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Engagement Workflow

Six weeks from first contact to recurring work

Every engagement runs the same eight-stage pipeline with five hard gates. Nothing advances on optimism: each gate has a written exit criterion and a named owner.

Scope a pilotQuality framework
Engagement workflowEight stages, five gates
01QualifyGated

Work does not move forward until a named owner signs this off in writing.

Engagement Workflow

Eight stages.Five gates. One standard.

Every engagement runs the same pipeline. Standardisation is what lets a small leadership team run many programs at once without quality drifting between them.

See the gates
  1. 01

    Qualify

    Fit, scope, data sensitivity, feasibility.

    We check the work against our service lines and against your data-handling constraints before anyone talks price. Work we cannot staff to the acceptance bar is declined at this stage rather than discovered at delivery.

    • Feasibility read
    • Data-handling assessment
  2. 02

    Scope & pilot

    Acceptance criteria, rubric draft, pilot pricing.

    A two-page feasibility memo with a staffing plan and a paid pilot quote. Acceptance criteria and rejection definitions are written down before signature. Ambiguity here is the single largest cause of failed engagements.

    • Feasibility memo
    • Pilot SOW
    • Rubric v1 draft
  3. 03

    Staff

    Pod selection from the bench, skills-matched, NDA’d.

    A named pod. Contributors, reviewers and a lead. Is drawn from the calibrated bench and matched on domain. Every member signs an engagement-specific NDA before task access is granted.

    • Named pod roster
    • NDA register
  4. 04

    Calibrate

    Gold tasks, rubric training, IAA gate before production.

    The pod trains on gold tasks and must clear the agreement gate on two consecutive calibration rounds before production begins. Clarification questions are logged and folded into the rubric, versioned.

    • Calibration report
    • Rubric v1.1
    • Clarification log
  5. 05

    Produce

    Daily quotas, live dashboards, blocker escalation.

    Production runs against daily targets with a live quality dashboard shared with you. Contributors below the gold-task floor are moved to recalibration and replaced from the bench the same day.

    • Live dashboard
    • Mid-batch quality snapshot
  6. 06

    QA pipeline

    Peer review → senior review → independent audit.

    Every item is peer-reviewed. A senior sample and all flagged items go to Tier 2. Ten percent is audited independently of the delivery line. Internal bar sits two points above yours.

    • Per-item review trail
    • Audit sample results
  7. 07

    Deliver

    Batch plus QA evidence, audit sample and metrics.

    The delivery package contains the work and the proof: per-item review trail, agreement data, gold-task results and defect taxonomy. You never have to ask what you received.

    • Delivery package
    • Quality report
    • Defect taxonomy
  8. 08

    Review & expand

    Retro, quality report, systematic-failure insight memo.

    A retro with your ops lead, rubric proposals for the next version, and an unsolicited memo on the systematic model-failure patterns we observed. The insight memo is the part clients remember.

    • Retro notes
    • Insight memo
    • Expansion proposal
Stage gates

Five places work can stop.

A gate is a written exit criterion with a named owner. If the criterion is not met, the work does not advance, including when that is commercially inconvenient for us.

GateExit criterionOwner
Qualify → ScopeClient confirmed in ICP; work matches at least one service line; no red-flag data handling.CEO
Scope → StaffSigned SOW with written acceptance criteria and rejection definitions.CEO + Project Lead
Calibrate → ProducePod hits gold-task accuracy ≥90% and the IAA target on two consecutive rounds.Senior Reviewer
Produce → DeliverBatch passes internal QA at the client acceptance bar plus a two-point buffer.Head of Quality
Deliver → ExpandClient acceptance confirmed; retro logged; quality report sent within five business days.Project Lead
Standard rhythm

Six weeks from first contact to recurring revenue is the standard play.

  1. W-2 → W001

    Capability call, NDA, feasibility memo, pilot SOW

  2. W102

    Pod staffed, rubric training, agreement gate cleared

  3. W2–303

    Production with mid-batch checkpoint shared live

  4. W304

    Delivery with full QA evidence pack

  5. W405

    Retro plus systematic-failure insight memo

  6. W5–606

    Dedicated pod proposal with quality SLA