. You keep the system, the documentation and every capability it earned you.
Common questions about operating
What exactly does the 90-day warranty cover?
Defects in anything we shipped — behaviour that doesn't match the accepted milestone scope — fixed free for 90 days after acceptance. No arguing about definitions.
What does a retainer typically include?
We run and improve the system: monitoring and incident response, fixes, and continued development against the metric it was built for — with reporting in your channels.
How does a handover work in practice?
Your team gets the architecture and decision records, runbooks, the test suite and CI/CD — and time with the engineers who built the system. Handover is a process we plan, not a zip file we send.
Can you help us hire the team that takes over?
Yes. If you're building an in-house team, we help you hire it — writing the roles, screening candidates, and onboarding them into the codebase we documented for exactly this moment.
Can we come back after a handover?
Any time. The documentation that made the handover clean makes the return cheap — we pick the system back up without an archaeology phase.
Is there any lock-in?
No — and by design, not by promise. Everything is documented for a team that isn't us, the IP is yours, and nothing about the system depends on our continued involvement.
Already running a system nobody wants to touch?
We take over existing codebases after a short technical audit — and document them so nobody fears them again.