Or maybe you’ve engaged a far-shore ‘partner’ in India who always says everything is fine and on time, but frequently delivers late and with sub-standard quality.

These are, of course, generalisations – but they have happened too frequently to me, and others I know, to be outliers.

Either situation is extremely frustrating, potentially costly, and will fail to produce the kind of results that you and your organisation require. That’s why, at Damilah, we have developed the ‘partner-shoring’ model – a different way of approaching near-shoring.

What do we mean by partner-shoring?

Using this model, the client and supplier work seamlessly together towards common goals. Some people in the team may be from the client side, some from the supplier – but to an outsider it should be virtually impossible to tell which is which. That’s because they collaborate as genuine partners to build the best possible product within the constraints set by the business.

The teams are also fully autonomous, containing all the skills necessary to deliver the products end users are looking for. This maximises productivity by removing as many dependencies as possible, which often tend to slow progress.

How does partner-shoring work in practice?

Here’s a good example of the collaborative culture we foster at Damilah. With one of our clients, the autonomous team is led by a triumvirate comprising a product manager, an architect and a delivery manager. One of those roles is provided by the customer, the other two by us. But they are all equal in status – and we call them the Three Amigos, as they work so closely together on projects.

The product manager aims to create the ideal product to meet customers’ needs. The architect works out how to do this, the challenges involved, and how long it will take. And the delivery manager looks after putting the plan together and ensuring everything is delivered on time and of high quality.

Above all, the Three Amigos are mature and experienced people, equals who are constantly working together on discovery, understanding what needs to be built, and prioritising work based on business needs, difficulty and time requirements – without the traditional ‘them and us’ client and supplier relationship.

Why does it require a near-shore team, rather than a far-shore team?

We believe this gives our clients the best of both worlds.

In the first instance, you can leverage the cost benefits of working with an off-shore team. But, at the same time, this kind of partnership is hard to achieve when the teams are far apart in geography, time zone and culture. On the other hand, if the people involved can spend time face to face, working together, planning, resolving challenges – and even socialising – then positive working relationships will form and truly enable close collaboration and velocity.

If your European-based team has to travel for an entire day to reach a remote part of the world, then suffer from jet lag, they will probably be reluctant to visit their partners very often. And that’s not to mention the difficulty of getting expensive travel costs approved. As a result, the kind of closeness and effective teamwork that comes from frequent contact is unlikely to arise. On the other hand, if the partner is just a few hours away, with a one-hour time gap, it can make all the difference.

Furthermore, although there may be some minor cultural differences between teams in the UK and, say, Eastern Europe, these are likely to be far less pronounced than between the UK and South or East Asia.

What are the main benefits of partner-shoring?

Working with a partner whose team feels like an extension of your own, and is fully aligned with your own business requirements and goals, allows you to successfully leverage the advantages of near-shoring with a company that is already established in the overseas market.

That means your partner can ensure people are rewarded appropriately while you also benefit from their deep market knowledge and understanding when it comes to aspects such as local regulation and cultural differences. In other words, you can build confidence in the process, the people and the location with minimal risks.

There are also the benefits of reduced churn that tend to come from a well-run near-shoring operation. In many Indian off-shore firms, for example, it’s common to see annual employee turnover at rates as high as 25% or 30% – whereas our Damilah team in North Macedonia has a rate of around 2% on average.

And, last but not least, there are the advantages of transparency. If a development team works as a black box – where the client knows very little about what’s going on until the product is delivered – you’ll frequently hear that everything is going well… until the day of delivery. And then you might hear that there’s been a problem – and delivery will be delayed for a month or three.

Such issues are common among teams in geographies like India, where culturally people are reluctant to deliver bad news. On the other hand, European teams tend towards more transparent working practices. This makes it easier to be aware of problems as they arise, allowing you to find a solution – such as prioritising certain features or narrowing the scope – while still hitting the delivery date, rather than being trapped in a last-minute situation where you have no way out.

If you’d like to find out more about the ways partner-shoring could benefit your business, and how Damilah can help, get in touch now to discuss our range of services.

Iain Bishop, founder and CEO, Damilah

A strategic partnership between two companies with shared values and complementary services that drives high-quality, mutual referrals. This programme is built for organisations whose services complement ours. By becoming a partner you can:

• Earn an additional revenue stream when your introductions lead to work with Damilah.
• Strengthen your client offering by connecting them with proven engineering capability, without adding new teams in-house.
• Benefit from reciprocal referrals – we’ll also look for chances to introduce your company to opportunities in our network.

How it works

1. Make an introduction. Connect us with someone you know who fits our ideal client profile.
2. We take it forward. We’ll handle the conversation, keep it professional, and respect your relationship.
3. You get rewarded. If the introduction leads to a project, you’ll receive referral fees for as long as the work continues.

