How We Work

We don't start with code. We start with understanding.

Every engagement begins with a fixed-scope assessment. Starting modernization without knowing where change is safe — especially around data, security, and core workflows — is how teams create outages, audit issues, and expensive rollbacks.

Phase 1

AI Modernization GUIDE Assessment

Before implementation accelerates, we evaluate whether your engineering system can contain failure, preserve knowledge, direct agents, and prove correctness.

  • Governance: where the system limits how far a failure can spread
  • Understanding: how institutional knowledge is built, maintained, and kept current
  • Intent: whether specs, tests, documentation, and conventions are actionable by agents
  • Direction: where humans set priorities, constraints, and outcomes before agents execute
  • Evidence: what proof lets humans and agents trust the system

Outputs include a system risk map, test confidence evaluation, and modernization pathways.

Phase 2

Guided Modernization

After the assessment, we help you execute — safely and incrementally.

  • Scope informed by assessment findings
  • Incremental change under defined safety constraints
  • Knowledge transfer to your team
Available only after completing an Assessment

How we reduce risk before we change anything

  • We identify unsafe areas before proposing change
  • We earn access incrementally
  • We isolate risk before touching critical paths
  • We design rollback before deployment

What we don't do

  • Feature delivery before system conditions are understood
  • Projects where speed is prioritized over safety
  • Staff augmentation
  • Greenfield builds or MVPs

"We trusted them to deliver data necessary to identify fraud. Orum is reliant on these reports for business-critical functions. In the future, Def Method would be my top pick."

Emily Pirnack
Head of Product, Orum

"I have used Def Method for 5 different efforts at two different companies because I know I can count on them for high quality work."

Dave Zaretsky
CPO, Elias Sports Bureau

Ready to get started?

If breaking things is expensive, the first step is understanding where change is safe.

Start with an Assessment