Seven calendar days from kickoff call to a live dashboard your team logs into. People hear that and assume the trick is working faster. The trick is removing the things that usually slow a build down.
We do not run sprints, run discovery for two weeks, then build, then hand off. We compress the steps. Each day has one shape, one deliverable, and one decision the client owns.
Day 1, Monday: Discovery
Ninety minutes on a call. We do not ask what data you have. We ask what decision you make on a Tuesday morning, what tools you already tried, and where the truth lives when two systems disagree. We sketch a layout in front of you and leave the call with a one-page brief.
You sign off on the brief by end of day. That is the only deliverable we ask of you in week one.
Day 2, Tuesday: Connections
We connect the integrations on day two because connections are where surprises hide. API tokens expire, sandbox accounts have different field IDs, a custom report breaks on a special character. Better to meet that on day two than day six.
By end of day, raw data flows into our warehouse, named in your vocabulary, not the vendor's.
Day 3, Wednesday: Layout
The board takes shape. Six tiles, in the order a user would read them, with placeholder values that look real. We send a clickable preview link before end of day. You comment in the margin. We do not wait for a meeting.
Day 4, Thursday: Real data
Placeholders come out, real values go in. Calculated fields land. Filters work. Drilldowns exist. This is the longest day on our side, and the quietest on yours.
Day 5, Friday: Polish
We tune. Spacing. Colour. Mobile layout. The five-second test (open the page on a phone in a queue and see if the first useful number is on screen). Anything that fails gets fixed.
Day 6, Saturday or Monday: Your review
If you want a weekend off, we slide review to Monday. Either way, you and one or two stakeholders open the live preview together. We tweak in real time. The deal is simple: feedback in the room, not by email a week later.
Most builds need fifteen to thirty minor changes at this stage. That is the point of the day.
Day 7: Live and trained
Production cutover in the morning. Forty-five minutes of team training in the afternoon. Handover doc in your shared drive. Support channel opened. You are live.
What we ask of you
The seven day rhythm only works because the client side stays light. Three commitments are enough.
- One decision-maker present at the kickoff and at the review. Not a committee.
- Credentials and access ready before day two. We send a list.
- Feedback inside the day it is requested. Saved-up feedback is the most expensive kind.
What can derail it
Three things, in order of how often we see them.
- Mid-flight scope changes. A new widget on day five is fine. A new data source on day five resets the clock. We will tell you which is which.
- Access bottlenecks. A token nobody can hand out costs days. We front-load this and still it sometimes happens.
- Review by committee. If the final word lives with someone who has not been in the room, we will pause until they are.
What you have on day eight
- A live, branded dashboard at your own URL.
- An admin login and team logins.
- Documentation of every data source and refresh schedule.
- One support channel where we reply within hours.
- A maintenance retainer that keeps the dashboard yours, not ours.
Week two starts with one quiet meeting: what is working, what is missing, what to build next. Usually that becomes the second dashboard.
If your organisation has a supplier assessment or GDPR review to complete before the engagement starts, we have written about where your data sits and what the GDPR requires of us as your processor. Both are short reads and answer the questions procurement teams usually ask.
