Forward-Deployed Engineering09
We keep runningwhat we built,until you take it.
After handover, the same engineers who built the system watch it, page on it, re-score it as your records drift and change it when the work changes. A flat monthly fee, a written report every month, and any month you can take it in-house.
- MONITORED
- ALERTED
- RELEASED
- queue depth over threshold · paged · cleared
- score dip on a new document type · golden set extended
- credential rotation · completed in window
- Shape
- Monthly, after handover
- Fee
- Flat, agreed before month one
- Report
- Monthly, in writing
- Ends
- Any month, when you take it in-house
FDE / 01The scope
What we run and watch.
Four things, each with a named person on the rota. The system stays in your accounts; what changes is who is looking at it.
Uptime and incidents
The pager goes to us first. An incident is acknowledged inside the agreed window, worked in your tools and written up the same day with what happened, what was done and what changes so it does not recur.
Quality
The system is re-scored on fresh cases against the golden set at an agreed interval, and the operating threshold is watched on live traffic. When a new kind of case appears, the golden set is extended and the score is reported before and after.
Cost, credentials and dependencies
Cost per case is tracked against the figure at cut-over. Credentials are rotated on schedule. Model, library and platform changes are applied behind the regression run, so an upgrade that lowers the score is held.
Iteration
Small changes, scoped and agreed in writing, are made inside the month: a new field, a new exception, a changed rule. Anything larger is written up as a scoped sprint, so the flat fee stays flat.
FDE / 02What you receive
6 ITEMS
One report, every month.
The report is written, not presented, and it says the same six things every month so a change from one month to the next is visible.
- Uptime and incidents
Availability against the agreed target, every incident with its cause and its fix, and what changed so it does not recur.
- The score
The golden-set score for the month, the live-traffic score beside it, and the cases that moved either one.
- Volume and cost
Cases handled, cases handed to a person, and cost per case against the figure at cut-over.
- Changes made
Every change merged in the month, with its pull request, its score before and after, and who approved it.
- Housekeeping
Credentials rotated, dependencies upgraded, the golden set extended, and what is scheduled for next month.
- The recommendation
What we would change next, what would need a scoped sprint, and whether the system is ready for your team to take in-house.
FDE / 03Specified
10 FIELDS
Operations, specified.
The terms as they stand before the first month. The system moves the detail; it does not move the shape.
- Shape
- Monthly, starting after the handover gate; renewed month by month
- Fee
- Flat and monthly, agreed before month one; no hourly billing and no per-incident charge
- Who
- The engineers who built the system, on a rota with a named first responder
- Where
- Your accounts, your monitoring, your repository; the system does not move
- Access
- Scoped to the system, granted under your identity provider, logged, and removed when the contract ends
- Response
- Acknowledged inside an agreed window, day and night for an outage, working hours for the rest
- Re-scoring
- On fresh cases at an agreed interval; the golden set extended when a new kind of case appears
- Changes
- Small ones inside the month, scoped in writing; larger ones written up as a scoped sprint
- Report
- Written, monthly, the same six headings every month
- Ending
- Any month, with notice; the handover manifest is re-run so your team takes a current system
FDE / 04Fit
Keep us or take it
Keep us running it when
- Your team has no one to carry the pager for it yet
- The workflow changes often enough that someone needs to be re-scoring it
- The system is one of several and your engineers are on the others
- You want the people who built it to be the people who are paged on it
- The plan is to take it in-house, but not this quarter
Take it in-house when
- An engineer on your side has been second on the rota for months without escalating
- The monthly report has said the same thing for several months
- Your team is already changing the system without asking us
- The system is stable and its cost per case is where it was at cut-over
- You would rather spend the fee on the next workflow
FDE / 05Questions
6 QUESTIONS
Asked about operations.
Is this a retainer?
It is a flat monthly fee for a written scope: run, watch, re-score, report and make small changes to a named system. It is not a bank of hours, and it does not stretch to cover work outside the scope; that is written up as a scoped sprint.
Does this replace handover?
No. Handover & Enablement still happens and the manifest is still ticked by your side. Operations starts after the gate, so your team could take the system at any point; we are running it, not holding it.
What counts as a small change?
Something an engineer can scope, build, score and ship inside the month without changing the shape of the system: a new field, a new exception, a changed rule, a new document type in the golden set. If it needs its own gate, it is a sprint.
Who is paged?
Our rota first, with a named first responder, then the owner on your side if the incident needs a decision from you. Your team can be second on the rota from the start, which is how taking it in-house usually begins.
How do we stop?
With notice, from any month. The handover manifest is re-run in the last month so your team takes a current system: the runbook up to date, the golden set current, the credentials rotated, our access removed.
Can you run a system you did not build?
Sometimes. It has to be scored first, so a golden set and a harness come before the first month; that is scoped on its own. If the system cannot be scored or has no runbook, a Production Sprint to bring it to that state is the honest starting point.
FDE / ENDStart
Handed over,still watched by the people who built it.
Thirty minutes with an engineer is enough to say what the rota would cover and what the monthly report would contain.