Software Risk Assessment
$25,000 · fixed scope · written money-back guarantee
An independent measurement of one funded value stream: how much of the delivery capacity you are paying for is going to waiting, rework and defect debt — and where. Measured from your own tracker, sized in features you have already shipped, and read out to the people who own the budget.
Is this for you?
It is, if most of these are true:
- You fund a software delivery organization — in-house, a vendor, or both — and you are accountable for what it delivers, not only for what it costs.
- Your work tracker (Jira, Azure DevOps or similar) records when work items change status. That history is what we measure.
- You can say, roughly, what you spent on software development last year.
- The executive who owns the P&L for that spend will be in the room for the readout.
If the second one is a “not sure,” that is not a no. Whether your data can support the measurement is one of the first things we find out — and the guarantee covers both answers.
The process is the same whether the team is yours, a vendor’s, or you are deciding whether to outsource. The record is the record.
What We Do
Five steps, in a fixed scope.
- Scope it in writing. Together we choose one team and one recent release — or a set of features — and we put in writing, before we look at a single ticket, the bar we expect to clear and the date on which you will decide what to do with the findings.
- Measure how work actually moves. With read-only access to your tracker, we reconstruct how work moved through that release: where it waited, where it came back, what never shipped, and what a feature cost you against your own baseline. We read the documents around the work too — requirements, test results, release notes — in whatever condition they exist.
- Put a value on it — yours, not ours. A 90-minute working session with the executive who owns the budget. You state what the capacity is worth to you; we state how much of it there is. We won’t tell you what your capacity is worth, because if we did, you would be right to discount it.
- Read it out. A two-hour session with your technology and finance leaders. It opens with what is working. Every finding is labelled measured, inferred, or stated by you — so nobody has to take our word for which is which.
- Then you decide. The findings say what, if anything, is worth doing next. Nothing beyond the assessment is sold on day one.
What You Get
- A reconstructed picture of one release or feature set: where the funded capacity is going, in effort and in cost, against your own baseline.
- Cost per feature, sized in features you have already shipped — “this one cost about twice the March release” — so every number is in your vocabulary, not ours.
- Where work waits, and for how long — in days, reported beside the capacity figure rather than inside it, because waiting costs you calendar, not hours.
- Every finding labelled measured, inferred, or stated by you.
- A written readout you can put in front of your CEO or your board without us in the room.
- If your data cannot support the measurement: exactly what is missing, why it matters, and how to put it in place so it can be measured from now on. That is a finding — often the most useful one.
- A decision date, agreed at the start, so the findings do not go into a drawer.
On time. On budget. Four features short.
What does a Software Risk Assessment readout actually say? Here is the executive summary of a full eighteen-section report, start to finish.
20.7%
of capacity went to rework & work never shipped
7 of 11
committed features delivered
18%
flow efficiency touch vs elapsed time
31%
of story points were defects and rework
The Guarantee, In Writing
These are the full terms. Every mention of the guarantee on this site links here, and the statement of work carries the same words.
Instead of a vague and hard to enforce “Satisfaction Guarantee”, here’s what we commit to:
We measure a subset of your delivery — a recent release or a set of features. In that subset, we expect to find at least 20% of your delivery capacity consumed by unplanned rework and work that was built but never shipped. We put that expectation in writing before we look at a single ticket.
If your data lets us measure it, we’ll show you the actual figure and exactly where that capacity is going. If your data won’t support the measurement, we’ll show you how to measure it going forward. If we do neither, you don’t pay.
Your expected outcomes are dependent on what we discover in the assessment — and what you implement based on our recommendations.
What It Isn’t
It is not a tool rollout, a testing engagement or a staffing proposal. If what you need is help testing, or people, say so — we do both, and we will sell you exactly that. → Software Testing & QA · Talent & Staffing
It is not a benchmark. We do not compare you with an industry average or with other clients. Every number is yours, against your own history.
And it is not a verdict on your team. Most of what we find is structural — how work waits, where it comes back, what never ships — and the point is capacity, not blame.
What Happens After
The assessment is the first step, and it is a whole step on its own. What can follow it, in order: a full assessment across your delivery organization, a roadmap, the fixing, and a standing independent read of the numbers so the gains stay measured. Each is earned by what the step before it finds; none of it is sold on day one.
Some clients act on the findings with their own teams. Some ask us to measure the whole delivery organization, to build the roadmap, or to keep the independent read running. The findings decide.
