Standing advisor
An ongoing relationship in three-month terms, which you can end with a month's notice. This includes a day with your team every other week, on site or by Zoom, and questions in a shared channel, such as Slack, in between.
I keep a written log of the decisions we make and the reasoning behind them, for your team to come back to.
For when
Decisions like this keep arriving, and you'd rather not brief a new person each time.
Day to day
I am available to your team throughout the building and shipping stages, and sit in on design discussions.
Most of what comes up can be settled in an on-site meeting or a Zoom call. When something turns out to be larger than that, it can be lifted out and run as its own engagement. The months of context behind it make that a more efficient solution than it would be starting cold.
A fixed fee is set for the term before it begins.
How it works
- The first two weeks: I read the code, meet the team leads, and go through the open decisions with you.
- Then a day with your team every other week: design discussions, reviews, whatever is on the table.
- In between, questions go to the shared channel, and I answer by the next working day.
- At the end of each term, we go over the log together and decide whether to continue.
What you get
- After the first two weeks, a list of your open decisions, marked by which ones get expensive once other teams build on them
- The decision log, kept up to date as we go
- A short summary at the end of each term: what we decided, and what is still open
Your other options
Give it to a senior engineer or architect you already have
They know the code and the people. They're also usually overloaded, may not know the technology in question, and sit on one of the teams, so they see decisions from that team's side.
Hire a principal architect
That's someone permanent, but hiring takes months, and once hired they become a stakeholder themselves.
Ask someone you know when a question comes up
Free and candid, but they start from zero every time and haven't seen your code.
Questions
Can we stop early?
Yes, at any time, with a month's notice.
What counts as a question, and what counts as a project?
A conversation or a day with the team is part of the term. Building a specific proof of concept or working out an architecture decision is quoted separately.
Who on our team can ask you?
Anyone on the team I work with, in the shared channel.
Will you write code for us?
I build prototypes when that's the way to answer a question. Your team writes the production code since they're the ones who will maintain it later.
Will you sign our NDA?
Sure, signing a mutual NDA is part of the package.
What I learned
Want to talk it through?
