What is Tech Project Rescue?

Unfortunately tech projects can and do go wrong. Misaligned expectations, short term decisions and suppliers acting in bad faith can all derail your product.

Don’t panic – we have extensive experience taking over projects and products that have gone off the rails and recovering them.

We approach a project rescue in the same way we would any product development – we start by understanding why you’re doing the project and how it fits into your broader business vision. This allows us to design the best solution to move you forwards.

What You Can Expect:

  • Keeping focus on the big picture whilst nailing the fine detail
  • A team of experts deployed as appropriate across the project
  • Picking the right tech for you - not what we want to work with
  • Clarity on costs and deliverables before any work begins
  • Re-using what we can from the previous project
  • Being clear about and compromises or trade-offs required to get you over the line

Our Tech Project Rescue Includes

Tech Strategy

We’ll carry out a North Star Workshop with you to dig deeper into the issues and start looking at potential solutions, focusing on lowest cost, highest impact implementations. We’ll also give you a roadmap that details how results will be measured and visualises your path back to a position of strength.

  • Tech Strategy

    We’ll carry out a North Star Workshop with you to dig deeper into the issues and start looking at potential solutions, focusing on lowest cost, highest impact implementations. We’ll also give you a roadmap that details how results will be measured and visualises your path back to a position of strength.

Solution Design

As a tech agnostic team we focus on the best tools for your project, not just our favourite. Our goal is to find the best solutions, not just the ones that conveniently mean the most budget for us. You’ll get a detailed, plain English specification document with diagrams, early designs and the pros, cons, fixed costs and timelines of any advised approaches.

  • Solution Design

    As a tech agnostic team we focus on the best tools for your project, not just our favourite. Our goal is to find the best solutions, not just the ones that conveniently mean the most budget for us. You’ll get a detailed, plain English specification document with diagrams, early designs and the pros, cons, fixed costs and timelines of any advised approaches.

Design and Build

We start by translating the specification into wireframe mockups for final review and course correction. We’ll then add your branding and begin development. Progress updates keep you involved at every step, with our whole team adding a range of expertise to each build. Regular code reviews ensure top-notch technical quality is maintained.

  • Design and Build

    We start by translating the specification into wireframe mockups for final review and course correction. We’ll then add your branding and begin development. Progress updates keep you involved at every step, with our whole team adding a range of expertise to each build. Regular code reviews ensure top-notch technical quality is maintained.

Test and Launch

We integrate testing right from the start of a project. Clients can access a regularly updated test plan at any time to guide user testing. All code is tested by the author, reviewed by another developer and then tested by the lead test developer. We use manual, automated, and unit testing. Launch is planned with you, ensuring all aspects are aligned.

  • Test and Launch

    We integrate testing right from the start of a project. Clients can access a regularly updated test plan at any time to guide user testing. All code is tested by the author, reviewed by another developer and then tested by the lead test developer. We use manual, automated, and unit testing. Launch is planned with you, ensuring all aspects are aligned.

How it Works

  1. North Star Workshop

    Getting a deep understanding of your vision, business and challenges

    • More Info

      The North Star Workshop creates a shared vision between you and us, avoiding common project pitfalls caused by misaligned expectations. Clients find it helps them discover new perspectives, risks, and opportunities, and unify their team’s vision.

  2. Onboarding

    Understand what has been done, and how to fix it

    • More Info

      The specification takes the output of the North Star Workshop, adding additional detail, validation, and finally a fixed price. We’ll keep revising this document until you’re 100% clear on what you’re getting and that it’s 100% what you need. We know clients like seeing visual wireframes as it helps them give the best feedback, so we include those too.

  3. Development

    Delivering the specification - the ‘actual work’

    • More Info

      All projects benefit from a skilled team who share expertise and conduct peer reviews for best results. You’ll have a single point of contact and be able to engage the team directly, seeing progress early and often, with ample opportunities for input and course correction. Our rigorous testing prevents you needing to lead long, drawn out bug hunts during your final review.

  4. Launch and Iterate

    Measure the impact, update the plan, take the next step

    • More Info

      After thorough testing, we’ll launch your product with a detailed checklist covering our technical tasks, like domains and redirects and your operational tasks, like customer communications. We’ll also work with you to create an Improvement Scorecard to track metrics, link feedback to goals, and map out the next steps together.

Ready to talk about your product?

Book a Free Discovery Call

500+
Total Products Built
250k+
Users Supported
20
Years Running
300+
Clients Worked With
200+
Combined years of experience

The Benefits of Tech Project Rescue

Having a tech project go wrong is not a pleasant experience – you’ll have expended a lot of energy for little return. We get this and will make the process of getting from where you are now, to where you need to be as painless as possible.

We’ll be clear and open on what can and can’t be done, be realistic about timelines and budget, and think creatively to deliver the essentials you need to get you moving again. Once this is done we can improve from there to keep you moving forwards.

