Our Engagement Process

Real Kinetic approaches consulting using a declining-engagement model with an emphasis on mentorship. We believe this approach best positions our clients for long-term success while helping them deliver value quickly. Many consulting practices take the approach of code-for-hire or selling specific technical solutions which often ends in trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. The problem with this approach is teams don’t generally develop the skills and understanding they need to own the solution and be successful in the long run. And selling technical solutions frequently results in trying to stuff a company’s culture into a particular tool. This is why we prefer to work closely with our clients to help them develop the technical know-how and select solutions that fit their needs.

As mentioned earlier, our strategy is to use a declining-engagement model. This means at the beginning of an engagement, we are actively involved in a project. Again, not in terms of doing all the heavy lifting on behalf of the client, but in terms of providing a supporting role where we are actively mentoring staff, surfacing critical discussions, and facilitating decisions. As time goes on, our involvement begins to slowly taper off until our clients are fully self-sufficient. A weekly cadence turns into a biweekly cadence, which moves to a monthly cadence, which becomes a quarterly cadence, and eventually we exit the engagement. Throughout any engagement, we are available for our clients, but as we progress, we move from driving key parts of a project to advisory services and mentorship. Our services are held on retainer, which is why we have weekly, monthly, and quarterly rates that reflect this.

This diagram loosely shows the lifecycle of a typical engagement. The timeline and sequence is not exact and varies for each client, but it illustrates what we mean by a “declining engagement.” The remainder of this post describes our general engagement lifecycle. While we always tailor our engagements to each client, they usually follow this process.

Assessment

At the beginning of an engagement, we perform an assessment for the client. The word “assessment” might connote a sort of judgement on our part, but it really is about getting a clear understanding of where the client is at currently, where they want to be, and developing a strategy for getting there. Our team comes on site for one to two weeks and meets with various teams and individuals — engineers, architects, product managers, operations, InfoSec, compliance, leadership, and other relevant parties.

We typically like to kick this off by getting a demo of the product because this provides important context and helps us to understand the customer problem being solved. We approach all problem solving from the perspective of delivering business value. Once we have an understanding of the business, we dig in technically. This includes interviewing key engineering and product development staff, meeting with operations teams, reviewing code and infrastructure architecture, observing CI/CD processes, and so on.

You can’t disentangle technical challenges from organizational structures and processes, which is why we also meet with leaders and managers to understand their perspective and concerns. We often uncover that the real issues stem from alignment, strategy, and other organizational issues with the technology and execution challenges manifesting as a symptom. Part of the value of our assessment is to reveal potential disconnects between the business and product development. During it, we like to observe “everyday” meetings and prompt internal discussions between teams to get an accurate view of things.

Once we have performed our on-site interviews, we create our assessment. This is delivered through a series of artifacts detailed below. These deliverables center around surfacing misalignment and disconnects, then driving internal discussions in order to achieve better alignment. We offer suggested best practices and solutions to common problems that may be implemented as a starting point, but these are also meant to drive discussions and help us arrive at solutions that work for each unique client.

