Mudo for growing architecture practices

Growth in an architecture practice is rarely a smooth curve. It is a series of thresholds, and each one breaks something that used to work.

The threshold that matters most is the point where no single person can hold the state of the practice in their head any more.

What breaks, in order

First, resourcing. With three projects, allocation is a conversation. With nine, it is a problem that has to be looked at rather than known.

Then the commercial picture. A director can carry the fee position of three jobs. Nobody carries nine, and the practice discovers its position in arrears.

Then consistency. Two people do things the same way by talking. Eight people do things the same way only if the way is written down and lives where the work happens.

Then memory. The practice starts losing what it has learned, because the people who learned it are now supervising rather than doing.

Making the practice legible

The work at this stage is not adding process for its own sake. It is making the operational model explicit so more than one person can hold it.

The Brain is the clearest example: the state of every live project, derived from the records rather than from a person, on the screen the practice opens on. It replaces the thing a director used to do by knowing.

Priced so that growing does not penalise you

Mudo is priced per practice, not per seat. Hiring does not increase the bill, which removes one of the more counterproductive incentives in per-seat software: rationing access to the system that coordinates the work.