  • Maintain Speed

    We know you’ll be behind where you want to be at this point. We’ll quickly get up to speed with the existing project and ‘learn on the job’ to get you moving again. Our technical team has a wide experience across many technologies and frameworks, there’s very little they’ve not seen before.

  • Focus on what’s essential

    We start by understanding what is most important to you and your business, then focus on the most effective way to achieve this without blowing your budget or timelines. We won’t just continue what was being done before – we’ll challenge and rethink to make sure we can deliver what’s essential. Everything else can come later.

  • A Clear Plan

    We won’t just fix the immediate problem and leave you to work out the rest. We’ll help you create a realistic plan to address all short, medium and long term issues to make sure your future is primed only for success.

  • Team of experts

    Instead of hiring a front end developer that moonlights as a UX designer on the side, you’ll have specialists involved at every stage of the project – our UX Engineers will design the user interface, our Full Stack Developers will build the database and API, our QA Lead will test it, and our Head of Development will oversee implementation of the whole solution.

Our On-Time Guarantee

We’re committed to delivering your project on time. If delays happen due to our scope underestimation, we’ll cover any extra costs, complete the work, and refund 15% of the project costs as a goodwill gesture. We’re a different kind of software development company.
Find Out More

How People Feel About Working With Us

5/5
I just love The Tech Dept. I think they’re brilliant. I love them as people. They are really easy to work with. From a charity POV, a lot of private sector companies take advantage of us. We’re easy pickings. They bamboozle us. It’s really nice to have found a company to work with who are on the same page and have our best interest at heart. It’s never felt like a transactional relationship. More like a long-term partnership.
Helen O’Donnell

Children’s University

5/5
The Tech Dept are aware of the pitfalls and things that can go wrong – they’re grounded in reality. You can count on them because they’ve been through the good, the bad and the ugly
Ali Munro

Flutterlab

5/5
The Tech Dept understands our product and what we’re trying to achieve. We have a great working relationship with them. I like that they’re not too techie. They help us solve the problem simply. 'This is the problem; this is how we do it. There’s no rubbish around the side'. In contrast, other dev agencies need us to spell it out. If we don’t get the explanation exactly right, they don’t get it right. So they build the wrong thing.
Clare Baldwin

QHS (Vaccination Track)

5/5
We needed skilled technical expertise and strategic capabilities to help us deliver a number of complex digital projects. We engaged TTD as our “Plug-In Tech Team”, it worked really well. Their devs, strategists and PM joined our internal team and achieved successful delivery across all projects. They’re a brilliant team and we feel lucky to be working with them.
Pippa Irvine

D&AD

Frequently Asked Questions

  • How will working with you differ from hiring a CTO to manage all of this?

    We provide the whole skillset to deliver a product but we only apply it when needed. With a CTO you are paying for a CTO all the time, when really what you might need is a CTO a couple of days of the month, and most of the time you need a full-stack developer, a project manager and a test lead. We can deliver specialist expertise much more cost effectively than hiring a full time team, but much more coherently than bringing in a bunch of freelancers.

  • How do you foster collaboration between us and your team?

    We build this in from the start with the North Star Workshop – where we work to really understand your vision. We then work closely with you through the design and specification phase to make sure you know exactly what you are getting. As we move into development your project manager will keep you updated and you can speak directly to the technical team when your input is required.

  • Do you support products after launch?

    Yes – we provide support and maintenance packages to keep your product up to date and secure – we price all significant enhancements up as their own separate projects though to A) make sure we check that they are aligned with the vision and B) Give you control over costs rather than a nebulous ‘retainer’.

    Eventually you may get to the size that hiring a completely in-house team DOES make sense at which point we can help onboard and handover to them.

  • How do you cost projects and manage budgeting?

    All projects are fixed price/fixed scope – we cost these up based on time and complexity and this will be clear in the specification. We recommend retaining a small contingency for any additions that come up during a project – otherwise these will be added to a list for future phases of development.

    This means if we underestimate something in specification, that’s on us – we take on the risk.

  •  If we work with you now, will you build things in a way that ties us in with you forever?

    Absolutely not – if, for any reason, you reach a point where it no longer makes sense to continue working with us, likely because we’ve helped you to grow revenue enough to take your business into the next league, we can help you transition. We’ll help you set up in-house systems and processes, making sure a newly hired team has everything they need to continue delivering the high standards you will have grown accustomed to.

  • Will you reuse what we’ve already built?

    It depends – if it saves time and budget whilst also getting you to where you need to be, yes we’ll absolutely re-use what has already been done as much as possible. We won’t do this just for the sake of it though – if it’s quicker to throw things away and start fresh we will. 

    This is all about getting you back on track as quickly and cost effectively as possible.