There are two types of referrals:

• Proactive referrals – where you know there’s a project or need. This is far more than a casual recommendation. It is a trusted endorsement from a satisfied Damilah Partner that directly connects Damilah with a qualified potential customer who has a genuine project.
• Introductions –The scheme rewards introductions where there is no current project but, at a later stage, one does arise that leads to Damilah providing services to that company.

Referral Fees: Example:

Contact: CTO

Client: Software Product Company

Duration:  3 Years

Team Size: 9 People

Referral fees will also be paid on the revenue of any additional projects Damilah starts within the same company as per the payment profile outlined in the example.

What makes it simple

• You open the door. We manage the rest.
• Clear rules on when and how fees are paid.
• We let you know at every step — when a referral is accepted, qualified, and closed.
• Referral fees are paid monthly once the client invoice is paid.

Who you might introduce

Damilah’s Ideal Client Profile:

• Software product companies – usually PE-backed, £50m–£500m revenue, or recently funded.
• Corporates – typically £250m–£10bn revenue.
• Contacts – Executive-level technology or digital product leaders e (CTO, CIO, CPTO, VP/Head of Engineering).
• Based in the UK or EU.
• We don’t work in gambling, tobacco, or defence.

Why Damilah

Experts in Partner-shoring from Vision to Value

Full-cycle, end-to-end delivery of modern solutions, seamlessly integrated with existing systems

We provide end-to-end technology services that support everything from re-platforming legacy systems to full-cycle digital product ideation, design, development, and go-live. Our cross-functional teams combine engineering excellence with modern tools and agile delivery to accelerate outcomes. Whether integrating with complex legacy environments or building greenfield solutions, we partner closely with clients to deliver scalable, future-ready platforms that drive real business value.

Full-stack expertise across modern languages, frameworks, and cloud platforms including:

Re-imagine your potential with AI and Damilah

Bringing intelligence, automation, and possibility into every product and platform experience

Damilah Leverages AI across the SDLC

To accelerate the journey from Vision to Value

With the appropriate security, governance, compliance and data controls in place, Damilah leverages the AI tooling across its client engagement SDLCs to deliver significant productivity gains. We collaborate with each new client to determine which AI tools can be leveraged in their context to achieve similar gains.

What our partners are saying about us

In particular, Damilah are ideally suited where we have a critical deliverable with challenging timelines, and a high degree of technical uncertainty and ambiguity.
They’re great to work with, and they really value their people. Generally speaking, in software engineering, a small number of very bright people will outperform large teams of mediocre people. Damilah truly demonstrate that – it’s their philosophy.

Phil Brown, Director of Engineering at Zellis

Damilah fosters a positive culture that really cares about its people. Most importantly, they enjoy what they do and bring great energy to the team. They’re collaborative, knowledgeable, and have taken the time to understand our vision, which helps ensure they are aligned with where we are headed and how best to support us along the way.

Lucinda Faucher, VP of Product Management at ValveSpace

Damilah stands out as an exceptional company for both remote and in-person collaboration. Their team of remarkably talented professionals work seamlessly to deliver exceptional results.What sets Damilah apart is their genuine dedication not only to the process but also to the outcome, exemplifying a commitment that ensures success through and through.

Dickon Grey, Head of Product Design and Research, ParentPay

This Partner Referral Programme is designed for independent advisors, interim, and fractional executives who want to create value for their network while building an additional income stream. The programme rests on three principles: Revenue, Trust, and Reach.

• Revenue – earn referral fees for introductions that lead to work with Damilah, without taking on delivery responsibility.
• Trust – partner with a company founded by a former CTO, recognised by industry peers and trusted by PE firms, founders, CEOs, and CTOs.
• Reach – complement your own expertise with Damilah’s depth and capacity, giving your network more options when they need them.

How it works

1. Make an introduction. Connect us with someone you know who fits our ideal client profile.
2. We take it forward. We’ll handle the conversation, keep it professional, and respect your relationship.
3. You get rewarded. If the introduction leads to a project, you’ll receive referral fees for as long as the work continues.

There are two types of referrals:

• Proactive referrals – where you know there’s a project or need. This is far more than a casual recommendation. It is a trusted endorsement from a satisfied Damilah Partner that directly connects Damilah with a qualified potential customer who has a genuine project.
• Introductions – The scheme rewards introductions where there is no current project but, at a later stage, one does arise that leads to Damilah providing services to that company.

Referral Fees: Example:

Contact: CTO

Client: Software Product Company

Duration:  3 Years

Team Size: 9 People

Referral fees will also be paid on the revenue of any additional projects Damilah starts within the same company as per the payment profile outlined in the example.

