The Narqix Specialist Operating Standard

The Narqix Delivery Loop

Every engagement, from a one-week landing page to a year of bookkeeping, runs through the same five stages. Small jobs move through them fast. Nothing skips one.

Stage	Question it answers	What leaves this stage
1. Discover	What does the client actually need, and why?	Discovery notes
2. Define	What exactly will we deliver, and how will we know it is done?	Signed-off Scope Sheet
3. Build	Are we making it, in the open, on schedule?	Work in progress, daily and weekly updates
4. Prove	Does it meet every acceptance criterion?	Client acceptance in writing
5. Hand over	Can the client run it without us?	Handover pack, access cleaned up

Ongoing retainers (ads management, social, bookkeeping) loop stages 3 and 4 every week and every month, with a fresh Define step whenever goals change.

Kickoff

• Hold the kickoff call within 2 business days of your start date. Use the agenda on the Delivery Rituals page.
• Before the call, read everything the client and Narqix already have: sales notes, their site, their ads, their brand, past reports.
• Send the kickoff summary within 4 working hours of the call ending. It lists goals, decisions, access still needed, the first milestone and the next meeting.
• Ask for every access item in one message, not drip by drip.

Discovery questions

Ask the questions that change what you build. Skip the ones already answered in the sales notes, and confirm instead.

Goal and success

• What business result should this work produce in the next 90 days?
• How will you measure it? What is the number today?
• What happens if we do nothing?
• What does "great" look like to you? Show me an example you admire.

Audience and offer

• Who is the customer, and what problem pushes them to act?
• What do you sell, at what price range, and what makes you different?
• Where do your best customers come from today?

People and decisions

• Who approves the work? Who else must see it before it goes live?
• Who do I go to for day-to-day questions, and how fast can they usually reply?
• Is anyone else (another agency, an in-house person) touching the same work?

Constraints

• Deadline, and is it fixed or flexible? What is driving it?
• Budget for the work, plus any running costs (ad spend, hosting, subscriptions).
• Brand rules, legal rules, industry rules, words or claims we must never use.
• Systems we must work inside, and systems we must not touch.

Assets and access

• Which accounts, files and data already exist? Who owns them?
• What has been tried before, and what happened?
• What do you need back from us at the end (files, documentation, training)?

Scope and acceptance criteria

Every piece of work has a Scope Sheet before build starts. One page is enough. The client approves it in writing (a reply of "approved" in the project channel or email counts).

What a Scope Sheet contains

1. Goal: one sentence tied to a business result.
2. Deliverables: a numbered list of what the client will receive.
3. Acceptance criteria: testable statements for each deliverable.
4. Out of scope: what we are not doing. Write it down; it prevents most disputes.
5. Assumptions: what must be true for the estimate to hold ("client supplies final copy by (DATE)").
6. Dependencies: what we need from the client or others, and by when.
7. Milestones: dates for review points and final delivery.
8. Approver: the one person who signs off.

Acceptance criteria must be checkable by someone who was not in the room. Write them as "Done when..." statements.

Weak	Strong
Fast website	Done when every page loads its main content in under 2.5 seconds on a mid-range phone over 4G
Good ads	Done when 3 campaigns are live, conversion tracking fires on the thank-you page, and daily spend stays within 10 percent of the agreed budget
Clean books	Done when every bank and card account is reconciled to the statement for (MONTH) with zero unexplained differences

Estimates

• Give ranges, not single numbers, for anything uncertain: "6 to 9 working days".
• Break work into pieces of one day or less before you estimate. If a piece is bigger, you do not understand it yet.
• List the assumptions that drive the range.
• Add a visible buffer of about 20 percent for unknowns. Never hide padding.
• Track actual time against the estimate. At 80 percent of the estimate used, tell your Delivery Lead and the client where you are and whether the range still holds.
• If a new fact moves the estimate by more than 15 percent, re-estimate in writing the same day.

Updates

Daily update (for engagements with daily work), posted in the client's project channel at the end of your working block:

Done: what moved, with links Next: what you will do in your next working block Blocked: anything stopping you, and since when Need from you: decisions or items, each with a recommended answer and a date

Weekly report every Friday by the client's end of day, using the template on the Delivery Rituals page: progress against milestones, KPIs against target, risks, decisions needed, next week's plan.

