No branded methodology. No proprietary framework with a clever name. Just the delivery principles that have worked across 150 projects and 20 years.
WHAT WE BELIEVE
No black boxes. You get access to the backlog, the board, and the repos. If we are behind, you will know on Wednesday. Not when the invoice lands on Friday. Weekly reporting covers what shipped, what is blocked, and what is next. We do not curate the news.
A story is not done when a developer says it is done. It is done when it has been code reviewed, tested, deployed to staging, and accepted by your product owner. We do not move cards to “done” and hope nobody checks.
Every story is estimated before it enters a sprint. If we cannot estimate it, it is not ready. We will tell you that before the sprint starts. Not after. Unknowns get spiked. Assumptions get written down. Surprises are what happen to other consultancies.
Delivery leads and designers sit in Australia. Senior developers and QA engineers work from Manila on Australian hours. Same standups. Same repos. Same Slack channels. Everyone talks to the client directly. It is not a handoff. It is one team with a timezone advantage built in.
Code reviews on every pull request. Automated tests on every commit. Security scanning in the pipeline. Our definition of done includes accessibility and documentation. Not just “it compiles.” We do not bolt quality on at the end. It is already there.
A TYPICAL WEEK
MON
Sprint planning or backlog grooming
Priorities confirmed with client
Last week's blockers cleared
TUE
Standup. Ten minutes.
Build, test, review.
Questions via Slack.
WED
Standup. Ten minutes.
Build, test, review.
Mid-week check-in with client.
THU
Standup. Ten minutes.
Build, test, review.
Stories moved to QA.
FRI
Demo of completed work
Sprint review (fortnightly)
Status report delivered
Next week flagged
Two-week sprints. Standups that run ten minutes. Retros that change something. If a ceremony does not help the project, we drop it.
HOW WE START
WEEK 1
We scope the engagement before anyone writes code. What are you building? What does the current stack look like? Who makes decisions? We document assumptions and flag risks early. Not after the first sprint falls over.
WEEK 2
Team introductions. Tooling configured. Access sorted. Repos, CI/CD, Slack, your project board. Whatever you use, we plug into it. The team joins your standups from day one. No parallel universe where work happens somewhere you cannot see it.
WEEKS 3-4
By end of week three, you should have working software in staging. Not wireframes. Not a discovery document. Something you can click on and give feedback about. If we cannot show progress by then, something is wrong. And we will tell you.
WHAT YOU GET
Every Friday. One page. What was planned, what shipped, what is blocked, what is coming. If something is going wrong, you will read it here before you need to ask. Not a 40-slide deck. Just the facts.
You get access to the board. Every story, every sprint, every pull request. You are invited to standups, demos, and retros. We do not work behind a curtain and send you a build at the end of the month. You are part of the team.
Donnish have been excellent partners for us. They ask great questions to understand what we want to achieve and offer real technical expertise. In the past we have had software consultants give us lots of choices and ideas (for us to decide!) but rarely provided such clear recommendations of the best solution. They have worked with us to understand our service needs to develop shared and concrete expectations of how to best work together to manage timelines, budget, and outcomes. No uncertainty ever lasts long!
Joshua Hall
Acting Clinical Services and Research Coordinator
STARTTS (NSW Service for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture and Trauma Survivors)
Tell us what you need. If we can help, we will tell you how. If we cannot, we will say so.
Talk to Us