What makes it simple

• You open the door. We manage the rest.
• Clear rules on when and how fees are paid.
• We let you know at every step — when a referral is accepted, qualified, and closed.
• Referral fees are paid monthly once the client invoice is paid.

Who you might introduce

Damilah’s Ideal Client Profile:

• Software product companies – usually PE-backed, £50m–£500m revenue, or recently funded.
• Corporates – typically £250m–£10bn revenue.
• Contacts – Executive-level technology or digital product leaders e (CTO, CIO, CPTO, VP/Head of Engineering).
• Based in the UK or EU.
• We don’t work in gambling, tobacco, or defence.

Why Damilah

Experts in Partner-shoring from Vision to Value

Full-cycle, end-to-end delivery of modern solutions, seamlessly integrated with existing systems

We provide end-to-end technology services that support everything from re-platforming legacy systems to full-cycle digital product ideation, design, development, and go-live. Our cross-functional teams combine engineering excellence with modern tools and agile delivery to accelerate outcomes. Whether integrating with complex legacy environments or building greenfield solutions, we partner closely with clients to deliver scalable, future-ready platforms that drive real business value.

Full-stack expertise across modern languages, frameworks, and cloud platforms including:

Re-imagine your potential with AI and Damilah

Bringing intelligence, automation, and possibility into every product and platform experience

Damilah Leverages AI across the SDLC

To accelerate the journey from Vision to Value

With the appropriate security, governance, compliance and data controls in place, Damilah leverages the AI tooling across its client engagement SDLCs to deliver significant productivity gains. We collaborate with each new client to determine which AI tools can be leveraged in their context to achieve similar gains.

What our partners are saying about us

In particular, Damilah are ideally suited where we have a critical deliverable with challenging timelines, and a high degree of technical uncertainty and ambiguity.
They’re great to work with, and they really value their people. Generally speaking, in software engineering, a small number of very bright people will outperform large teams of mediocre people. Damilah truly demonstrate that – it’s their philosophy.

Phil Brown, Director of Engineering at Zellis

Damilah fosters a positive culture that really cares about its people. Most importantly, they enjoy what they do and bring great energy to the team. They’re collaborative, knowledgeable, and have taken the time to understand our vision, which helps ensure they are aligned with where we are headed and how best to support us along the way.

Lucinda Faucher, VP of Product Management at ValveSpace

Damilah stands out as an exceptional company for both remote and in-person collaboration. Their team of remarkably talented professionals work seamlessly to deliver exceptional results.What sets Damilah apart is their genuine dedication not only to the process but also to the outcome, exemplifying a commitment that ensures success through and through.

Dickon Grey, Head of Product Design and Research, ParentPay

Delivering great software on time for our customers comes down to effectively managing four key elements: scope, risk, quality, and talented people. In this series of articles, which accompany our Tech Talks video, we take a closer look at each one individually.

Here, we tackle the important matter of managing people…

If you’re a follower of English football, depending on your allegiance, you’ll have either been enjoying or lamenting Manchester United’s recent failure to live up to their previous high standards.

There are many possible reasons for the club’s relative lack of success, and we wouldn’t claim to be soccer experts who can fully explain its problems. However, one thing is clear: there has been no lack of talent when it comes to players on the pitch, with world-class footballers such as Cristiano Ronaldo, Casemiro and Lisandro Martinez in the squad, either now or recently. But individual talent is one thing, and team performance is another.

United’s troubles go to show that success relies not solely on hiring talented people. It’s also necessary to manage and motivate them in the right ways, so they perform as a team with a shared goal, constantly improving, and always working hard for each other.

The same is true when it comes to software development. You can’t produce great software without great people. But you also need to ensure you create the right conditions for those people to succeed.

We therefore believe it’s always worth the time, effort and expenditure of investing in all our people. By showing we care, and helping them to reach their potential, they will always go the extra mile and produce better quality work for our customers. So here are some of the ways we enable this at Damilah:

Maintaining a positive culture

We strive to create a culture that is open and supportive, where everyone is clear on what success looks like and how they can find the right path towards it.

Our line managers are ultimately responsible for an employee’s growth and development, but it’s not limited to them. For example, someone might need support for a particular skill that is not within the line manager’s competence – in which case, we’ll ensure they are connected to the right person in the business to help them develop in the desired way.

In other words, we’re constantly supporting each other and growing together.

What’s more, it’s important to us that our people are prepared to take risks in order to develop and innovate. If they are afraid to, they will usually struggle to advance. Of course, that doesn’t mean they’ll take silly or unnecessary risks – but, rather, in a measured way with the right support.

