The model — how an engagement runs
Free discovery. A written proposal either way.
Nothing to sign before you know what you're buying. We look at the problem properly, at our cost, and you leave with a document you own — whether or not you hire us.
01 — What you’re probably used to
The shape of a normal engagement
Most technology consulting separates the thinking from the building. The gap between those two is where projects die, so we don’t run them as separate phases.
- The usual shape
- A partner pitches. Juniors deliver.
- How we run it
- The person in the first meeting is the person writing the code.
- The usual shape
- Six to twelve weeks of paid discovery, then a deck.
- How we run it
- One to two weeks of discovery, unpaid, then a proposal you own outright.
- The usual shape
- Recommendations handed over the wall to whoever has to build them.
- How we run it
- Strategy comes out of building. There is no wall to hand anything over.
- The usual shape
- A team you rent, sized to keep a bench busy.
- How we run it
- One engineer, embedded, finished when the problem is.
- The usual shape
- The knowledge leaves when the team does.
- How we run it
- Your engineers are in the pull requests from week one.
02 — The sequence
Drafted — durations need your numbers
01 · 45 minutes
First conversation
What's broken, what you've already tried, who it affects. No deck, no discovery fee, no follow-up sequence.
02 · 1–2 weeks · free
Discovery
You may not be able to say precisely what is wrong yet. Imposing structure on that is the job, not a prerequisite for starting. Unbilled, and you owe us nothing at the end of it.
03 · In writing
The proposal
Scope, sequence, price and timeline. Or a reasoned case for not doing it at all. Yours to keep and to take elsewhere.
04 · As long as it takes
The build, with your team
We work in your tools alongside your people. Handover happens continuously, so the engagement can end whenever the problem is solved.
03 — What free discovery asks of you
Drafted
It costs you nothing in fees. It does cost you something, and it's worth being straight about what.
Access
Read access to the systems and the data. Without it, anything we tell you is an educated guess dressed up as a finding.
A few hours of the right people
Not just the sponsor. The people who work around the problem daily are the ones who can describe it.
Candour
The workarounds, the shadow spreadsheet, the thing nobody mentions in front of the board. That's usually where the answer is.
04 — Straight answers
Drafted — replace with what you actually get asked
- “What if you get hit by a bus?”
- Everything lives in your repository, your infrastructure and your accounts from day one. We hold no keys you can’t revoke and no knowledge that isn’t written down. It would be inconvenient. It wouldn’t be fatal.
- “Can you take on something this size?”
- Sometimes no. You’ll hear that in the first conversation rather than three months into a build. Turning down work we can’t do well is cheaper for us than doing it badly.
- “Isn’t a forward-deployed engineer just a consultant with a better title?”
- The title is not standardised and plenty of people use it loosely, so the scepticism is fair. There is a simple test: ask whether the person sitting in the room will be writing the code. If the answer is no, it is consulting. Here the answer is yes.
- “Why is discovery free?”
- Because we’d rather find out early that we’re wrong for the job. A paid discovery creates an incentive to find work worth doing. This way the proposal is the honest one.
- “What happens when the build's done?”
- Your team runs it. We’ll stay for a defined support window if you want one, but the measure of the engagement is that you stop needing us.
Start with a conversation. It costs nothing.
Discovery is free — you get a written proposal either way