Sunlab's Project Delivery Process

Across hardware, software, AI, and marketing, the method is the same: define the problem, reduce the biggest risk early, build in visible increments, and transfer the work in a form your team can own.

What an Engagement Delivers

Every engagement includes client-owned deliverables. Depending on the service, these may include editable schematics and production files; source code, tests, and infrastructure definitions; trained models, data pipelines, and evaluation results; or marketing accounts, analytics, web pages, and performance baselines.

The record of how it was made comes with it. Decision notes, review findings, and the options we considered and threw out are handed over alongside the work, so your team can maintain and extend the system without the people who built it.

What Transfers

  • Editable source files, not exported output
  • A note on every significant technical decision and why it went that way
  • Review findings, including open items and recommended actions
  • Options we considered and rejected, and what we judged them against
  • Named alternatives for anything single-sourced, in parts and in dependencies
  • Runbooks, test procedures, and enough documentation to run it without us
  • Accounts, repositories, and credentials held in your name

The service pages provide the complete deliverable list for each practice area.

Four Phases, Every Program

Each practice page lists the stages specific to its own discipline, like part selection, load testing, or a measurement baseline. This is the structure common to all four, with the risk you carry by skipping each phase set beside it.

  1. Scope

    Define requirements, exclusions, constraints, risks, deliverables, and decision points.

    Activity
    A fixed-fee scoping phase typically takes one to three weeks. We interview stakeholders, review existing materials, document requirements and exclusions, rank risks, and define the delivery schedule.
    Deliverable
    A written scope containing requirements, exclusions, prioritized risks, deliverables, responsibilities, assumptions, and a milestone schedule. The document belongs to the client and can be used with any qualified team.
    Risk of Omission
    An incomplete scope increases the risk of inaccurate estimates, late requirement changes, disputed responsibilities, and avoidable rework.
  2. Risk Reduction

    Test the highest-risk technical or commercial assumption before dependent work begins.

    Activity
    We isolate and test the highest-priority risk, such as radio performance inside an enclosure, an unreliable third-party integration, or insufficient data for a model. This phase usually takes two to four weeks.
    Deliverable
    A prototype, test result, feasibility finding, or measured recommendation that supports a decision before full implementation.
    Risk of Omission
    Untested assumptions can invalidate completed design work, extend the schedule, and require major changes late in development.
  3. Open Development

    Deliver the work in short, reviewable increments using client-owned accounts and repositories.

    Activity
    Work is completed in the client's repository, cloud accounts, and shared storage. Each one- or two-week increment includes a reviewable output and a written status update. Open findings remain documented until resolved or accepted.
    Deliverable
    Reviewable project increments, current source files, decision records, test results, and a visible list of open issues.
    Risk of Omission
    Infrequent review allows incorrect assumptions and design decisions to continue until they are more expensive to change.
  4. Transfer

    Transfer the deliverables, documentation, accounts, and operating knowledge to the client team.

    Activity
    We complete runbooks, test procedures, architecture notes, and decision records, then conduct a supervised handover in which the client team deploys the software, brings up the hardware, retrains the model, or operates the marketing workflow.
    Deliverable
    A tested handover, complete project files, operating documentation, account access, and a list of any remaining recommendations.
    Risk of Omission
    Incomplete handover creates unnecessary supplier dependence and makes future maintenance, deployment, and staffing changes more difficult.

The First Two Weeks

The opening activities establish access, review existing work, define the scope, select the first risk-reduction task, and set the reporting cadence.

  1. Day one

    Kickoff, Ninety Minutes

    A 90-minute working session with the project sponsor and relevant stakeholders. We review objectives, users, requirements, constraints, prior commitments, dependencies, and unanswered questions.

  2. Day one

    Access, Set Up Once

    The client provides access to repositories, cloud accounts, analytics, CAD storage, and required third-party systems. New accounts are created under the client's organization.

  3. Days two to four

    Reading What Already Exists

    We review existing source code, schematics, design files, documentation, support history, analytics, research, and relevant sales information.

  4. Day five

    The Written Scope

    We issue a draft scope containing requirements, exclusions, prioritized risks, assumptions, responsibilities, deliverables, and milestone decision points for client review.

  5. Week two

    Your First Decision

    We recommend the first risk-reduction task and review the evidence, schedule effect, and expected decision with the client sponsor.

  6. Friday, week two

    First Weekly Update

    The first written status update covers completed work, open issues, planned work, decisions required, and client actions. The same format is used for subsequent weekly updates.

How We Price the Work

We use fixed-fee assessments, milestone-based programs, and monthly retainers. The appropriate model depends on scope certainty and the type of work required.

Fixed-Fee Assessment

One to three weeks · agreed in advance

Used for scopes, design reviews, technical audits, marketing audits, and feasibility assessments with defined deliverables.

The assessment includes findings, recommendations, and documentation that your team or another qualified supplier can use.

Milestone Program

Priced per milestone · agreed before each milestone starts

Used for product development programs in which later work depends on the findings and deliverables from earlier stages.