Software and technology are always changing and we constantly need to try new things to stay ahead of the game. We’ll usually do that in close consultation with clients, and often ‘spike’ technology – that is, test something in a controlled environment. If it works, then great: we can roll it out. And if it doesn’t, we’ll learn from this and move on.

We’re currently doing exactly that with one of our clients. This approach allows the client to be reassured that what we’re suggesting will work, while also allowing everyone to feel in control. What’s more, we all learn together in an environment built on mutual trust.

Investing in training and development

I’ve worked in businesses as a CTO where the first thing to go when budgets are tight is training. But that’s always a false economy that ultimately impacts on the quality of the work delivered and the success of the business. So we will always continue to invest in training, because we know we’ll get a return on it, tenfold or more.

Therefore, every employee has a development plan, and that can include both technical skills and the ‘softer’ skills, such as communication or presentation. Doing this, we believe, delivers the obvious short-term benefit of upskilling our team – but also the long-term benefit of an increasingly knowledgeable, committed workforce that chooses to stay with us.

Committing to innovation

With the rapid pace of change in technology, it’s important for us to stay abreast of new innovations. We do this by providing opportunities to all our people to initiate or join specific innovation projects, which allow them to invest time in trying out new technologies that enhance our capabilities and ensure their skills remain at the forefront of the industry.

Celebrating success

There is no greater motivator than success – and it can be addictive. We therefore ensure we celebrate those successes at every opportunity, for example by having annual awards for both individuals and teams.

It’s important that these are not subjective. Instead, they’re based on performance and also the way in which our people uphold and emphasise the values of our business. We find that’s a really powerful way of encouraging further success, which of course will always lead to additional benefits for our clients.

Working as one team with our customers

We believe strongly in the value of teamwork, and our commitment to this extends to our customers. We aim to avoid the traditional customer-supplier relationship, opting for collaborative, transparent partnerships from the outset.

We encourage customers to feel as if we’re all part of the same organisation, working towards the same goals. Quite simply, that’s our culture – and the culture we encourage from everyone we work with, both internally and externally.

If you’d like to find out more about any of the points raised in this article, and how we can deliver great software for your business, get in touch now.

Iain Bishop, founder and CEO, Damilah

Delivering great software on time for our customers comes down to effectively managing four key elements: scope, risk, quality, and talented people. In this series of articles, which accompany our Tech Talks video, we take a closer look at each one individually.

Here, we tackle the essential topic of ensuring quality…

It’s easy to fall into a trap when it comes to managing the quality of software: an over-reliance on quality assurance (QA) at the end of the process.

While QA is vital, we strongly believe that quality is pervasive, and there needs to be a constant focus on this throughout a project. That also means always paying attention to a customer’s or user’s requirements. After all, there’s no point in building the best product if it doesn’t do what’s needed.

Because we always take this approach, we believe that quality is everyone’s responsibility all the time – from the developers writing the code, to the project managers, and even the customers we’re working with.

Doing this is not easy, and it requires a high level of commitment. But by operating in this way, as a single team, we can deliver outstanding outcomes together. Here are some of the most important considerations we always keep in mind when it comes to ensuring we create great software.

Understanding from the outset what ‘good’ looks like

Quality starts at the very beginning. That means the first discussion with the main stakeholders and really understanding their requirements. We then need to ensure the requirements are described in a way that’s testable, so we can validate whether the finished product meets the correct criteria.

We’ll then work with our development teams to check the written requirements are achievable and can be implemented with the right level of quality. Only once everyone is satisfied with this will we be ready to start work on a product.

Managing time pressures

It’s rare to have a project without some kind of time pressure – and of course that can compromise quality if not managed properly. So, as well as defining ‘Ready’ before we start a piece of work, we also create an agreed definition of ‘Done’. This will include the types of tests and reviews which must be completed before a feature is considered finished.

But, of course, unforeseen problems or scope changes do happen during a project, meaning that things can take longer than expected or need to be reprioritised. When this happens, it’s important to be open and transparent, and also to have courage – for example to explain to a key stakeholder that a change in the delivery schedule might be necessary.

I’ve seen organisations that have a very top-down way of working where people are too afraid to give bad news to their superiors, so they’ll do whatever is expedient to avoid it. Unfortunately, though, the upshot is usually that the management will eventually discover that the delivered product is not good enough – and they’ll wonder why. The answer, of course, is because of the culture in their business. Therefore, transparency and honesty are vital. After all, everyone is ultimately working to achieve the same goals.

