A new developer should be able to ship a non-trivial change on their first day.

The test that matters

If a developer who has never seen your codebase can understand it, make a meaningful change, run the tests with confidence, and deploy safely on day one, then almost everything else is working. The code is readable. The tests are trustworthy. The CI pipeline catches mistakes. The deployment process is safe. The documentation covers what it needs to.

If any of those things are broken, they can't do it.

We don't force this outcome every time. Sometimes day one is about understanding context, and that's fine. But we build every system so that it's possible. That's the difference. Some teams set targets like this and end up cutting corners to hit them. We'd rather build the capability and let the outcome follow naturally.

Every practice on this page serves that goal. Testing, code review, static analysis, CI/CD, documentation, architecture. None of them exist for their own sake. They exist because together they produce a codebase that a competent developer can walk into and start contributing to immediately.

That's what a healthy system looks like.

Requirements and communication

We don't start with a specification document that tries to predict everything. Requirements change. The business learns things. Users surprise you. Any process that assumes the plan won't change is setting itself up to fail.

Instead, we work closely with you throughout. We want to understand the business problem, not just the feature request. When we understand why something is needed, we can often suggest a simpler or more effective approach than the one originally imagined.

Communication is direct. You talk to the engineers doing the work, not a project manager relaying messages. We keep a regular cadence of check-ins, but we don't hide behind process. If something needs discussing, we discuss it.

We use whatever tools your team already uses for communication. We're not going to force you onto a new platform.

Architecture and system design

Every technical decision has a commercial consequence: how fast you can ship, how easy it is to hire developers who understand the system, how much it costs to change direction, and how badly things break when something goes wrong.

We make those trade-offs explicit. We don't pick technologies because they're fashionable. We pick them because they're the right fit for your business, your team, and the lifespan of the system.

Our default is to keep things simple. Complexity should be earned, not assumed. A straightforward architecture that your team can understand and maintain is worth more than an elaborate one that only its creator can navigate. We've seen too many systems collapse under the weight of cleverness that nobody asked for.

We design for change. Not by trying to predict what will change (nobody can), but by keeping components decoupled, responsibilities clear, and the cost of modification low. That's what lets a system absorb ten years of evolving requirements without needing a rewrite.

Code standards

Consistency matters more than personal preference. When every file in a codebase follows the same patterns, any developer can pick up any part of the system. When everyone has their own style, every file is a puzzle.

We use automated formatting and linting so that code style is never a conversation. It's handled by tools before code reaches review. That frees up human attention for the decisions that actually matter.

We also care about naming, structure, and clarity. Code is read far more often than it's written. We optimise for the person reading it six months from now, not the person writing it today.

Testing

We test at multiple levels, and each level has a different job.

Unit tests are fast, focused, and cheap to write. They verify that individual components behave correctly in isolation. We design our code with testability in mind, which means keeping dependencies explicit and logic separated from infrastructure. If code is hard to test, that's usually a sign the design needs rethinking.

Integration tests verify that components work together. They catch the problems that unit tests miss: misconfigured services, incorrect database queries, broken API contracts. They're slower to run but essential for confidence.

System tests exercise the application as a user would. They're the most expensive to write and maintain, so we use them selectively for critical paths rather than trying to cover everything.

The goal isn't a coverage percentage. It's a test suite that gives your team genuine confidence to make changes. If developers are afraid to touch the code because they don't trust the tests, the tests aren't doing their job.

We also keep test code to the same standard as production code. Decoupled, readable, and maintainable. A test suite that's coupled tightly to implementation details becomes a drag on development rather than a safety net.

Static analysis

Static analysis tools examine your code without running it. They find bugs, enforce type safety, and catch entire categories of errors before they reach production. We treat them as a core part of the development process, not an afterthought.

We run static analysis at the highest practical level for your codebase. On new projects, that means starting strict from day one. On existing projects, we use baselining (we built a tool for this, SARB) to introduce analysis without being overwhelmed by historical issues.

Beyond the standard checks, we write custom rules that enforce your project's specific architectural decisions. If a factory is the only valid way to create a certain object, static analysis should catch it when someone bypasses the factory. If a service should only be called from a specific layer, that rule should be automated, not documented and forgotten.

