Product & Systems Engineering
Turning complex operations into software.
Products with multiple domains, journeys, rules and exceptions have most of their cost decided before anyone writes a line of code.
When the product grows faster than the understanding of it.
The rule lives in three places
Part in the code, part in the database and part in the head of whoever has been there longest.
Nobody knows what state the order is in
States were added one at a time, and today combinations exist that never should.
Every small change takes a quarter
Not because of the change, but because of testing everything it might have broken.
A new team takes months to produce
With the domain modelled nowhere, joining the product becomes archaeology.
What this discipline decides.
Domain Modeling
Naming what exists in the business before deciding how it becomes a table. When the model mirrors the operation, product and engineering argue in the same words.
Product Architecture
Where the boundaries sit: what changes alone and what changes together. It decides how many teams can work in parallel two years from now.
Business Rules
Taking the rule out of the code and putting it where whoever answers for it can read and change it. A rule hidden in a conditional lasts only as long as its author stays.
Workflow Design
States, transitions and what happens when the happy path does not happen. Most of the cost lives in the exceptions, and they are designed late or not at all.
The product fits again in the head of whoever runs it.
Change that fits in one module
Explicit boundaries stop an alteration from travelling through the whole system.
A rule readable by whoever answers for it
The business side checks what the system does without asking for a report.
Exceptions designed, not discovered in production
Unhappy paths drawn alongside the happy one, which is when they are cheap.
Running in production
Getting it wrong early is what costs the most.
Tell us what you need to build and we will show you where to start.