Rigorous testing – after every small step

Although, as we’ve stressed, quality needs to be baked in right through the process, effective testing is still crucial. And it’s important to test early and regularly, otherwise a nasty shock may arise at the end – for example, realising an entire project is built on code that doesn’t work properly.

We use agile processes, breaking a project down into sprints that usually last two weeks. At the end of each sprint, we’ll carry out tests to ensure the software is fulfilling its requirements, working effectively, and conforms to the highest security standards.

We employ tooling to continuously conduct vulnerability testing and ensure software complies with OWASP Top 10 security standards. We put these tools into the build pipeline to ensure they are always running and developers know immediately when code is non-conformant.

We also use static code analysis tools to ensure the code we produce conforms to quality, reliability and maintenance standards.

And while our most experienced, senior developers are involved in these processes, again we also look to automate as much of it as possible. That way, a test can be rerun on a frequent basis – as software will always change during an agile development process – with no backlog building up.

Scalability and future-proofing

Scaling needs to be considered from the get-go – but there’s always a balance to be found. It’s easy to end up over-engineering a product so it can scale when that may not be needed for several years, if at all. But ignoring scalability can lead to its own problems if it turns out to be necessary.

It’s therefore essential for us to truly understand our customer’s needs so we can ensure the right level of scalability is built in. We’re also finding that public cloud gives us the option of scaling a product easily and rapidly, if required.

In addition, it’s crucial to consider the future maintainability of a solution – and this is often more important than the initial cycle of development. If quality is compromised during the build phase, maybe for cost reasons, it can quickly become a false economy as maintenance of poor software can be expensive and greatly increase the total expenditure.

In our opinion, automation is definitely the way to go when it comes to maintenance. But it’s incredibly hard to automate if the product hasn’t been built to high standards in the first instance – which further emphasises the need for stringent quality control during the initial build phase.

If you’d like to find out more about any of the points raised in this article, and how we can deliver great software for your business, get in touch now.

Iain Bishop, founder and CEO, Damilah

Delivering great software on time for our customers comes down to effectively managing four key elements: scope, risk, quality, and talented people. In this series of articles, which accompany our Tech Talks video, we take a closer look at each one individually.

Here, we tackle the tricky topic of risk…

Whether you’re developing software or sending a person to Mars, there’s always a fine line to tread at the start of every project: between optimism and pessimism.

Naturally, everyone involved will be hoping and working for the best possible outcome. But unless there’s a keen awareness of what could go wrong – whether you want to call that pessimism or realism – it’s highly likely that some poor outcomes will result.

This is why effective risk management is vital when it comes to delivering great software on time. And, as with many other considerations – such as managing scope and quality – doing it well means taking a holistic approach from start to finish, and beyond.

We think a lot about risks – so you don’t have to

It’s important to point out that, if you continue reading this article, you may end up with a sense of foreboding, worrying that every project is fraught with dangers waiting to derail it. And it’s true that even the simplest undertaking can have inherent risks that threaten to compromise quality, cost or delivery times.

However, we spend a lot of time predicting and assessing those risks to help avoid problems before they occur; or, if they do materialise, to ensure we can mitigate against them in a way that will result in minimum impact for our customers.

In other words, we spend a lot of time thinking about risks, and how to manage them, precisely so our customers don’t have to.

The three principal kinds of risk

In every software development project, there are usually three major types of risk to consider, as follows:

1. Scope

This could include changes to the scope, or adding new requirements, once a project has already begun. For more on this, see our article on this topic .

2. Technology

This could involve, for example, incorporating new technologies and new practices, or changing the platform on which we are working.

3. Dependencies

This generally revolves around the interdependencies between teams, and is an area we focus on strongly. We might have, for example, a dozen or more teams working on a single project, so frequent and clear communication is essential to avoid blockers. We’ll therefore sequence and synchronise our schedules so they are complementary to each other, while constantly keeping the lines of communication open. 

Mitigation plans and measuring risk

At the start of every project, we’ll create a risk mitigation plan based on a combination of our own experience and empirical data.

To do this, firstly we’ll identify the risks and assign each one a score – assessing its possible impact on a scale of one to five, and the probability of it occurring on a scale of one to four. Multiplying those two values gives us a risk score from zero to 20, with 20 being the highest possible.

That gives us a clear idea of what to focus on. Then we’ll plan how to avoid those risks and also pinpoint the signs that help us to spot a problem at the earliest possible stage. Our overall aim is to steer clear of situations where people just hope for the best because they want to report good news to the management – maybe because they’re under pressure to deliver by a certain time.

In our experience, it’s always better to have the risk discussion at the beginning of a project so we can develop a realistic plan, rather than end up making excuses for failure throughout. That’s why it’s so important to think through risks early on, and to keep updating the risk assessments, as risk management is an ongoing process throughout any project.