Rules for every update:

• Lead with outcomes and numbers, not effort. "Landing page live, form tested on 4 devices" beats "worked on the landing page".
• Send it even when nothing changed. Silence reads as a problem.
• Link to the work. The client should never ask "where is it?"

Async communication

Most of your hours will not overlap fully with the client's. Write so the client can act without a meeting.

1. One complete message. Never send "Hi" and wait.
2. Main point first. Then context. Then what you need.
3. Decision-ready questions. Give options and your recommendation, so the client can reply "yes": "Option A keeps the launch date; option B adds the booking widget but moves launch 3 days. I recommend A. OK?"
4. Batch questions. Five questions in one message, numbered, beats five messages.
5. Times in the client's zone, with the zone named: "Thursday 3:00 PM ET". Never your local time.
6. Short screen recording for anything longer than about five sentences: under 3 minutes, the ask in the first 15 seconds.
7. Read back anything involving money, deletion, launch or mass sending before you act.
8. Plain English. Drop phrases that read oddly abroad: "do the needful", "kindly revert", "prepone". Write "please handle", "please reply", "move earlier".
9. Use only the client's approved channels. No personal messaging apps with client staff or customers.

Response times

During agreed overlap hours:

Channel	Acknowledge	Full answer or ETA
Project chat	15 minutes	Same day, or an ETA within 1 hour
Email	1 hour	Same business day
Urgent (P1)	5 minutes	Updates every 30 minutes until resolved

Outside overlap hours: reply at the start of your next working block, unless you are on an agreed on-call window. Put your working hours, in the client's zone, in your profile and your kickoff email.

Acknowledge, then deliver: "Got it. Revised banner set by Tuesday 11:00 AM ET."

Demo and review cadence

• The 30/90 rule: show direction at about 30 percent (wireframe, outline, rough cut, draft structure) and near-final at about 90 percent. Never show work for the first time at the deadline.
• Weekly review: a short live call or a recorded walkthrough of what changed, every week of active build.
• Collect feedback in one place, numbered, with one owner. Confirm the list back before you start revisions.
• Revision rounds are defined in the Scope Sheet (default: two rounds per deliverable). A third round is a change request unless the miss was ours.

Handover

Nothing is finished until the client can run, edit or reuse it without you. Every delivery includes a handover pack:

• Final files or code in the client's own storage or repository, with the latest version clearly marked.
• A short guide: what was built, where it lives, how to change the common things, and what to watch.
• A list of every account, service and subscription involved, who owns it, and what it costs per month.
• Known issues and recommended next steps.
• A recorded walkthrough of 5 to 15 minutes.
• Written client acceptance against the Scope Sheet.

Documentation

Write as you go, not at the end.

• Decision log: date, decision, who decided, why. One line each.
• Runbook for anything that runs repeatedly (automations, reports, monthly close): what it does, when it runs, how to check it worked, what to do when it fails.
• Change log for every release or significant edit.
• Store documentation with the work, in the client's space, never in your personal notes.

Client ownership of accounts, code and assets

The client owns everything. No exceptions.

• Domains, hosting, repositories, ad accounts, analytics, design files, source footage, social profiles, automation workspaces, bank feeds and data all sit under the client's business, with the client as owner and billing contact.
• You get your own named seat with the lowest role that lets you do the work. You are never the only admin.
• If an account does not exist, guide the client to create it in their name, then they invite you. Never create it under your own email or card.
• Fonts, stock media, music, plugins and paid components are licensed to the client, not to you.
• At handover, the client receives editable source files, not only exports.

Security and access

• Credentials live only in a password manager, in a vault shared by the client or by Narqix for that client. Never in chat, email, documents or browser notes. If a client sends a password in chat, move it to the vault and ask them to delete the message and change the password.
• Two-factor login on every account. Shared codes live in the client's vault, not on your personal phone.
• Least access: ask only for what the task needs. Read-only when you only need to read.
• Devices: client work only on your approved work device, with disk encryption, automatic updates, a screen lock of 5 minutes or less, and a user account no one else uses. No client data on USB drives, personal cloud storage or personal phones.
• AI tools: only Narqix-provided or client-approved business accounts. Never paste customer personal data, credentials, payment or financial data, or confidential material into an AI tool unless the client approved that tool for that data in writing.
• Approve only what you triggered. Never approve a login prompt you did not start. Report it.
• Incidents (lost device, clicked a phishing link, sent data to the wrong person, a surprise login prompt, a leaked key): tell your Delivery Lead within 15 minutes. Contain it if you can do so safely. Do not fix it quietly. Narqix handles client notification.

