How we work
Small senior teams, short cycles, a planned handover
We work the same way on a six-week assessment as on a three-year rebuild, and we plan for the day you no longer need us from the first week.
Talk to us
Our approach
A small team of people who have done it before, working in short cycles alongside yours, with a written plan for the day you run the system without us. That is the whole method. The rest is discipline in keeping to it.
We do not hand you a slide deck and leave, and we do not keep fifty people on site for years. Our teams are senior, so they are small, and they stay close to the people who will inherit the work.
Every engagement starts with a measure of success that someone outside technology can check, and ends when it has been met.
The shape of an engagement
How an engagement runs
Most of our work follows five steps. Some clients join at the first, others at the fourth.
Understand
Two to four weeks reading the code, the bills and the incident log, and talking to the people who run the system today. We agree one measure of success.
Plan and price
A costed sequence of work, smallest valuable step first. Each phase has a fixed price or an honest range, and a date.
Build in short cycles
Two-week cycles with working software at every review. Your engineers pair with ours and own parts of the system from the start.
Hand over
Runbooks, training and a period where your team is on call with ours beside them, then on their own, on a date set in the first month.
Run or step back
Your team runs the system, or we stay on as a standing team through Managed Services or KIASA Canopy. You choose.
Our commitments
What you can expect from us
The partner stays
The partner who agrees the work is in the reviews and on the phone until it is done, not only at the pitch.
Your people in the team
We plan for your engineers, designers and analysts to work in the team, not to receive its output at the end.
A working demo every two weeks
Progress is shown, never reported. If there is nothing to show, you will hear why the same day.
Costs in the open
You see what we spend, and the running costs of what we build, before you are asked to approve them.
Nothing proprietary
Everything we write lives in your repositories, your accounts and your documentation, from the first commit.
A date for the handover
We set it in the first month, report against it every cycle, and say early if it needs to move.
In practice
What this looks like in the numbers
- 7
- people on an average KIASA engagement team.
- 2 weeks
- between working demonstrations, on every engagement.
- 83%
- of handovers completed on or before the date set in the first month.
- 9 in 10
- of the clients we worked with in 2023 are still working with us today.
KIASA delivery records, engagements completed July 2025 to June 2026; client survey, June 2026.
“They put our people in the team from the first week. By the time the last product line moved, our own engineers were the ones explaining the new claims platform to the auditors.”
FAQ
Questions clients ask
How big is a typical team?
Between four and nine people, most often six or seven. We would rather add a cycle than add people: smaller teams make fewer handoffs and fewer mistakes.
Do you work on fixed prices?
For assessments and well-understood phases, yes. Where the work cannot be known in advance, we give an honest range and report against it every two weeks, so a change in cost is never a surprise.
Can our own engineers join the team?
We plan for it. Most of our teams are mixed from the first sprint, and the handover is far easier when your people wrote part of the system.
Workforce EnablementWhat happens after the handover?
Most clients run the system themselves, and call us for the next piece of work. Some prefer a standing team to run, secure and improve it. We offer both.
Managed ServicesWhere does the work happen?
Mostly from our studios, with the team on your site for the moments that need it: discovery, key reviews and the handover. Every studio can draw on people from the others.
Our locationsClient stories
See it in the work
Tell us what you are working on
A partner will reply within two working days, with a view on whether we are the right people for it.