The usual modelThe retainer arrangement
The default way technical work is bought, and the one most businesses are still paying for.
Manuel TechnologiesOne engineering practice
Sixteen services across Build, Grow and Scale, under senior engineering ownership and one accountable owner.
- Who builds
- Sold by a senior. Built by whoever is free that week.
- Who builds
- Scoped, written and reviewed under senior engineering ownership.
- Structure
- Several vendors, several invoices, no single owner.
- Structure
- Sixteen services, three pillars, one accountable owner.
- Deliverable
- A report, a deck, and a list of recommendations.
- Deliverable
- Working code, a documented deployment path, and a handover.
- Ownership
- Access through somebody else's accounts.
- Ownership
- The repository, the domains, and the analytics property.
- Performance
- Fast enough, measured on an office desktop.
- Performance
- Core Web Vitals as a build requirement, measured on mobile.
- SEO
- Rankings and traffic, summarised monthly.
- SEO
- Crawlability, indexation, and the code that causes both.
- AI search
- An add on line item, when it is mentioned at all.
- AI search
- GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and Google-Extended, allowed by name.
- Proof
- Case studies you cannot open and screenshots you cannot check.
- Proof
- Software you can install today, and tools you can run on this page.
- Result
- Advice in a folder, and an invoice that repeats.
- Result
- A system in production, senior review behind it, and the means to maintain it.