Resources

Take our checklists. Really.

These are working versions of the checklists we run on real engagements - published free, with no email wall, because they are more useful to you filled in than gated. Print this page or save it as PDF (Ctrl/Cmd + P).

1 · Software planning checklist

Answer these before writing a line of code (or hiring anyone, including us):

• Problem: can you state it in one paragraph a stranger could act on - who has it, how often, what changes if solved?
• User: who opens this product on a Tuesday, and what do they do in the first 60 seconds?
• Success: what single number tells you in 90 days that this worked?
• Workflow: which ONE workflow proves the business? (Everything else is version two.)
• Data: what records must exist, who owns them, and what must never be lost or leaked?
• Integrations: which existing systems must this talk to on day one?
• Constraints: budget, deadline, compliance - written down, not implied.
• Ownership: whose repositories and cloud accounts will this live in? (Correct answer: yours.)

2 · MVP planning guide

How we scope a 4–6 week MVP Sprint, usable without us:

1. Week 0 - cut scope twice. List every feature, mark the one workflow that proves the business, delete the rest from v1. Then delete more.
2. Define the walking skeleton. The thinnest end-to-end path: sign in, do the workflow, see the result. Ship this internally in week 2.
3. Decide the platform once. Auth, database, hosting, pipeline - boring choices made early (our defaults) so weeks are spent on the product.
4. Real data by week 3. Demos on fake data hide every hard problem. Import, migrate or hand-enter the real thing early.
5. Deploy from week 1. Production exists before features do; every merge ships to staging automatically. Launch day is then a non-event.
6. Book the feedback before the build. Five users scheduled for week 5, on calendars, before week 1 ends.

3 · Architecture & deployment checklist

The pre-launch list we run on every release - the long version of the architecture page:

• Infrastructure as code: could you recreate every environment from the repo alone?
• Pipeline: do tests and review gate every merge? Can you roll back with one command?
• Secrets: in a managed vault, rotated, absent from code and logs?
• Data: backups running AND restore tested? Migrations reversible?
• Security: TLS everywhere, security headers, least-privilege roles, input validation at every service boundary?
• Observability: will you know it is down before a customer tells you? Do alerts page a human who can act?
• Cost: per-service spend visible? Autoscaling bounded with floors and ceilings?
• Docs: can a new engineer deploy from the README in under an hour?

Guides

• How to choose a software company - including the eight questions to ask before hiring developers.
• Why software projects fail - the five patterns we see in rescue work.
• How to validate an MVP - the bet, the kill metric, the one-workflow scope.
• Cloud migration checklist - inventory to decommission, rollback-guarded.
• AI readiness guide - the four week-one questions, including honest not-yet signals.
• How software cost actually works - the drivers, the pricing models, the honest comparison method.

Coming next

Delivered as promised: the cloud migration checklist and AI readiness guide are now live above. Next on the bench: an architecture-review template.