Part engagement, part consultancy. Embedded teams, system rescues, integrations and migrations off legacy stacks. The work usually starts with “can you take a look at this?” and turns into a five-year relationship.
No two are the same on paper. They tend to fall into one of these patterns when you sit down and look. We're happy to start with a paid two-week diagnostic to figure out which one you've got.
Something built years ago by a person who is no longer at the organisation. It runs, but it’s the kind of running that makes everyone nervous to touch. We adopt it, write down how it actually works, stabilise it and then evolve it carefully.
You have a roadmap and a product manager but no engineers. We become the engineering team for the duration. Your tooling, your backlog, daily stand-ups. We come and go cleanly when you no longer need us.
Legacy systems onto a modern stack: SQL Server to PostgreSQL, spreadsheet to real database, custom-built to off-the-shelf or the other way round. We’ve done a lot of these and most of the surprises by now are familiar ones.
We don’t run the day-rate-and-hope model. Engagements are fixed-price-per-month or fixed-price-per-outcome, agreed up front, on a rolling 90-day basis. If we’re not earning our keep you can leave with a quarter’s notice. Most don’t.
"I called HCOMS in for a two-week look at a system I'd just inherited. By the end of week two they'd fixed three things nobody had been able to fix in two years. We've worked with them ever since."— Interim CTO · Professional body · 2024