Engagement model
Designed around the handover.
Most consultancies optimize for the build, because that is what gets invoiced. We optimize for the moment you no longer need us, because that is what gets us referred.
Phases
Four
Discovery
Fixed price, 1 – 2 weeks
You own
Everything produced
In short
Scope, design, build, hand over.
Every engagement runs through four phases: a fixed-price discovery that produces a written assessment, a design phase that puts the target state and its reasoning on paper, a build delivered in waves you approve, and a handover that leaves your team able to operate the result without us.
The sequence is not unusual. What is unusual is that the last phase is a deliverable with its own time and budget, rather than the thing that gets compressed when the build runs long. An environment you cannot operate without the person who built it is not finished. It is a dependency that has been sold to you as an asset.
The four phases
What actually happens, in order.
Durations are for a typical engagement. Discovery always comes first, including when you already know what you want built.
Scope
We look at what you have and write down what we would change first.
A fixed-price discovery. We review the environment, interview the people who operate it, and produce a written assessment with a sequenced recommendation. You own that document whether or not you engage us for the work.
Written assessment and sequenced plan
Design
Target state on paper before anything is built.
Architecture, control design and the decision record that explains why each choice was made over the alternatives. If the plan is not readable by someone who was not in the room, it is not finished.
Architecture and decision record
Build
Delivered in waves you approve, recorded as it goes.
Work lands in reviewable increments rather than one change window. Infrastructure is expressed as code in your repository. Every change is recorded with what it was before, which is the artifact your auditor will ask for.
Code, configuration and change record
Hand over
Runbooks, a working session, and no dependency on us.
We write the operating documentation, walk your team through it live, and rehearse the procedures that matter: recovery, rollback, onboarding. The measure of a finished engagement is that you could run the environment without us.
Runbooks and operating handover
Ownership
You own all of it, from day one.
Not at the end of the engagement, and not conditional on the invoice clearing. There is no proprietary tooling to unwind and no knowledge that leaves when we do.
Source code
In your repository, under your license, with commit history intact. Never in ours.
Infrastructure as code
Terraform in your repo, state in your subscription. We do not hold the state file.
Documentation
Baselines, decision records and runbooks, written for the engineer who inherits them.
Credentials
Every account is yours. Our access is named, scoped, time-bound and revocable by you.
Operating principles
What you can hold us to.
Four commitments that shape every engagement, stated plainly enough to be held against us.
If it is not written down, it did not happen
Every engagement produces documentation as a deliverable, not as an afterthought. Configuration baselines, decision records, runbooks. Undocumented work is work you will pay for twice.
You get the senior engineer
The person who scopes your engagement is the person who designs it and the person who builds it. Nothing is sold by one party and delivered by a cheaper one.
You own everything
Code in your repository, infrastructure in your subscription, documentation in your hands from day one. No proprietary tooling, no license to renew, no knowledge that leaves when we do.
We tell you what not to do
Scoping includes the work we recommend against and the reasons. A consultancy that agrees with every request is optimizing for its own invoice.
Commercials
How it is priced.
Hourly work is $500 per hour and applies to any service line. Everything else is fixed, and quoted once we understand the environment.
A price given before discovery is a guess, and someone always pays for a wrong guess: either you through a change order, or us through corners cut quietly. Quoting after discovery removes that.
Managed service
Fixed monthly fee
MonthlyWe take ownership of an environment and hold it to a documented baseline. Defined scope, monthly reporting, no hourly billing.
Fixed-scope project
Fixed price, quoted after discovery
Defined start and endA bounded piece of work with agreed deliverables and a price fixed before it starts. You carry no risk on the estimate. Any service line can be run this way, not only the ones that default to it.
Retained advisory
Quoted by tier
Monthly 8, 16 or 32 hours 3-month minimumA committed block of senior hours each month at a tier agreed up front. Every tier includes a monthly review call, a maintained risk register, and a reply within one business day. The hours can go to build work as readily as advisory, including ongoing software development. Hours are allocated monthly and do not roll over: whatever is unused at the end of a month expires, so the tier is worth setting at what you will genuinely use rather than the most you might.
Hourly
$500 per hour
As neededAny service line, billed by the hour with no engagement wrapped around it, in 15-minute increments. Architecture reviews, second opinions, incident post-mortems, a few days of development, or anything that would cost more to scope than to do.
Questions
About working together.
What happens in the first two weeks?
Discovery. We review the environment, read whatever documentation exists, and interview the people who actually operate it, who are rarely the people who own it on paper. You get a written assessment and a sequenced recommendation at the end, and you own that document whether or not you continue with us.
Do you work on site or remotely?
Remote by default, which is how the work gets done efficiently. Discovery workshops, handover sessions and tabletop exercises are materially better in person, so we arrange those on site where it is practical and by video where it is not.
How do you handle change control?
Work lands in reviewable increments rather than one large change window. Each wave is approved by you before it runs, and every change is recorded with what the setting was before. That record is the artifact your auditor asks for, and producing it afterwards from memory is not possible.
What if we want to stop mid-engagement?
You can, and you keep everything produced to that point. Engagements are structured so value lands incrementally rather than all at handover. There is no phase where you have paid for work you cannot use because it is half finished.
Who actually does the work?
One senior engineer, throughout. The person who scopes the engagement designs it and builds it. Nothing is sold by one party and delivered by a cheaper one, because there is no cheaper one.
Start with discovery
Thirty minutes, no pitch.
The first conversation costs nothing and is not a sales call. We review what you have and tell you what we would change first.