How we work
How engagements are planned, delivered, measured and billed — the mechanics common to every service we offer.
Every engagement is planned before it is priced. The plan states the phases, the sequence in which they run, the milestone each is accepted against, and the hours budgeted to each. That single artefact governs the schedule, the budget and the weekly conversation about progress, which is why it is produced first.
The engagement plan
Phases overlap where dependencies permit and are accepted against milestones rather than against elapsed time. Acceptance is what moves an engagement forward; a phase that has run its duration without meeting its milestone has not finished.
Budget and time recording
The budget decomposes through a fixed hierarchy, and time is recorded only at the lowest level. Every figure above it is a sum, which is what allows a variance to be explained from records rather than from recollection. This is how we manage our own unit economics; it is not how we measure whether the engagement succeeded.
The delivery spectrum
Engagements are not one of two categories. Service level scales along a spectrum and moves along it as the work proceeds — commonly beginning nearer done-for-you during implementation and moving toward advisory as internal capability develops. Training, implementation and advisory are combined in whatever proportion the work requires.
Done for you
RevOps HQ performs the work. Appropriate where the internal team lacks capacity or the platform expertise the work requires, and where speed to a working system is the priority.
Mixed
The common arrangement. Workstreams are allocated to whichever party is better placed to perform them, and the allocation is revisited as internal capability develops.
Done with you
Your team performs the work with RevOps HQ directing, reviewing and training. Appropriate where retaining the knowledge internally matters more than the speed of delivery.
Commercial basis
Time and materials by default
Work is charged on time and materials by default. Enterprise engagements are structured against milestones where the scope is stable enough to define acceptance in advance. In either case the plan sets the schedule and the hour budget together, so the figure is derived from the plan rather than estimated alongside it.
Hours are budgeted against the plan
Each phase carries a budgeted hour figure. Consumption is reported against that figure at the weekly review, which means a variance is raised while there is still time to act on it rather than at invoicing.
Scope changes are re-planned, not absorbed
Where a change alters the schedule or the hour budget, the plan is amended and the amendment is agreed before the work proceeds. Work constituting a discrete project is planned as one rather than absorbed into existing commitments.
Goals, strategy and measurement
Goals are agreed with your team rather than assigned to it. A strategy is selected to reach each goal, and the strategy is measured on whether it moved the measure it was chosen to move. Underneath sits the part that makes measurement hold across quarters: a published statement of which data feeds each KPI and how that KPI is calculated. Without it, a strategy that failed and a measure whose definition quietly changed cannot be told apart at the post-mortem.
The quarterly business review does two distinct things: it sets the coming quarter's goals, and it conducts a post-mortem on whether the previous quarter's strategies achieved what they were selected to achieve. The same cadence applies whether the work is running as a retainer or as a defined project.