01Define
A shared brief before a build.
The workflow, business owner, system boundaries, inputs, exclusions, and acceptance criteria are agreed in the engagement scope.
A scope your operating team and technical team can both use.
How we work
Clarity at the start.
Accountability throughout.
You should understand what you are commissioning, how it will be evaluated, and who will operate it. These principles guide the scope of an XP Solutions engagement.
Discuss your requirementsThe engagement path
Three stages.
A decision at each one.
02Validate
A controlled pilot before expansion.
Representative test cases include incomplete data, ambiguous requests, exceptions, and recovery. Quality and control are evaluated alongside time recovered.
An evidence-based decision to proceed, revise, or stop.
03Operate
A handover your team can use.
The release plan defines responsibilities, documentation, access, monitoring, and support. Changes and new capabilities are scoped deliberately.
A documented system with an accountable operating owner.
Controls that fit the work
Boundaries by design.
Access, retention, hosting, and provider requirements are assessed for each engagement. Specific controls belong in the agreed architecture and scope.
Scoped access
Agree which systems and fields a workflow may read or change. Prefer least-privilege service accounts, separate test environments, and revocable access.
Human decision points
Identify actions that require a named approver. Define escalation, abstention, and a manual path when the system cannot safely complete a task.
Recoverable workflows
Specify duplicate handling, safe retries, reconciliation, and the response to partial failures. Include exception handling in the operational test.
Understandable records
Define the execution history needed to trace an action. Agree what is recorded, who can see it, and how retention fits the engagement’s data requirements.
Designed for ownership
A working system.
A practical handover.
A workflow needs more than a successful demonstration. We define the operational handover and support responsibilities before launch.
See a sample diagnosticAgree these before release
- Acceptance criteria and the evidence used to approve release
- System and data owners, access permissions, and credentials handling
- Architecture, integrations, and configuration documentation
- Exception handling, recovery steps, and the manual fallback
- Monitoring, usage limits, and responsibility for reviewing alerts
- Team training and the scope of any ongoing support
A buyer’s review
Make the proposal
easy to evaluate.
Use these questions before commissioning a pilot. The written scope is where requirements, responsibilities, and commercial terms become specific.
- Scope & change
- Which inputs, systems, outputs, and exceptions are included? What is excluded, and how are additions approved?
- Commercial clarity
- What is the delivery fee? Which software, model-usage, hosting, maintenance, and support costs are separate?
- Acceptance & evidence
- Who approves the release? Which test cases and quality, control, reliability, and value measures support that decision?
- Access & information
- What data can be read or changed? Which hosting, provider, retention, confidentiality, and access conditions apply?
- Ownership & exit
- Which deliverables, configurations, documentation, and accounts transfer? How does the team revoke access and continue operation?
- Support & operation
- Who reviews alerts, exceptions, and changes? What support is included, for how long, and under which agreed response arrangements?
See a sample pilot delivery plan.
A working example of scope, responsibilities, acceptance gates, and handover. Adapt it to the actual engagement.
Before an engagement
Ask the questions
that matter to you.
Share your procurement, security, hosting, or data-processing requirements at the start. The initial discussion identifies whether the work and its constraints are a suitable fit.
The proposal should define deliverables, responsibilities, commercial terms, third-party services, and any support arrangement. Access and production changes follow the agreed scope and approval process.
If a required standard or control cannot be met, it needs to be resolved before the engagement proceeds.
Request a diagnostic