The default cadence at ORBT Labs is six to twelve weeks from kickoff to launch. Larger systems can run longer, but the unit of work is always the week — never the quarter. Most prospects assume this is a cost decision. It isn't.
Why short cycles win
Three reasons, in increasing order of importance.
Memory. The longer a project takes, the less anyone remembers why it started. A six-week project ends with the original brief still on the table. A nine-month project ends with two retros, a stakeholder change, and three theories about what the goal originally was.
The operator's attention. We work with the person who runs the place — and the person who runs the place has a business to run. They can stay engaged for ten weekly check-ins. They cannot stay engaged for forty.
Calibration. Short cycles force decisions that long cycles let you defer. "We have nine months" usually produces month seven of nothing happening, because the deadline doesn't bite yet. "We have six weeks" produces week one of real choices.
Calm software wins the long shift. The cadence that produces calm software is also short.
What we won't take
If the brief honestly requires twelve months, we're the wrong studio. We'll tell you that fast — usually within the first conversation. Three flavours of work we typically decline:
- Enterprise replatforms. Migrating a fifteen-year-old internal system is real work. It is not our work.
- "Build us an entire SaaS from scratch." If you don't have a single live operator, you don't have a brief — you have a wish. We come in once you've validated the wedge with paying customers.
- Open-ended retainers. We don't sell hours. We sell a finished thing with a clear endpoint.
What a typical engagement looks like
- Week 0: One-paragraph brief through the form. Reply within two working days. If it's a fit, we set up a call.
- Week 1: Scope locked. We write the spec. You read it and tell us what's wrong.
- Weeks 2–8: Build, in public against the spec. Weekly check-ins. Working software at the end of every week.
- Final week: Launch, handover, docs. We're not the dependency after this — you are.
That's the cadence. It works because we make it work — and because we say no to the projects that wouldn't.