Code review

Every change is reviewed before it's merged. No exceptions.

Code review isn't about catching typos. It's about shared understanding. When two people have looked at every change, knowledge is spread across the team rather than siloed in one person's head. That matters when someone goes on holiday, leaves the project, or just forgets what they wrote three months ago.

We review for clarity, correctness, and maintainability. Does this change make the system easier or harder to work with in six months? Is the approach consistent with how the rest of the codebase works? Are there edge cases that haven't been considered?

We also use code review as a teaching tool. When working alongside your team (in Steer or Build engagements), review is where a lot of the knowledge transfer happens naturally.

CI/CD and deployment

Code should move from a developer's machine to production through an automated, repeatable pipeline. Manual deployments are error-prone, stressful, and slow. Automated ones are boring. We prefer boring.

Our pipelines typically include automated tests, static analysis, code style checks, and security scanning. If any step fails, the deployment stops. Nothing reaches production without passing every check.

We aim for deployments to be small and frequent. A deployment that contains two days of work is easy to understand and easy to roll back. A deployment that contains six weeks of work is a gamble.

The pipeline itself is version-controlled and reproducible. It's not a set of manual steps that only one person knows. If the person who set up the infrastructure is unavailable, nothing should grind to a halt.

Infrastructure and DevOps

The best application code in the world is worthless if the server it runs on is unreliable, insecure, or impossible to maintain.

We treat infrastructure as code. Environments are defined in configuration, reproducible, and version-controlled. There's no "it works on the production server because someone SSH'd in and changed a setting three years ago." Every environment can be rebuilt from scratch.

We set up monitoring and alerting so problems are caught before users report them. When something does go wrong, the goal is fast diagnosis and recovery. That means good logging, clear error messages, and runbooks for common failure modes.

We keep dependencies updated. Security patches shouldn't sit in a backlog for months. We build regular dependency updates into the normal workflow rather than treating them as a separate, dreaded task.

Handling change

Requirements will change. That's not a failure of planning. It's reality.

Our approach is to make change cheap rather than trying to prevent it. That means keeping components loosely coupled, keeping the test suite healthy, and keeping the deployment pipeline fast. When a new requirement arrives, the question should be "how long will this take?" not "what will this break?"

When priorities shift, we work with you to understand the impact. Sometimes a change is straightforward. Sometimes it affects the architecture in ways that aren't obvious. We surface those trade-offs early so decisions are made with full information, not discovered after the fact.

We push back when a requested change would create disproportionate long-term pain for short-term convenience. That's not obstructionism. It's what you're paying a senior team for.

Knowledge sharing and documentation

We don't write documentation for documentation's sake. We document decisions: why something was built a certain way, what alternatives were considered, and what constraints shaped the choice. That context is what a future developer (or your future self) actually needs.

Code review, consistent naming, and clear architecture do more for knowledge sharing than any wiki. If the codebase is well-structured, a competent developer can understand it by reading it. Documentation fills the gaps that code can't express: business context, historical decisions, and operational procedures.

When working with your team, knowledge transfer happens through the daily work: code review, pairing, architecture discussions, and shared ownership of the codebase. We don't hoard knowledge. The goal is always to leave your team more capable than we found them.

Working with your team

Whether it's a Build, Steer, or Train engagement, we adapt to how your team operates. We're not going to impose a methodology on you or insist you adopt our preferred tools. We work within your existing setup and improve things incrementally.

That said, we have opinions and we'll share them. If your current process has gaps, we'll point them out. If your tooling is creating friction, we'll suggest alternatives. If something is working well, we'll say so and leave it alone.

We're direct communicators. We won't bury bad news in a status report. If there's a problem, you'll hear about it as soon as we identify it, along with our recommendation for how to handle it.

The short version

We write tested, reviewed, statically analysed code. We automate everything that should be automated. We deploy frequently and safely. We design systems to absorb change. We document decisions, not just code. We communicate directly and honestly. And we optimise for the people who'll be working on this system in three years, not just the people working on it today.