01

Health check

System health check · free

Tell us what you are dealing with. We will write back with what we see.

No call, no pitch, no cost. Answer as much as you can. “I do not know” is a valid answer to every question on this form, and it is often the most useful one.

02

What you get

What you get.

A written response from a person, within one to two business days.

It covers what we can tell about your situation from your answers, what we would need access to in order to tell you more, which of your problems look urgent and which only look urgent, and what we would do about it if it were ours.

It ends with a recommendation, which is sometimes an engineering assessment, sometimes a specific piece of work, and sometimes that you do not need us at all. We will write that last one down if it is true, because a written “you do not have a problem here” is worth more to you than a meeting.

What it is not

It is not a report, it is not an audit, and it is not a meeting. It is one person reading your answers properly and writing back.

03

What we ask

What we ask about.

Nine short sections. Most people finish in about 15 minutes.

Section

What it covers

Your situation

What prompted you to fill this in. Free text, in your own words.

What the software does

In business terms. What breaks in your business if it stops.

Who built it

In-house, an agency, a freelancer, or nobody knows.

Who supports it now

Including nobody.

Where it runs

Cloud, your own server, somebody else’s account, unknown.

Access and control

Who holds the accounts, the code, the domains, and the passwords.

What is going wrong

A checklist of symptoms, plus room to describe your own.

Urgency

How much real time pressure there is.

About you

Contact details, company, size. Last section, not the first.

04

The form

The form.

Your situation

01

What made you fill this in today?

02

Has something happened recently that changed things?

What the software does

03

In one or two sentences, what does the software do for your business?

04

What happens to your business if it stops working for a day?

05

Roughly how many people use it?

Who built it

06

Who built it?

07

When was it built, roughly?

08

Are any of the original builders still involved?

Who supports it now

09

Who do you contact when something goes wrong?

10

Is there a support agreement in writing?

11

How responsive are they at the moment?

Where it runs

12

Where does the software run?

13

Whose name is the hosting account in?

14

Do you know what it costs to run per month?

Access and control

15

Do you have access to the source code?

16

Who can log in and change things right now?

17

Is the domain name registered in your company’s name?

18

If your current provider stopped answering tomorrow, could you get into everything yourself?

What is going wrong

19

Which of these apply? Tick as many as you like.

20

Describe the worst of it in your own words.

21

Has anyone given you a diagnosis or a quote already?

Urgency

22

What is driving the timing?

23

When does this need to be resolved?

24

Is there a budget position yet?

About you

25

Name, company, email, and role

29

Company size

30

Anything else you want us to know before we write back?

Only your email address is required. Every other question can be left blank or answered with “I do not know”.

05

Why free

Why we do this for free.

Because most of the work in a bad situation is figuring out what the situation actually is. Answering these questions is most of that work, and you have just done it.

If we write back and you take our answer to somebody else, that is a fine outcome. If it turns into work, better still. Either way we would rather spend an hour on a written answer than on a call that establishes what this form already has.

The self-interested version

You may as well have it: this is how we decide who to talk to. We are a small engineering team and we cannot take on everything. Thirty answered questions tell us more than a first meeting would.

06

What happens next

What happens next.

01

You submit

No automated sequence starts. Nothing is added to a drip campaign. Nobody telephones you.

02

A person writes back

Wihann, our Team Lead, reads it and replies within one to two business days. A person, not a template with your company name inserted.

03

You decide

An engineering assessment, a specific piece of work, or nothing. If it is nothing, we will not chase you.

07

Skip ahead

If you already know you want a proper look.

If you have already established what is wrong and you want someone to go in, document it, and cost the options, start with the paid assessment instead.

A fixed-fee engineering assessment. Two weeks, a written report, costed options with the trade-offs stated. Yours to keep, whoever ends up doing the work.