How We Work Together
Kilvin's engagement playbook
What this document is
This playbook describes how Kilvin engages with clients, from our first conversation through years of partnership. It's meant to set clear expectations on both sides: how we'll work together, what you can expect from us, and what we'll need from you.
We've written this as a framework rather than a rigid process. Every client is different, and we'll adapt the specifics - but the principles below hold across every engagement.
Our operating principles
Custom software, fast. AI-assisted development lets us build bespoke tools in days or weeks rather than months. That changes what's worth building. Workflows that previously didn't justify custom software now do.
Your problems drive the roadmap. We don't show up with a product to sell you. We show up to understand what's slow, painful, or broken in your day-to-day, and we build to fix it.
We embed, we don't deliver-and-disappear. Most agencies build something, hand it off, and move on. We're built differently. Our model assumes a long-term relationship where we get progressively better at solving your problems as we learn your business.
We'll tell you when not to hire us. If a great off-the-shelf solution already exists for your problem, we'll point you to it rather than building something custom you don't need. Our job is to solve your problem in the way that actually serves you, not to maximize what we build.
Phase 1: Getting started
Introductory meeting (45–60 min, no cost)
A conversation to understand your business and explore whether there's a fit. We'll ask a lot of questions about how your team operates today, what tools you use, and where the friction is. You should leave with a clear sense of how we work and whether we're worth a deeper conversation.
Discovery session (60–90 min)
If there's mutual interest, we go deeper. We'll ask you (or relevant team members) to walk us through actual workflows: share your screen, show us the spreadsheets, the manual processes, the SaaS tools that aren't quite right. We take notes, ask follow-ups, and end with a verbal summary of what we heard.
This is the most important meeting in the engagement. The quality of what we build later is largely determined by how well we understand your work now.
Proposal (within ~2 days of discovery)
We send a written engagement proposal that includes:
A summary of what we heard
The 1-3 problems we recommend tackling first, and why
A proposed first Statement of Work (SOW) with scope, timeline, and fee
Our Master Services Agreement (MSA) for review
Contracting
Three documents, signed at the start:
Master Services Agreement (MSA) — the framework for our working relationship: IP ownership, confidentiality, data handling, payment terms, termination. Signed once, governs everything that follows.
First Statement of Work (SOW) — scope and terms for the first project. Each subsequent project gets its own SOW under the same MSA.
Platform subscription — access to the Kilvin platform: hosting, infrastructure, security, ongoing maintenance. This is the foundation everything we build for you runs on, so it's a prerequisite to any custom work.
Our default cadence is to have everything signed within ~2 weeks of the discovery session. Slower than that usually signals misaligned expectations, and we'd rather surface that early.
Phase 2: Building together
Cadence
During an active build, we suggest:
Weekly sync (30 min). Same time each week. We demo what shipped, show you what's coming, and surface any decisions we need from you. If there's nothing to discuss, we cancel; your time is valuable.
Async daily updates. Short notes in our shared Slack channel: what we did, what's next, where we need input. Sets the tone that we're embedded with your team, not working in a black box.
Milestone demos. When we hit a defined milestone, we walk through the deliverable in a working session before formal acceptance.
We'll flex this for your team's preferences. Some clients want more, some want less. The principle is: frequent, lightweight contact beats infrequent formal reviews.
Channels
We standardize on a few tools to keep things simple:
Slack Connect — a dedicated shared channel for day-to-day communication
Email — for anything contractual or formal
Your Kilvin environment — project artifacts, roadmap, and documentation live in a pre-loaded tracking app within your platform environment, alongside the apps we build for you
Video calls — for syncs, demos, and working sessions
We'll avoid sprawling across more tools than necessary.
Feedback
Most feedback happens in context during demos, in Slack, or in working sessions. We don't believe in formal surveys for active engagements. The shorter the loop between "this isn't quite right" and "fixed," the better the work gets.
For bigger questions about how the engagement itself is going, we cover that in the monthly business review (below).
What we need from you
The single biggest predictor of a successful engagement is your team's responsiveness on decisions and feedback. We can build fast, but only if we're not waiting days for an answer on a question that takes 5 minutes to resolve.
Concretely, we ask for:
A primary point of contact who can make day-to-day decisions
Responsiveness on Slack within ~1 business day for non-urgent items
Availability for the weekly sync
Honest feedback, including when something we built isn't right
Phase 3: Acceptance of deliverables
Each SOW defines specific milestones with explicit acceptance criteria — written in plain language and agreed before work starts. The goal is shared clarity: we both know what we're aiming for, so there's no ambiguity when we get there.
How acceptance works
When we deliver a milestone:
We demo it in a working session and walk through how it meets the agreed criteria.
You have 5 business days to either confirm acceptance (a Slack message or email reply is fine) or send a list of items that don't meet the criteria.
If items don't meet criteria, we fix them as part of the milestone at no additional cost.
If we don't hear back within 5 business days, we'll assume things look good and keep moving so projects don't stall waiting on a formal sign-off.
Building on what we agreed
As you use what we've built, you'll often spot two kinds of things:
Things that don't quite work as agreed. We fix these as part of the milestone, no charge. That's our job.
New ideas for what it could also do. These are some of the most valuable signals in the engagement. We capture them and either fold them into a change order or queue them for a future SOW, so they get the proper attention rather than being squeezed into an active build.
This isn't about gatekeeping scope, but rather making sure good ideas get built well rather than hurriedly.
Phase 4: Ongoing engagement
After the first project ships, the relationship continues in a few overlapping ways.
Platform subscription
The custom apps we build for you live on Kilvin's platform. Your subscription covers hosting, infrastructure, security updates, monitoring, and platform maintenance. This isn't a service tier; it's the foundation that keeps your tools running.
Care plan (optional, recommended)
Most clients add a monthly care plan on top of the platform subscription. It covers:
A pool of hours each month for small changes, tweaks, and minor enhancements
Faster turnaround on requests that don't justify a full SOW
Proactive monitoring and small improvements we notice
Without a care plan, every change requires a small SOW, which is fine but slower. With one, you can Slack us "hey, can we add a column to that report?" and it gets done.
Future SOWs
Bigger projects - new apps, major features, new workflows, etc. - go through a fresh SOW. Same structure as the first one: scope, milestones, acceptance criteria, fixed fee. Most clients have 1–3 active SOWs at any given time as their needs evolve.
Quarterly business reviews
Every 90 days, we do a deeper review with whoever holds the budget on your side:
What we've built and what it's done for the business
What's working, what isn't, what we'd do differently
The roadmap for the next quarter
Any strategic shifts on your end that should change our priorities
This is also where we discuss the specific outcomes we are driving with each project (hours saved, errors reduced, revenue impact, etc.).
What happens if it's not working
We'd rather have a hard conversation early than let an engagement drift. If something isn't working — pace, communication, the work itself, the fit — we want to hear it directly, and we'll do the same.
Termination
Either side can terminate the MSA with notice (specific terms in the agreement). Active SOWs are honored through their current milestone.
On data and portability, we want to be straightforward: your data is always yours and exportable in standard formats, anytime. The custom apps we build for you run on the Kilvin platform - that's part of how we're able to build them so quickly and affordably. If you decide to leave, we'll provide a wind-down period at standard platform rates so you have time to migrate your data and operations elsewhere.
Summary: what to expect from us
A short, focused sales process with discovery, proposal, and signed contracts within ~2 weeks
Custom software shipped in days or weeks, not months
Weekly syncs, daily async contact, embedded working style
Clear acceptance criteria written before work starts
Honest guidance, including telling you when an off-the-shelf solution is the right answer
A long-term partnership where we get better at your business over time