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Engagement model
Project-Based Delivery.
SOW-driven engagements with fixed scope, fixed price, and fixed timeline. Clear acceptance criteria, change-order discipline, and the engineering rigor production deliverables actually require.
- Pricing
- Fixed-price · milestone-based
- Cadence
- Per SOW
- Min term
- Per project
- Acceptance
- Named criteria
When this fits
You need a bounded outcome with predictable cost — and the discipline to land it.
Three patterns we see consistently. First, the discrete initiative: a customer needs a specific system shipped (an MVP, a modernization wave, a migration program) with predictable cost and timeline. Second, the modernization phase: a strangler-fig migration broken into 4–8 fixed-scope waves, each independently scoped and priced. Third, the regulatory deadline: a workload that has to ship by a specific date for compliance, audit, or partnership reasons — and needs the milestone discipline to hit it.
Project-Based delivery answers all three. We design the SOW with explicit scope boundaries, named acceptance criteria per milestone, and an honest change-order process for the inevitable scope evolution. The senior team that scoped the SOW is the team that ships it. We turn down projects that don't fit this model — we will tell you when Dedicated Teams or Managed Services is the right answer instead.
Operating cadence
How the engagement runs week-to-week.
The cadence below is what stakeholders actually feel. Named ceremonies, named owners, named acceptance criteria — not a generic agile slide.
- 01
Discovery & SOW design
2–6 weeks: workload discovery, architecture, scope decomposition, acceptance criteria definition, and risk modeling. SOW lands as the contract — including explicit out-of-scope items and change-order semantics.
- 02
Milestone-based delivery
Project decomposed into 3–8 milestones with named acceptance criteria. Each milestone has a deliverable, an owner, and a sign-off gate. Payment tied to milestone acceptance — not hours logged.
- 03
Change-order discipline
Scope changes happen — but they're explicit. Change orders document the addition / removal, impact on cost and timeline, and re-baseline the relevant milestones. No silent scope creep, no post-hoc reconciliation.
- 04
Acceptance and handoff
Final milestone acceptance triggers handoff: documentation, runbooks, knowledge transfer to the customer's permanent team, and a 30–90 day support period for warranty fixes. Or convert to Managed Services for ongoing operations.
Scope
In and out of scope, in writing.
Scope creep is a contract problem, not an engineering problem. Both columns below appear in the SOW.
In scope
- Fixed-price, milestone-based delivery against a defined SOW
- Senior engineers (G6+) plus department co-pilots throughout delivery
- Architecture, build, deployment, and named acceptance criteria
- Documentation, runbooks, and knowledge transfer at project close
- 30–90 day warranty period for defects against acceptance criteria
- Change-order process for scope evolution mid-project
Out of scope
- Open-ended work without acceptance criteria (use Dedicated Teams)
- Production support / SLA-backed operations (use Managed Services)
- Pure staff augmentation or hourly billing arrangements
- Projects under $200K — typically too small to justify project-management overhead
- Projects with no defined success criteria or constantly-shifting scope
Team
Who’s on the engagement.
Senior-only by policy. Each role below names the seniority floor; we don’t staff client work below it.
- 01G6 – G9
Senior Project Engineer(s)
Senior engineers (G6+) with multi-quarter experience in the workload's category. Drawn from CORTEX, FORGE, NEXUS, CITADEL, or other practice departments based on engagement scope.
- 02G8 – G9
Project Lead
Single-point-of-contact for the customer's program leadership. Owns SOW execution, milestone tracking, change orders, and stakeholder reporting. Reports separately from technical line.
- 03G9 – G10
Department Co-pilot
Department lead for the practice owning the engagement. Architecture review, hard problem escalation, and stakeholder check-ins on a defined cadence. Included at no extra charge.
- 04G8 – G9
Optional Specialist
On request: senior architect or specialist (1–2 days/week) when the project benefits from focused expertise outside the core squad. Common for AI / security / compliance overlays.
Pricing
Line items in the SOW.
Brackets — not hidden quotes. We publish ranges so visitors self-qualify before the first call.
- 01
Discovery & SOW design
Fixed-price discovery engagement to produce the SOW, ADR, and milestone plan. Customer keeps the artifacts whether or not the build phase proceeds with us.
Range
$40K – $250K
- 02
Build phase (mid-market scope)
Milestone-based delivery for projects in the $200K – $1M range. Typical: 3–6 months, 3–5 senior engineers, department co-pilot.
Range
$200K – $1M
- 03
Build phase (enterprise scope)
Larger engagements with multi-team delivery, integration scope, and regulatory frame. Typical: 6–14 months.
Range
$1M – $5M
- 04
Multi-quarter modernization programs
Multi-wave programs delivered as a sequence of project-based engagements with shared SOW continuity and roadmap governance.