Version control

• Code lives in the client's repository. Work on a branch, open a review request, merge to the main line only after review or the agreed check. Nothing goes straight to production.
• Clear commit messages: what changed and why, in one line.
• Tag every release so any version can be restored.
• Files (design, video, documents, spreadsheets) follow one naming pattern: YYYY-MM-DD_Client_Asset_v01. Increase the version number on every meaningful change. Finals end in _FINAL and are never edited, only copied.
• No secrets in version control. Keys and passwords live in the vault or the hosting platform's secret settings.

Backups

• Before any destructive or bulk change (database migration, bulk edit, account restructure, deleting campaigns, closing a period), take a backup and note where it is.
• Confirm that backups for live systems run on schedule and land in client-owned storage.
• Test a restore at least once per engagement. A backup you have never restored is a hope, not a backup.
• Keep raw source material (footage, original data exports, original files) untouched in a read-only folder.

Change requests

Anything not in the approved Scope Sheet is a change request. That includes "small" additions.

1. Log it the moment it is raised, even if you think it is tiny.
2. Write it up using the template on the Client Communication Templates page: what, why, impact on time, cost and risk, and options.
3. Copy your Delivery Lead. Narqix confirms any cost impact with the client.
4. Start work only after written approval.
5. Update the Scope Sheet and the timeline once approved.

Courtesy changes: if the Scope Sheet allows a small allowance (for example, up to 2 hours per month of minor tweaks), log each one against it and show the balance in the weekly report.

Escalation

Level	Meaning	Examples	Who and how fast
P1 Critical	Money, data, legal or reputation at risk right now	Site or checkout down, ad spend running far over budget, a data leak, a hacked account, a legal threat	Contain only. Delivery Lead within 15 minutes. Client within 30 minutes by the fastest agreed channel
P2 High	A deadline or many users blocked	Tracking broken, a failed release, a missing approval that blocks launch	Client and Delivery Lead within 1 hour
P3 Normal	A decision is needed, not urgent	Unclear brief, a policy gap, a small scope question	Next daily update
P4 Low	Improvement or minor issue	An idea to save time, a small inconsistency	Weekly report

Chain: Specialist, then Delivery Lead, then Account Manager, then Narqix founders.

Stuck rule: escalate P2 or higher after 15 minutes stuck, P3 after 30 minutes of trying. Every escalation says what happened, when, who is affected, what you already tried, what you need, and by when.

Offboarding

When an engagement or a role ends:

• Handover pack delivered and accepted in writing
• Final files, code and documentation in client-owned storage
• Open tasks, risks and ideas listed in the final report
• All your access removed within 24 hours (Narqix confirms each tool)
• Client changes shared passwords and rotates any keys you used
• You confirm in writing that local copies of client files are deleted
• Your Delivery Lead runs the close-out checklist on the Delivery Rituals page

Check yourself

1. A client says on a call, "Can you also add a blog to the site?" What do you do?

Thank them, log it as a change request, and send a written change request with time, cost and risk impact. Copy your Delivery Lead. Do not start until it is approved in writing.

2. The client's ad account does not exist yet. Can you create it with your email so you can start today?

No. Guide the client to create it in their business name with their own payment method, then they invite you with a named seat.

3. You have used 80 percent of your estimate and are about 60 percent done. What now?

Tell your Delivery Lead and the client the same day, with a new range, the reason, and options (reduce scope, extend time, or approve more hours).

4. You got a login approval prompt on your phone that you did not trigger. What do you do?

Deny it, then report it to your Delivery Lead within 15 minutes. It is a security incident.

5. What is the 30/90 rule?

Show the client the direction at about 30 percent done and the near-final at about 90 percent, so nothing is seen for the first time on the deadline.

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