A good example is the introduction of new technology, which often carries its own risks. A proactive approach, such as ‘spiking’ – in other words, taking a couple of people aside and testing it well in advance of the project deadline – is an effective way of managing it. I’ve worked on many projects in the past where our first choice was wrong and the tech we were planning to use just wasn’t going to work for us – which is exactly the kind of risk that spiking can help to avoid.

Turning short-term risks into long-term opportunities

The phrase, ‘There are no problems, only opportunities’ is a cliché – because, we believe, it’s often true. In many cases, when it comes to risks inherent in a project, we can also identify an opportunity hidden within.

The methodology we use to assess levels of risk allows us to calculate both negatives and positives. For example, making certain technical changes may pose a short-term risk because we need to alter the scope of a project to accommodate them. But in the longer term, those changes may help us to build a solid platform that will accelerate the development of additional features.

By using the same methodology for opportunities as for risks, we can gauge how one is balanced against the other – and if the gain score is higher than the risk score, it’s probably worth considering.

As always, the great benefit comes from close collaboration with our customers so we can truly understand their requirements and how we can create value for them. Then we can effectively measure the risks worth taking and ensure we deliver the best possible outcomes.

If you’d like to find out more about any of the points raised in this article, and how we can deliver great software for your business, get in touch now.

Iain Bishop, founder and CEO, Damilah

Delivering great software on time for our customers comes down to effectively managing four key elements: scope, risk, quality, and talented people. In this series of articles, which accompany our Tech Talks video, we take a closer look at each one individually.

Here, we tackle the thorny topic of scope and scope creep…

We were recently working on a project for a customer that required us to re-architecture a solution to help deliver some key mid-term goals for their business. The project had been carefully scoped, and a roadmap produced.

However, our customer received some important feedback from their prospective customers. The solution would need an additional feature in a short timeframe to enable them to secure a contract. That immediately shifted the scope of our project, as this new requirement suddenly became a top priority.

In many cases, this kind of pivot may cause a significant problem by adding a large amount of additional work which could jeopardise the success of the entire project.

But it didn’t for us. We were able to quickly re-prioritise the tasks involved, allowing us to complete the essential elements on time and extend the deadline for the rest. That meant we delivered the most essential value for the client, fast, and the project was still completed in a satisfactory way.

Such a scenario, where scope changes are required mid-project, will be familiar to anyone involved in software development: scope creep can be one of the biggest risks. Left unmanaged, it can result in delays and unsatisfactory outcomes for both the client and the developer.

We therefore believe it’s vital to pay close attention to managing scope, from before a project even starts, and right through to the end and beyond.

The main causes of scope creep

In our experience, scope creep – or ‘gold plating’, where unnecessary features are added to a product – usually comes from one of two places.

The first is the product manager or evangelist. Understandably, they always want the best product they can have – that’s their job. And, to achieve this, it’s important that good ideas are thrown in during the development process. But the constant danger is that, if you add something in, you don’t take something out. When that happens, and we’re working to a fixed delivery timeline, quality is likely to be compromised or, worse, the whole project is likely to fail.

The second is on the technical side. There may be a desire to create a technological standardisation – for example, a new way of accessing data in a program – which invariably creates more work. That’s often for very good reasons, and it might also be the case that this has to be prioritised ahead of everything else, because of the value it could bring to the business and customers. But the effect it will have on the project has to be acknowledged, as there is usually only a finite amount of time and effort available.

Strategies for avoiding scope creep

Here are our four main approaches to keeping a project on track:

1. Everyone takes responsibility

Managing scope is not solely a delivery manager’s job. We believe everyone needs to play a part – and that includes the customers with whom we work in partnership. If everyone involved has a transparent and honest relationship, and keeps the lines of communication open, scope issues can be kept to a minimum.

2. Working closely with customers

If we can create a clearly defined scope with the customer from the outset, we are usually able to hit the ground running and very few issues will occur. When the scope of a project spirals out of control, it can nearly always be traced back to a failure to recognise changing priorities in a project and adjust the plans accordingly.

3. Agile processes with regular feedback loops

We use agile development processes that involve working in short sprints, usually two weeks at a time. That’s because, at the end of every cycle, we’ll share our progress with the customer and obtain their feedback, allowing us to make small, incremental improvements. It’s an excellent way of ensuring the customer is getting what they really need – and nothing they don’t need.

And, best of all, it ensures we don’t miss any gems. Our experience tells us that if you wait until everything is completed, you miss the chance for domain experts to share their knowledge and ideas along the way. The more collaboration you have, and the more feedback you gather, the better the product you end up with.

