Nine weeks to a logistics platform: an honest build diary

This is the diary version, not the case-study version. Nine weeks, one logistics client, dispatch and invoicing and fleet KPIs in a single portal — and the parts that did not go to plan, left in.

Weeks one and two were design, and they ran clean because the client gave us a real person who could make decisions in the room. Build started in week three. By week five we had re-estimated one integration upward; the legacy dispatch system spoke a dialect of CSV that no document admitted to, and pretending otherwise would only have moved the pain to launch.

The Friday demos are what kept it honest. Every week the client saw exactly where it was, clicked the new parts, and flagged anything drifting. Nothing accumulated into a surprise, because nothing got a week older than a Friday before someone looked at it.

It shipped in week nine, on the scope we agreed, with the source handed over and a warranty on it. The re-estimated integration cost us a little margin and bought the client a launch with no fires. We will take that trade every time.