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Delivery Kickoff

Two days to find out what's actually going on

You suspect something is structurally broken in how your team delivers. You might be right. I embed with your team for two days, find out what's working, what isn't, and leave you with a setup your team can follow from Monday morning.

2 days · on-site or remote€5,000 · fixed price
Book a free 30 min call
Sound familiar?

You don't need a consultant for months. You need two honest days.

Things carry over week after week. Nobody is sure what's actually done. The board says "in progress" for items that haven't moved in three weeks. Your daily meeting takes 45 minutes and nothing comes out of it.

Priorities shift constantly. The team is busy, but the thing that matters most keeps getting bumped. Nobody knows who decides what gets worked on next, or the answer is "it depends" or "whoever's loudest."

You can't answer "when will this be done?" Not because your team is slow. Because there's no system that makes progress visible. So you sit in meetings narrating status instead of making decisions.

What happens

Here's what the two days actually look like

Not a workshop with sticky notes. Not a methodology presentation. I sit with your team, watch how things work, and build the fix with you.

Day one See the reality
I sit in your standup
I watch what people talk about, how long it takes, and what questions don't get answered. Most standups are status narration. I'll time how many minutes are spent on things that should be visible on a board.
I open your board
I look at your Jira, Linear, Trello, spreadsheet, whatever you're using. I'll tell you which columns are lying, which tickets haven't moved in weeks, and where work goes to get lost. If your board is a mess, that's expected. The mess is where I start.
I talk to the people doing the work
Short, honest conversations with 2-3 people close to planning and development. Not interviews. I want to know: what slows you down? What's unclear? What decisions are you waiting on? These conversations usually surface the real problems within 20 minutes.
I map how work actually flows
Not how it's supposed to flow. How it actually flows. Where handoffs happen. Where things stall. Where "done" means something different to the developer, the reviewer, and the person who told the client it's done. This is usually where the biggest gap lives.
Day two Build the fix
We redesign the board together
I don't hand you a template. We rebuild your board so it reflects how your team actually works. Columns that mean something. A clear definition of what "done" means. A way to spot stuck work in 10 seconds instead of asking in a meeting.
We set the priorities
A short, written list of what to work on next, in order, that everyone agrees on. Not a quarterly roadmap. The next four weeks. Specific enough that nobody needs to ask "what should I work on?" on Monday.
We fix the meetings
If your standup takes 45 minutes, we figure out why and fix it. Usually it's because the board doesn't show progress, so people narrate it. Once the board works, the meeting shrinks to 10-15 minutes. That's not theory. I've done this at every engagement.
I write up the honest assessment
You get a written document: what's working, what's broken, and what to change first. Specific to your team. Not a slide deck. Not a generic maturity assessment. Included: a curated list of talks, articles, and books tailored to the specific problems I found, so your team keeps learning after I leave.

You stop losing weeks to confusion

The kickoff doesn't give you a process manual. It gives you a team that knows what it's doing next and can see what's stuck without asking.

A board that reflects reality

Not the Jira graveyard with 47 columns and tickets from 2023. A board the team actually uses, where you can see what's in progress, what's stuck, and what's next in 10 seconds.

Meetings that take 10 minutes

When progress is visible on a board, you stop narrating status in meetings. The daily check-in becomes a place for decisions, not updates. At Factry, a one-hour daily meeting went down to 15 minutes.

A priority list the whole team agrees on

Written, specific, covering the next four weeks. No ambiguity about what comes first. No "it depends." The kind of clarity where nobody needs to ask "what should I work on?" on Monday morning.

An honest assessment in writing

What's working. What's broken. What to fix first. No sugar-coating. Plus a curated list of resources tailored to your specific problems, so your team keeps improving after I leave.

A clear answer to "who decides?"

Half the confusion in product teams comes from unclear decision rights. After the kickoff, everyone knows who sets priorities, who decides scope, and what happens when things conflict.

A signal to your team

Bringing someone external in for two days tells your team that leadership sees the problem and is taking it seriously. People start working differently before any process changes. That signal matters more than most founders realize.

Investment

Less than the problem costs you every month

€5,000
Fixed price · VAT excluded
On-site or remote · 2 days

Some context on that number. A developer in Belgium costs roughly €400-500/day. A team of five losing one week to confusion, unclear priorities, or rework costs around €10,000 in burned salary. That happens every month in most teams I work with. The kickoff costs less than one bad month.

Is this right for you?

The kickoff works when the team is capable but the system isn't

You have people but no structure

Your team is motivated and skilled, but there's no clear way of working. Everything runs through you. You're the process, the priority list, and the tie-breaker. Two days to give the team a system that doesn't depend on you being in every conversation.

You had a process that stopped working

It worked when you were five people. Now you're twelve and the cracks are showing. Meetings got longer. The board got messy. Decisions take longer. You don't need to start from scratch. You need someone to see what broke and fix it.

Not sure if this is the right fit?

If you're wondering whether your problem is how you deliver or what you're building, that's a fair question. Book the call. It's free, it takes 30 minutes, and I'll tell you honestly whether a kickoff will help or whether you need something else entirely.

Questions

Things people ask before booking

"Can't we just run a retrospective?" +

You can. And you should. But a retro surfaces what the team already knows. The kickoff surfaces what nobody sees because they're too close. I don't work here. I have no loyalty to anyone's pet project and no reason to be diplomatic about what's broken. That outside perspective is what you're paying for.

"I could probably learn this from YouTube." +

Honestly? A lot of it, yes. A motivated CTO with two free weekends can learn the fundamentals of flow-based delivery. I'll even give you a list of what to watch. But the knowledge isn't the bottleneck. The bottleneck is that nobody on your team has the time, the mandate, and the outside perspective to do it all at once. You're too close. Your dev lead has opinions tangled up with ego. Your PM is firefighting. I walk in with no stake in any existing decision.

"What if our Jira is a total mess?" +

That's expected. I don't take your tracker's data at face value. I build a model of how work actually flows before I touch anything. The mess isn't a blocker. It's where I start.

"What happens after the two days?" +

You run with it. The whole point is that the setup works without me. Four weeks later, we check in to see what stuck, what didn't, and what needs adjusting. If after that check-in you realize you need deeper, longer support, we can talk about a Delivery Reset. Your Kickoff fee applies as a credit toward the Reset if you decide to continue within four weeks.

"How do I get my CEO to approve this?" +

Forward them this page. The pitch is simple: €5,000 is less than one month of wasted time costs. The team gets a clear setup in two days instead of three months of trial and error. Fixed price, no ongoing commitment. If it doesn't help, you're out two days, not six months of consulting fees.

This has worked before

What actually happened

Factry
Factory operating system · ~12 people · Ghent

Previous client implementation took 18 months and nearly broke the team. I went to the factory floor, talked to machine operators, prototyped with real users, and turned a one-hour daily meeting into 15 minutes. The next comparable implementation took 6 months. Three times faster.

Read the full story →

He took the time to understand our complex environment and our constraints to propose the best solution for us.

Jennifer Imbert Podgorski, Industrial Operations Manager, Lesaffre

Let's find out if this helps

30 minutes. No pitch. You tell me what's going on and I'll tell you whether a kickoff is the right move, or if it's not. Most kickoffs get booked within two weeks of the call.

Book a free 30 min call