4. Value-focused prioritisation

Truly understanding the value of each part of a project for our client and their end users allows us to deliver the best possible outcome in the shortest time available. This necessitates working closely with key stakeholders to ensure the most important aspects, from a business or commercial perspective, are prioritised.

How customers can play their part

We believe our customers have a huge role to play in helping us. Our advice, therefore, is to always engage fully throughout the process, as this will result in the best possible final product that precisely matches their needs – delivered on time.

If you’d like to find out more about any of the points raised in this article, and how we can deliver great software for your business, get in touch now .

Iain Bishop, founder and CEO, Damilah

When it comes to thinking about new products, we often wish for more time to conduct interviews, analyze data, and explore competitors. But these tasks take up a lot of time. That’s where ChatGPT comes in handy—it can save us time and make our processes more efficient.

Let’s dive into the world of product discovery by tapping into ChatGPT’s vast pool of data and capabilities. This guide will walk you through how to use ChatGPT for a more efficient product discovery process, helping you prepare for the development of innovative products.

• 1. Start your discovery by focusing on either your business goal or the problems you’ve noticed for a specific group of people

Prompt you can use: “I have a business objective and I’m looking to identify potential customer needs aligned with my goal. My objective is [specify your goal]. Could you please investigate the potential pain points experienced by this specific target group.”

• 2. Understanding the problem or the unsatisfied need

Prompt you can use: “Can you please act as a Product Manager and explore the actual problem underneath these pain points? Please use the ‘5 Why’s’ method to find out why this problem is happening. Once you figure out the main reason, summarize your findings in a clear problem statement.”

• 3. Defining Jobs-to-be-done (JBTD)

Prompt you can use: “Could you please identify the top 5 crucial tasks (JBTD) that my target customers need to accomplish when dealing with the problem? I aim to gain a better understanding of the key activities customers will undertake, when facing the problem.”

• 4. Defining User Personas

Prompt you can use: “Could you please outline the three user personas who are likely to be my most frequent customers?”

• 5. Preparing empathy map for our target customers

Prompt you can use: “Would you be so kind as to create an empathy map for my target customers? I’m eager to gain a deeper understanding of their thoughts, feelings, what they see and hear, and what they say and do.”

• 6. Going through an Ideation process

Prompt you can use: “Picture yourself in a room with your team, including Software Engineers, UX/UI Designers, QA Testers, a Product Owner, and a Scrum Master. During an ideation process, what would be the three standout ideas as potential product solutions for addressing this customer’s problem?”

• 7. Defining a value proposition for our product

Prompt you can use: “Can you please define our value proposition for the first product solution? Describe how it meets customer needs, its unique benefits, and what makes it better than similar products on the market.”

• 8. Doing a market research and competitive analyses

Prompt you can use: “Can you explore other companies in the market selling similar products? Summarize their strengths and weaknesses and identify areas where we can gain a competitive advantage.”

• 9. Defining functionalities

Prompt you can use: “Please outline the key features for the product solution. Consider functionality, user experience, and any unique aspects that will set our product apart in the market. “

• 10. Defining the MVP

Prompt you can use: “Can you now please define the features and functionalities that are essential for our Minimum Viable Product (MVP)? Focus on the core elements that will allow us to deliver value to our users quickly and efficiently.”

To show that these prompts truly make a difference, we put them to the test in a real-life example. In this case study below, you can follow how we turned an idea into a possible product solution, with a clear explanation of our thought process.

At the end we’ll say that ChatGPT can be a really valuable asset in product discovery, helping us save significant time. However, it’s important to remember that while ChatGPT and AI, in general, can be incredibly helpful, they don’t guarantee the automatic success of our products. Success still relies on thoughtful execution and a comprehensive approach beyond the capabilities of AI alone.

Olgica Strezoska, Principal Product Owner at Damilah

To avoid building products that nobody wants, extensive Product Discovery is essential before embarking on the actual development process.

What is Product Discovery?

Product discovery is a dynamic and iterative process that lays the foundation for successful product development. It is the process that helps product teams understand the real problems and needs that people have and then figure out the best ways to solve them before starting development.

The concept of product discovery originated during the 1990s. During that era, companies allocated substantial portions of their marketing budgets to persuade customers of their product’s necessity. Unfortunately, this led to a lot of very expensive failures, as products often made it to full release before companies realized that people just didn’t need or want them.

The main goal of product discovery is not to ship features but rather to promote a continuous environment of learning that will help improve the product incrementally and consistently.

Product discovery is all about de-risking. As Marty Cagan puts it in his book “Inspired”, the purpose of product discovery is to address these four critical risks:

1. Value risk – Will the customer buy this or choose to use it?
2. Usability risk – Can the user figure out how to use it?
3. Feasibility risk – Can we build it?
4. Business viability risk – Does this solution work for our business? 

