How We Work

Good delivery doesn't happen by accident. This section covers the approaches, methodologies, and standards that shape how CDS teams work — on every engagement, with every client.

The Engineering Bar sets out the standard we hold ourselves to. The rest of this section is organised around three themes that put that standard into practice: Delivery, covering how we run engagements from discovery to handover; Engineering & Architecture, covering the technical principles and infrastructure practices that underpin what we build; and Quality, covering how we build testing and accessibility in from the start.

These aren't rigid rules. They're the result of experience across many projects and many teams, refined over time into patterns that consistently produce better outcomes. They apply across disciplines — the shared layer that every CDS team draws from, regardless of practice or technology stack.

For deeper, discipline-specific standards and techniques — the detailed tooling guidance, methodologies, and practice-owned resources that sit beneath these shared approaches — see the Practices section.