Forward-Deployed Engineering08
The engagement endswhen your team runs itwithout us in the room.
Handover is the last two weeks of every engagement, not an add-on at the end of one. It closes at a dated exit gate, when your engineers have released, rolled back and retrained the system with ours watching and not touching the keyboard.
- Runbook
- Decision record
- Evaluation suite
- Keys
- On-call
- When
- The last two weeks of any engagement
- Exit gate
- Dated at scoping, written down
- Dry run
- Your engineers on the keyboard
- After
- We hold no standing access
FDE / 01Day by day
D1 – D10
The last ten days.
The final two weeks of an engagement, drawn as a plan. Each bar ends in something your team holds; the diamonds are the dry run and the exit gate.
If the dry run does not go cleanly, the gate moves and the engagement is not finished, whatever the calendar says.
FDE / 02What crosses over
6 ITEMS
Six items, ticked by your side.
The engagement is complete when every item on this sheet has been checked off by the owner on your side, not by our engineer.
- The runbook
Every operating procedure, executed by your engineers in the dry run before it is signed. A step nobody on your side has performed is not in the runbook yet.
- The decision record
Each architectural decision, the options considered and why one was taken, dated, so the next engineer knows what was tried and why.
- The evaluation suite
The golden set, the harness and the regression run, in your pipeline, run by your engineers in the dry run.
- The keys
Every credential rotated in the last week, held in your vault under your identity provider. Ours are revoked at the gate.
- The on-call
Your rota carries the pager from the gate. Our engineer is second on it for an agreed period, then removed.
- The trained owner
One named person on your side who has released, rolled back and retrained the system without us on the keyboard.
FDE / 03How handover is run
Four rules.
They make the exit real. Each is agreed at scoping and holds until the gate is passed.
The gate is dated before the work starts
The exit gate is written into the scope with its date and its criteria. Both sides can see it coming from the first week, so handover is planned into the build rather than squeezed after it.
Dependency decreases every week
From the midpoint of the engagement your engineers review more, deploy more and decide more, and ours less. By the last fortnight our engineer is answering questions, not doing the work. A handover that starts on the last day is not a handover.
Nothing is signed that has not been performed
A runbook step is signed when one of your engineers has done it with ours watching. A document read is not a procedure learned. The dry run is where this is proved.
Access ends at the gate
Our engineer's credentials are revoked when the gate is passed, and that revocation is the last item on the manifest. Anything we need afterwards, we ask for, and it is granted for a task and then removed.
FDE / 04Specified
10 FIELDS
Handover, specified.
The terms as they stand inside every engagement. The system moves the detail; it does not move the shape.
- Shape
- The last two weeks of any engagement; part of the fee, not an option
- Exit gate
- Dated and written into the scope before week one, with the criteria for passing it
- Who must be there
- The owner of the outcome and at least one engineer on your side who will run the system
- The runbook
- Deploy, rotate credentials, retrain, roll back, escalate; each step performed by your engineer before it is signed
- The decision record
- Dated entries: the decision, the options considered, the reason; kept in the repository
- The dry run
- A release, a rollback and a retrain by your engineers with ours in the room and off the keyboard
- Training
- By doing, in your tools, on the real system; no slide deck
- On-call after the gate
- Your rota first; our engineer second for an agreed period, then removed
- Access after the gate
- None standing; granted for a task on request and removed after it
- If the dry run fails
- The gate moves, the fixes are written down and the engagement is not finished until it passes
FDE / 05Fit
Ready to hand over
Handover is ready when
- The workflow runs on real traffic with monitoring live and rollback armed
- At least one engineer on your side has been reviewing and deploying for weeks
- The runbook has been executed end to end by your engineers
- The golden-set score is above threshold and your team can run the harness
- The owner on your side can name who is on call next week
It is not when
- The system still runs only in a staging environment
- Nobody on your side has approved a pull request on it
- The runbook exists but only our engineer has followed it
- No one has been named to carry the pager
- Your team has no capacity to run it; Managed Operations is the honest answer, not a handover
FDE / 06Questions
6 QUESTIONS
Asked about handover.
Is handover a separate engagement?
No. It is the last two weeks of every engagement and part of the fee. A Production Sprint ends with it; a pod's quarter ends with it. It is scoped on its own only for a system that somebody else built and left.
What does the exit gate consist of?
A date and a set of criteria, written into the scope before week one: the dry run passed, the manifest ticked by your side, the runbook signed, our access revoked. If the criteria are not met, the date moves; the criteria do not.
What if our engineers are not ready?
It is usually visible weeks before the gate, because dependency is meant to decrease every week and we report on it. If the dry run does not pass, the gate moves and we stay until it does. If there is nobody to take the system, we say so and the honest option is to keep us running it.
What happens to your access?
Revoked at the gate, and that revocation is the last item on the manifest. Credentials are rotated in the final week so nothing we held is still valid. If you need us afterwards, access is granted for a task and removed after it.
How is the runbook kept current?
It lives in your repository next to the code, and a change to the system is not merged without the runbook step it affects. Your engineers own it from the gate; the decision record explains why each step is the way it is.
What support exists after the gate?
Our engineer is second on your on-call rota for an agreed period, then removed. Beyond that, Managed Operations exists if you would rather we keep running the system, and a scoped sprint exists if you want it changed.
FDE / ENDStart
The exit gate is writtenbefore the first commit.
Book a scoping call; you leave it knowing what your team would need to hold at the end and when the gate would fall.