Our Process

The governance journey

Nine structured stages. Every one reduces risk, adds verifiability, and builds the evidence base your investors, customers and regulators expect. At the end: a certified, production-ready product.

JUMP TO: 01 Code Review 02 Security 03 Compliance 04 Pen Test 05 Performance 06 Documentation 07 Accessibility 08 AI Validation 09 Legal
01
Code quality & maintainability

AI Code Review & Refactoring

AI coding tools optimise for speed and functionality — not for the humans who will maintain the code for years afterward. We begin by making the codebase readable, structured, and defensible.

  • ✓Full codebase review against industry coding standards
  • ✓Modularisation and separation of concerns
  • ✓Naming conventions and documentation baseline
  • ✓Dead code identification and removal
  • ✓Performance optimisation at the code level
  • ✓Dependency audit — version pinning and update strategy
  • ✓Technical debt register with prioritised remediation
02
Static analysis & security posture

Security Audit & Vulnerability Scanning

AI-generated code frequently produces authentication logic, input handling, and API patterns that appear functional but contain exploitable security flaws. We find them before your users — or attackers — do.

  • ✓Static analysis for OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities
  • ✓Authentication and session management review
  • ✓Input validation and injection vulnerability scan
  • ✓Data handling: encryption in transit and at rest
  • ✓Secrets management — hardcoded credentials and API key exposure
  • ✓Third-party dependency vulnerability check (CVE database)
  • ✓API endpoint exposure and access control review
03
UK GDPR, ISO 27001 & regulatory alignment

Compliance Checks

Regulatory compliance isn't optional for any product handling user data. AI tools don't reason about compliance — they generate code that functions. We ensure it functions within the legal and regulatory framework your product operates in.

  • ✓UK GDPR compliance review — consent, data minimisation, right to erasure
  • ✓Data residency and processor documentation
  • ✓Privacy-by-design principles audit
  • ✓Error handling and logging — no PII in logs
  • ✓ISO 27001 alignment assessment (where required)
  • ✓Cookie and tracking compliance
  • ✓Data retention and deletion policy verification
04
Active exploitation testing

Penetration Testing — CREST Approved Partner

A security audit finds what's visible in code. A penetration test finds what's exploitable in practice. We run active, structured penetration tests mapped to OWASP against your staging environment — never production. All penetration testing is delivered by CREST Approved Partner engineers.

  • ✓Comprehensive OWASP-mapped penetration test
  • ✓Authentication bypass and privilege escalation
  • ✓IDOR (Insecure Direct Object Reference) testing
  • ✓API abuse and rate limit testing
  • ✓Business logic vulnerability testing
  • ✓Data exposure and over-fetching tests
  • ✓Remediation plan for every finding with severity rating
05
Load testing & growth ceiling analysis

Performance & Scalability Testing

A product that works for ten users and fails for a thousand isn't production-ready. We simulate real load against your application and identify the architectural constraints before your growth curve reveals them.

  • ✓Load simulation against expected user volumes
  • ✓Stress testing to identify failure thresholds
  • ✓Database query performance under concurrent load
  • ✓CDN and asset delivery optimisation
  • ✓API rate limit mapping under peak traffic
  • ✓Concurrency and deadlock analysis
  • ✓Scalability ceiling report with growth trigger thresholds
06
Handover-ready codebase

Documentation & Maintainability

AI-generated code is rarely documented for the development team that inherits it. A product is only commercially sustainable if it can be understood, extended, and supported by humans — with or without the AI tool that generated it.

  • ✓Full codebase documentation (inline and external)
  • ✓Architecture decision record (ADR) creation
  • ✓API documentation and endpoint reference
  • ✓Developer onboarding guide
  • ✓Maintenance procedures and runbook
  • ✓Known limitations and technical debt register
  • ✓Support escalation structure
07
WCAG compliance & usability

UX & Accessibility Review

AI-generated UI is often functional but not accessible. WCAG compliance is increasingly a legal requirement — and a commercial expectation in enterprise and public sector contexts.

  • ✓WCAG compliance audit
  • ✓Keyboard navigation and screen reader testing
  • ✓Colour contrast and visual accessibility checks
  • ✓Form label, error message and focus management
  • ✓Mobile responsiveness and touch target review
  • ✓Usability review against core user journeys
  • ✓Accessibility remediation recommendations
08
Fairness, ethics & reliability

AI Model Validation & Bias Checks

If your product includes AI components — recommendations, classification, scoring, generation — those components need validation. Bias in AI outputs creates reputational, legal, and regulatory risk that no amount of clean code prevents.

  • ✓AI output audit for consistency and reliability
  • ✓Bias assessment across protected characteristics
  • ✓Edge case and adversarial input testing
  • ✓Hallucination and confidence calibration review
  • ✓Human oversight and intervention point documentation
  • ✓AI ethics alignment check
  • ✓Ongoing monitoring recommendations
Add-on service

Deployment & DevOps Readiness

Once governance is complete, we can set up everything needed for continuous, consistent, and secure deployment — from secure repository configuration through to automated CI/CD pipelines that carry your product from code commit to production reliably, every time.

  • ✓Secure repository setup and access controls
  • ✓Automated CI/CD pipeline configuration
  • ✓Branch strategy and protection rules
  • ✓Automated testing gates in the pipeline
  • ✓Environment configuration management
  • ✓Deployment rollback and recovery procedures
  • ✓Monitoring and alerting setup
  • ✓Developer team handover and pipeline documentation
Talk to us about DevOps readiness →
Start the journey

Tell us what you've built. We'll tell you what it needs.

All projects are scoped individually. No off-the-shelf packages — the right governance stages for your product, your risk profile, and your timeline.

Talk to us → Free readiness checklist