Each milestone ends with a review and a decision to continue, revise the plan, or stop. Billing covers completed milestones only.

Monthly Retainer

Monthly fee · cancellable monthly unless otherwise agreed

Used for team extension, growth marketing, model monitoring, maintenance, incident support, dependency updates, and ongoing improvements.

Growth marketing retainers have a three-month minimum to establish a useful performance trend. Other retainers are cancellable monthly.

Selecting an Engagement Model

Work with a written scope behind it gets priced up front: a fixed fee where the deliverable is a document, a figure per milestone where the deliverable is a product. The milestone figure is agreed before that milestone starts.

Work on a system you inherited starts with a fixed-fee assessment. The milestone plan and its prices come out of what the assessment finds, so the number you're quoted reflects the state the system is actually in rather than the state it was described in.

Billing and Change

We bill per deliverable, not per hour. An agreed figure covers the milestone. Any change to scope gets documented, priced, and put in front of you against the schedule before anything happens.

Communication and Reporting

Written update
One page, every Friday. What moved, what didn't, what's next, and what we need from you.
Calls
Weekly or every two weeks, according to the project. Meetings are canceled when a written update is sufficient.
Channel
Your Slack or Teams workspace. Project communication remains in the tools your team already uses.
Who you talk to
You communicate directly with the engineers and specialists responsible for the work.
Response
Same working day for anything blocking you, next working day otherwise. If a proper answer is going to take a week, you'll hear that within a day.
Bad news
In the week it happens, in writing, with the options and what each one costs.

Risks, delays, and changes are reported in writing while corrective options are still available.

What We Need From You

Every commitment above has something on your side of it. We state all of it before an engagement starts, so you can arrange access and internal time around it rather than around us.

  1. One Person Who Can DecideSomeone with the authority to say yes or no, rather than a committee or a go-between who has to escalate. Four to eight real questions come up in a month, and each one has a date in the schedule attached to it.
  2. Access on Day OneRepositories, accounts, credentials, drawings, and the analytics property. We ask for all of it as one list at kickoff, so the first two weeks go on the work rather than on provisioning.
  3. The Constraints You Haven't MentionedThe budget ceiling, the board meeting, the customer already given a date, the supplier you're already committed to, and the internal politics that quietly take an obvious option off the table. Tell us and we'll write them into the scope and design around them.
  4. Background on Previous WorkProvide the existing work, the reasons the prior effort ended, known problems, and any components worth retaining. This helps us avoid repeating rejected approaches.
  5. About Four Hours a WeekKickoff, one recurring call, and reading what we send you. Most of it is reading. We state the number up front so you can plan your own availability around it instead of discovering it in month two.
  6. The Same Directness BackIf something we deliver is wrong, late, or not what you asked for, say so that week. It keeps the fix inside the current increment rather than the next milestone.

Contract and Commercial Questions

Questions about the contract rather than about the work. Questions about the studio itself, including where we are, who does the work, and what we won't take on, are answered on thestudio page.

How do you handle scope changes?

Scope changes on most programs. What we do about it is mechanical: we write down the delta, price it, say what it does to the schedule, and you decide. It goes in that week's update no matter whose idea the change was.

Nothing gets absorbed quietly. Testing, documentation, and handover stay in scope at the size we agreed, and if any of that has to move you'll have it in writing before it does.

Can you work alongside our agency or our in-house team?

Yes. We work in your repository and planning tools, and we document responsibilities, review authority, dependencies, and escalation paths at the start of the engagement.

We also identify work that is already being handled effectively by an existing supplier or internal team.

Who owns the intellectual property?

You own everything we make for you once you've paid for it: source, schematics, mechanical CAD, firmware, trained models, design files, copy, and any invention that comes out of the work. Assigned to you, not licensed.

One exception, stated plainly. We keep the methods, internal tooling, and general know-how we had before we met you, and we stay free to use general experience elsewhere. Nothing specific to you gets reused, and we won't name you as a reference without asking first.

What happens if we stop part way through?

Then it stops. Milestone contracts have a decision point at the end of every stage precisely so that ending one is an ordinary outcome and not a dispute. You pay for the milestone delivered and nothing past it, and retainers cancel monthly.

What you get on the way out is everything as it stands: the repository, the design files, and a written note on the state of each piece with what we'd do next. We write that as part of stopping and we don't charge for it.

Can we start with one practice and add another later?

Yes, and most engagements start in one practice and stay there. A board, a rebuild, a model, or a campaign is a complete piece of work on its own. Holding four disciplines under one team doesn't mean you have to buy four.

If a second practice would genuinely help, we'll say so once, with the reasoning, and then leave it alone. See Hardware, Software, AI, and Marketing.

Start With the Constraints

Tell us the deadline, the budget ceiling, and the part you already suspect is a problem. A scoping week turns that into a written plan with the risks ranked against each requirement.

hello@sunlabdigital.comSend Us the Details

St. Petersburg, Florida · we work with teams anywhere