Range
$3M – $15M+
- 05
Department co-pilot
Included at no charge: 30 minutes weekly with the relevant department lead, plus on-demand pulls for architecture review or hard problem escalation.
Range
Included
Governance
How we report, escalate, and change.
- Reporting cadence
- Weekly milestone status to program leadership. Monthly executive review with our delivery lead.
- Change-order semantics
- Documented impact on scope / cost / timeline for every change. No silent scope creep.
- Acceptance gates
- Named criteria per milestone, signed off by named customer stakeholder before payment.
- Warranty period
- 30–90 days post-acceptance for defects against the SOW. Defined in the SOW, not negotiated post-hoc.
- IP & confidentiality
- Work-for-hire by default. All IP assigned to client at acceptance. Standard confidentiality terms in MSA.
- Escalation path
- Direct line to delivery lead. Escalation to HELM (leadership) within 1 business day if needed.
Decision grid
Project-Based Delivery vs the alternatives.
Most buyers debate at least two of our engagement models. Here is how to choose, dimension by dimension.
| Dimension | Project-Based Delivery Fixed-price · milestone-based | Dedicated Teams Time & materials | Managed Services Monthly retainer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best for | Bounded initiatives with fixed scope, MVPs, modernization phases | Long-term capability gaps, scale-up phases, embedded squads | Production support, SRE, AI ops, ongoing platform stewardship |
| Pricing | Fixed-price · milestone-based | Time & materials | Monthly retainer |
| Cadence | Per SOW | Quarterly | Continuous |
| Scope flexibility | Change-order disciplined | High (within capacity) | Backlog-driven |
| Fixed-price | Retainer | ||
| Acceptance criteria | Per milestone | Per sprint | Named SLOs |
| Production SLA | |||
| Department backing included |
Selected work
Project-Based Delivery engagements, in flight.
- 01Retail
8x
peak-traffic capacityBlack-Friday-ready replatforming for a top-100 e-commerce brand.
Replatformed monolithic Magento onto headless commerce with read-model architecture. CDN-first cache, autoscaling worker fleets, and chaos-engineered failure modes ahead of peak season. Delivered milestone-by-milestone with documented rollback per cutover.
7 months
- 02DeFi
$340M
TVL operated post-relaunchLending protocol redesign and audit remediation.
Re-architected collateral management, risk parameters, and governance after a near-miss exploit. Three external audits, formal verification of critical invariants, and a phased relaunch under explicit value caps — all delivered against a fixed-price SOW with named milestone acceptance.
9 months
Common questions
Asked before the first call.
- 01
How do you scope a fixed-price project accurately?
Through a structured 2–6 week discovery: workload audit, architecture, scope decomposition, risk modeling. The SOW lands as the contract — including explicit out-of-scope items, named acceptance criteria, and change-order semantics. We don't pad estimates with risk margins; we name the risks explicitly and assign them to the right party.
- 02
What happens if scope changes mid-project?
Change-order process. The change is documented, its impact on cost and timeline modeled, and the relevant milestones re-baselined. Both parties sign before work proceeds. No silent scope creep, no post-hoc reconciliation.
- 03
What if you're going to miss a milestone?
Visible early. Weekly milestone status surfaces risk before it becomes slippage. If a milestone is at risk we surface it, propose mitigations (scope, sequence, parallel work), and re-baseline through change order if needed. We don't surprise customers with milestone misses on the day they're due.
- 04
Can we engage you for discovery only?
Yes — discovery-only engagements are common. We deliver the SOW, ADR, milestone plan, and risk register; the customer keeps the artifacts whether or not the build phase proceeds with us. Many discovery engagements end with us recommending you don't proceed at all.
- 05
What's the warranty period?
30–90 days post-acceptance, depending on workload complexity and SOW terms. We fix defects against the documented acceptance criteria during the warranty window at no additional charge. Beyond warranty, we engage under Managed Services or a follow-on project SOW.
- 06
Can we extend into ongoing work after the project ships?
Yes — most engagements convert. Common paths: (1) Dedicated Teams for ongoing engineering capacity, (2) Managed Services for operations of what we built, (3) follow-on project SOW for the next modernization wave. The discovery for the next phase typically overlaps the warranty period.
- 07
Do you publish past project pricing?
We publish brackets honestly: $40K–$250K for discovery, $200K–$1M for mid-market builds, $1M–$5M for enterprise scope, $3M–$15M+ for multi-quarter modernization programs. The right answer for any specific project lands in the SOW, with explicit cost-driver analysis. No mystery pricing.
Talk to us
Ready for a project-based delivery engagement?
A senior engineer plus the relevant department lead joins the first call. Bring the problem; we’ll bring the SOW draft.