Datsoft is a software engineering practice in Newport, run by an engineer nineteen years into the work. We write the unglamorous parts: the migrations, the error paths, the queue that has to drain at 3am with nobody watching. Web applications, mobile, integration and legacy rescue.
01 Case notes
Figures are the clients’ own, measured before and after. Two of the four are happy to take a call about it; the other two asked us not to pass their details on.
02 The practice
In 2017 our founder took a bench seat on a public-sector rebuild in Cardiff. Sixteen months, two hundred pages of specification, and nothing at the end of it that anybody ever used.
That ended in March 2019, and settled the rule everything here still runs on: nothing counts until it is in production and somebody who did not build it depends on it.
A forecasting engine, taken on out of confidence rather than competence. Four months in it was plain the job wanted a statistician, not an engineer reading papers at midnight. We refunded £31,400, handed back the code and the notes, and named two firms better placed to finish it.
It cost most of a year to put right. It also produced the one rule that has never been bent since.
Roughly one enquiry in four gets a polite no. We do not take design-only projects, we do not build on WordPress, and we do not accept work that needs a specialism this practice does not hold.
Most of this industry bills by the day, which quietly pays a supplier to be slow. We quote the piece of work. If we finish early, that is our problem to enjoy, not yours to fund.
03 What we take on
04 How an engagement runs
No deck, no discovery workshop, no invoice. You describe the problem and we tell you honestly whether it is ours to solve.
We read the systems you already have and write the plan. It is yours whatever happens next — several clients have taken it elsewhere, and that is a fair outcome.
Working software at the end of every increment, on your infrastructure, reviewed with you. Invoiced as each increment completes, not up front.
Your repository, your accounts, your runbook, written so a new developer can follow it. If you would rather we kept the pager, that becomes a monthly arrangement.
A thirty-minute call about the problem, or a written brief to [email protected]. We answer every enquiry within one working day, including the ones we turn down.
05 Book a consultation
Thank you — that has reached us. We will read it and reply within one working day. If it is urgent, ring +44 7480 252 597 and say so.
