Approach
Delivery that does not depend on luck.
The principle
In 2020 the company stopped selling man-hours and headcount, and started selling a standard.
Eight years in, Chris rebuilt the company’s strategy, products and organisation around that one decision. How engineers are recruited, trained, measured and managed was written down and made repeatable.
A standard passes one test. Delivery no longer depends on who happens to be on the project.
What a standard means
- WrittenEvery practice is on paper, so it can be read, questioned and improved.
- TaughtNew engineers are trained to it before they are counted as ready.
- MeasuredReadiness and delivery are checked against it.
- YoursThe documents belong to the client and stay when people change.
How the standard is applied
Recruit
A bench of senior leaders and architects is already in place. Engineers are hired against defined capability slots, from talent pools in Malaysia, China and the Philippines.
Train
Training follows four steps: learn, apply, evaluate, compete. Engineers work with AI-assisted development tools from the start, and nobody is counted as ready until the evaluation says so.
Manage
Targets are agreed in the first week. For teams that work remotely, hours, tasks and progress are visible in one system through the working day, so performance is measured.
The teams today
- 14Years building and running enterprise software
- 390Full-time engineers across Malaysia, China and the Philippines
- USD 12.5MPaid in salaries every year
- 95%Engineer retention at 12 months
What the client keeps
The team, the documented standard and the system. None of the three leaves when a person does.