Centra Limited Contact us

How we work.

Four short, visible stages, delivered by the senior team you meet at the start. At the end of each stage you decide whether to carry on, change direction or stop, with evidence in front of you.

  1. 01

    Discover

    Understand the work and the people doing it.

    Decide: prototype?
  2. 02

    Prototype

    Test the riskiest ideas with real users.

    Decide: build?
  3. 03

    Build

    Working software, in small increments.

    Decide: go live?
  4. 04

    Run and improve

    Keep it secure, healthy and getting better.

    Decide: improve or hand over
01

Discover

We spend time with the people doing the work and map where the real answer lives, before we draw a single screen. That includes the spreadsheets, inboxes and workarounds nobody puts in a requirements document.

What happens

  • Interviews and time alongside staff and service users
  • Mapping processes, data and the systems involved
  • Agreeing what success looks like and how it's measured

What you get

  • A clear statement of the problem worth solving
  • Options, risks and an estimate
  • An honest view on whether to build at all
02

Prototype

We build a working slice of the riskiest part and put it in front of real users. You decide whether to go ahead with evidence, not a long specification.

What happens

  • Prototype the highest-risk journey first
  • Test it with the people who'll use it
  • Check accessibility, privacy and security risks early

What you get

  • A prototype you can click through
  • Findings from user testing
  • A costed plan for the build
03

Build

We build in small increments and show you working software as it comes together, so you can change course while it's still cheap to do so.

What happens

  • Build, test and release in small pieces
  • Show-and-tells with working software, not slides
  • Accessibility built in and checked as we go
  • Independent penetration test before go-live

What you get

  • A live, documented system
  • Code in repositories you own
  • Training for the people who'll use it
04

Run and improve

Once it's live, we keep it secure, healthy and getting better under a service level we agree with you. If you'd rather take it in-house, the code and documentation are already yours.

What happens

  • Hosting, monitoring and backups
  • Security patching and dependency updates
  • Improvements worked through in priority order

What you get

  • Agreed response times
  • A system that keeps improving
  • A clean handover, whenever you want one

The people you meet are the people who build.

The senior team you meet at the start is the team that designs, builds and supports your system. There's no hand-off to a junior team once the contract is signed.

We're remote-first across New Zealand and Australia, and we come on site when the work needs it: discovery especially.

Fits how government delivers.

The NZ Government's Digital Service Design Standard asks agencies to understand the people a service is for, build in security and privacy from the start, and design for the whole life of a service. Our stages are built around the same ideas.

Because each stage ends with a decision, you can buy the work in right-sized pieces. Many projects start with a discovery on its own.

Where to next.