The product Discovery process can be divided into these 4 phases:

1. Understanding Users

The first phase is all about user research and building empathy for our users. We must be able to put ourselves in users’ shoes, and that can be achieved only if we truly get to know them, listen to what they are saying, and learn about their habits, desires, and frustrations.

To achieve this understanding, several steps can be taken:

• Conduct Surveys and User Interviews: Engaging with the target audience through surveys and user interviews provides valuable insights into their preferences, pain points, and aspirations. This step helps in identifying genuine problems that need solving.

• Continuously Ask “Why” (The Five Whys method): By consistently questioning the reasoning behind the product, teams can uncover deeper insights and align their solutions more effectively with user needs.

• Observe users and create empathy maps: By synthesizing and visualizing the data from user research and interviews, empathy maps can help us identify key insights. 

2. Defining the Problem

With a better understanding of the users, the next step is to precisely define the problem or need our product intends to solve. That can be done by analyzing the user research data we gathered and finding patterns that emerge from this data (using the Affinity mapping technique). By prioritizing the most important problems for users, the team can decide which user problem they want to focus on and clearly define their hypothesis before jumping into solutions.

3. Ideating and Prioritizing

Once we know what the user problem is, we should continue to the Ideation phase so that we can slowly come to the solution of the problem. This phase consists of gathering different ideas from the team (using brainstorming, mind mapping, or similar techniques) on how we can respond to the users’ problem or need. At the end of this phase, we have to prioritize the idea for which we are most confident it will bring value to the users so that we can continue prototyping and testing our hypothesis.

4. Prototyping and Validation

The final stage is about building a quick prototype to be tested and validated to gain confidence that the right product is going to be moved into the product delivery process. Prototyping ensures that the product solution aligns with the identified customer need and that users can navigate through the potential solution effectively.

Olgica Strezoska, Principal Product Owner at Damilah

Typically, the process involves reviewing the company’s technology and technical infrastructure, including architecture, scalability, security, performance and reliability of products and services.  Also understanding the people and their approach to software engineering, processes used and how closely they are engaged with their customers.

All software products, even new ones, tend to have technical debt, which may vary from areas of the code which may need refactoring to support scalability/performance future requirements to utilizing out of date or even obsolete versions of third party products. It is important that engineering teams have an understanding of their technical debt and a plan to manage it.

Modern software product teams tend to invest in devops and automation of both their delivery pipelines as well the testing of software. This is sometimes difficult and expensive to reverse engineer into long established “old tech” products, but is likely to be important to resolve if these products are expected to change significantly as part of the investment thesis.

It is also really important to review any major work-in-progress projects, especially where technology which is new or unfamiliar to the engineering team is being used, for example where public cloud is involved. Public cloud offers many opportunities to introduce time and money saving infrastructure as a service, but used in the wrong way may in fact incur significant additional costs. Understanding best use of cloud and the opportunities presented may be important to support value creation opportunities.

One of the biggest challenges I hear about when talking to investors occurs when they receive the Tech DD report from one of the third parties who have productised the process. Lots of analysis and data is presented outlining all the various potential areas of concern in a neatly structured form.

The question is then “So what?”. As a CTO what would concern you? I have been involved in many Tech DD activities as a CTO, either whilst performing that role on a full time basis, or as an independent consultant asked to advise an investor.  Being able to see the wood for the trees and raise red flags is an important part of the role, as well as looking for opportunities to improve productivity and customer engagement.

Assimilating all the data and turning into a workable plan can be quite a task depending upon the size of the organisation. Sometimes the selling business is deliberately obfuscating with information, which itself tells a story or denies access to key technical people so as not to unsettle them.

At Damilah, we have extensive experience conducting technical due diligence activities, particularly for product software companies. As product experts ourselves, we understand how to build a great product and the day-to-day challenges which may occur.

We have deep technical expertise of legacy applications as well as modern cloud SaaS products and understand the needs of investors wishing to create value and scale businesses they acquire and what the barriers to these may be.

We also have teams of highly talented software engineers able to tackle the most complex transformations from monolithic to micro-services, or from on-premise to cloud native SaaS solutions, working closely with existing client teams. We adopt a modern agile way of working , to deliver maximum value to the customer in the shortest possible time, with full visibility for all stakeholders.

In particular we have extensive experience of working with Private Equity houses and their portfolio companies, understanding well the need for value creation to support the investment thesis, having worked ourselves in these environments.

To discuss further, please contact iain.bishop@damilah.co.uk.

Iain Bishop, CEO and Founder at Damilah