Burning Sapp

Contact

Tell us about the system nobody wants to touch.

There is no form. Send an email and one of the two of us reads it, which is the same arrangement you get for the rest of the engagement.

01 · First email

What to put in it.

None of this is required and a two-line email is welcome. But the more of it you include, the more useful our first reply can be, and the less of your time we spend asking obvious questions.

  • The stack Language and version, app server, database, operating system. Rough is fine. "Java 7 on WebLogic somewhere, we think" is a real answer we have no problem with.
  • The age Roughly when it was built, and whether the people who built it are still reachable.
  • The pressure What is forcing this now. An audit finding, a licence renewal, a datacenter closing, a security review, or a person about to retire.
  • The deadline Real dates, including the one that is not negotiable and the reason it is not.
  • The constraints Restricted environments, clearance requirements, change windows, or anything that means we cannot simply clone the repository and start reading.
  • The shape Whether you want us direct, or under a prime contractor or agency, and whose paper the work runs on.

02 · What happens next

Four steps, and no salespeople in any of them.

  1. We reply, in writing

    Within two business days, with questions rather than a pitch. If we are not the right shop for it, that is what the reply says, and we will point you somewhere better if we know of one.

  2. A call

    Thirty to forty-five minutes with both partners. No slides. We would rather spend it on your architecture than on our logo.

  3. An assessment, priced on its own

    NDA, then access, then two to four weeks reading the code and the running system, reported weekly in writing. It ends in a risk map and a fixed-scope proposal, and it stands on its own even if you hire someone else to do the migration.

  4. A decision you can defend

    A fixed price for the work, or a written recommendation not to do it. Both are real outcomes and we have no preference between them at this stage.

03 · Fit

When we are the wrong call.

Saying this early costs us a few enquiries and saves everyone a wasted month. If you are in one of these situations, we would rather you know now.

  • You need eight engineers starting Monday. There are two of us, and we do not subcontract the work back out.
  • You need daily standups and someone reachable during your business hours. We work to a weekly written cadence, not a shared calendar. If your project needs a body in a chair from nine to five, we are not that shop.
  • You want something new built from scratch. We migrate systems that already exist and already matter.
  • You need the lowest bid. We are not it, and a legacy migration priced to be the cheapest quote tends to end badly for the client.
  • You need a signature certifying that a system is compliant. We produce evidence, we do not certify. That distinction is explained on the compliance page.
  • The decision to rewrite from scratch is already made and you want hands to execute it. We would want to argue about that first, and you should not pay us to argue.

04 · The business

Practical details.

Entity
Burning Sapp LLC. Torin Sapp and Jake Burns, partners.
Working as
Direct client engagements, or subcontracted under a prime contractor or agency, white-labeled where that is what the arrangement calls for.
Contracts
We are happy on your paper. NDA before the first code review, always.
Insurance
Bound per engagement to your contract's limits. Certificates before work starts.
Remote
We work remotely by default and travel on site where the environment requires it or where a cutover is worth being in the room for.
Availability
Ask. We take a small number of engagements at a time on purpose, so the honest answer changes month to month.

Start here

What is it, and what is it supposed to do?

We reply in writing, within two business days.