1. Assessment Summary — This document is delivered first and is typically 5–7 pages in length. This includes an executive summary along with the assessment findings. It also includes the major risks we have identified and key next steps for the project. This provides a nice level set for everyone involved in an initiative and reveals any alignment issues. From this, in partnership with the client, we develop a plan of attack. We usually deliver this by first presenting the findings to the leadership group.
2. Key Risks — This document is delivered next or sometimes bundled with the Assessment Summary. The length can vary greatly between clients and projects but is commonly between 8–12 pages. The purpose of this document is to clearly lay out all of the items identified during the assessment which pose a significant risk to the success of the project. Along with each risk, we include commentary and suggested mitigating actions. The purpose of articulating these risks is to drive internal discussions to improve alignment so that action may be taken where needed.
3. Next Steps and Path to Production — In tandem with the Key Risks, we provide a document that lays out critical next steps for the project and a roadmap to production. This is usually 4–5 pages in length. The next steps is a short list of key tactical items and will evolve throughout the lifetime of the engagement as we progress. The path to production is a longer-term (usually 6–12 month) roadmap to iteratively execute against. This is normally less prescriptive and more descriptive than the next steps section since it’s designed to provide a strategic vision to work towards. Again, this will evolve over time and is not meant to be a waterfall plan.
4. Best Practices and Recommendations — Finally, we deliver a document containing best practices and tailored recommendations for the project. We use our assessment to inform our recommendations and guide discussions. This document covers a broad set of topics including practices and recommendations around organizational process, testing, architecture, infrastructure, CI/CD, operations, disaster recovery, and incident response. It also includes specific recommendations tailored to the project, for example, GKE and Kubernetes configuration recommendations. This is a large document (roughly 50–60 pages) and is not intended to be read front-to-back but rather act as a reference document. It is broken into focused subsections which can be referenced when needed by appropriate teams and includes a detailed table of contents.

Weekly Cadence

Following the assessment, we move into a regular weekly (or biweekly) cadence. This is where the mentorship part of our engagement comes into play. During this phase, we establish a recurring sync-up with key stakeholders, typically held over video conference. In this meeting, we do a health check on the initiative, drive out any roadblocks, determine next steps, and identify breakout sessions for the week.

Breakout sessions are ad hoc meetings in which we deep-dive on various topics with relevant teams or individuals. This might be going in-depth on configuring Kubernetes with infrastructure engineers, discussing cloud architecture practices with product engineers, digging in on strategy or prioritization techniques with leadership, or helping lay out an incident-response plan with operations staff. In some cases, it may just be an opportunity for teams to bounce ideas off an impartial sounding board.

This cadence can last anywhere from 6–12 months, depending on the situation. During this time, we normally come on site monthly or bimonthly for 2–3 days. Following this phase, our client’s team is on a path to continuous growth and improvement.

Monthly/Quarterly Cadence

Once the client feels they are on track and self-sufficient, we move into a monthly and, eventually, quarterly cadence. In turn, our on-site visits typically become bimonthly or quarterly. During this phase, we are still available for teams to reach out with specific questions and will setup breakout sessions as needed, but normally we are no longer involved on a day-to-day basis. This means we are no longer actively facilitating discussions or surfacing tactical issues that need addressed. In this sense, we are held on retainer if and when the client requires technical guidance. This can range anywhere from 6–18 months or however long is needed.

Outcome

The goal of our engagement is twofold: help the client get unstuck with whatever it is they are trying to execute and leave them in a position where they have the capabilities to remain unstuck on a path to continuous improvement. Our declining-engagement model is proof of this, and it’s how we measure our success. If we do our job right, our client will need our help less and less to the point where it’s no longer required.

This approach can be a bit unnatural at first for some clients. Ordinarily, they want us to come in and do the execution work, or they view us as a staff augmentation to drop work onto. While we’re all engineers who are happy to help write code, this doesn’t best position our client for the long term. The best comparison I can think of is an engineering manager. Writing code is not an effective use of a manager’s time. If they work on critical tasks, they don’t have the time to own it, so it gets dumped off on the team to clean up. A manager’s job is to support their team, and—when they have time—good managers pick up the boring, dirty work to free up their team to execute the important tasks. We write code too, but in a supporting role that avoids creating a dependency for the client.

Our holistic approach can also surprise clients who wish to bring us in to tackle a specific technical problem. The fact is organizational culture, processes, and technology are all tightly interwoven. You cannot separate out a technical problem without understanding the larger context in which it’s framed. This is why we attempt to look at the whole picture.

After going through this process, our clients have found us to provide a valuable sounding board and offer critical technical and strategic guidance. We force important discussions and decisions and provide a bias for action.

Real Kinetic is committed to helping clients develop great engineering organizations. Learn more about working with us.