Service 5 · Continuity
Implementation support, scoped to your shape.
Three distinct engagement shapes for ongoing work. Embedded Consulting for active migration phases. Advisory Retainer for monthly strategy plus async review. Workshops for team enablement and decision gates. Each shape is scoped to a specific failure mode of post-engagement continuity — and each has a clear "this isn't the right fit" boundary so neither side commits to the wrong shape.
Embedded Consulting
One to two days per week. Three to six months. $20–40K per month.
The right shape during active migration phases. The pattern: a Migration Assessment or Architecture Assessment delivers the recommendation; the implementation kicks off; the team needs hands-on advisory support during the highest-risk phases — usually catalog setup and the first phase of detection-content migration. Embedded Consulting puts the principal in the implementation reviews one to two days per week, with synchronous decision-gate participation and async review of pull requests, ADR drafts, and architecture commitments.
The shape includes weekly synchronous time on-site or remote (one full day or two half-days), async slack/email availability for pull-request review and architecture-question response, monthly status report consolidating progress against the migration roadmap, and quarterly retrospectives that update the roadmap as the implementation surfaces details the assessment didn't anticipate.
Embedded engagements run three to six months by design, with renewal as a separate decision rather than a default. The shape doesn't fit teams that need full-time engineering capacity — the right answer there is to hire the engineer, not to retain a consultant. Embedded works when the team has the capacity but needs the architectural advisory.
Advisory Retainer
Monthly strategy call. Async review. $5–15K per month.
The right shape for post-engagement continuity. The pattern: the assessment ships, the implementation proceeds with the customer's own team running the work, and the program wants a sounding board for the strategic decisions that surface every quarter. Advisory Retainer is structured around that rhythm — monthly 90-minute strategy call plus async review on architecture decisions, ADR drafts, and the occasional vendor-evaluation question.
The shape carries a six-month minimum commitment to keep the relationship long enough to be useful, with automatic month-to-month renewal after that. Includes async review against architectural questions surfaced through the customer's preferred channel (Slack, email, scheduled calls). The matrix subscription stays active throughout the retainer period; quarterly tool-eval reports during the retainer are included.
What this isn't. Not on-call coverage; the cadence is monthly, not 24/7. Not for active migration phases where weekly synchronous time is the load-bearing requirement (that's the Embedded shape). Not the right fit if the program needs the consultant to drive decisions rather than advise on them — Advisory Retainer assumes the customer's team is the primary decision-maker. The retainer adds experience-grounded perspective on the decisions the team is already making; it doesn't replace the decision-making.
Workshop
One to three days. Structured curriculum. $15–30K per workshop.
The right shape for team enablement and decision-gate alignment. Three workshop topics in active rotation: MOAR architecture overview (one day, the LIGER stack, when MOAR is and isn't the right answer, the framework's elimination math against the team's environment), Decision-gate alignment (one day, working session against a specific architectural decision the team is facing, with the framework applied live and the trade-offs documented as the team's own ADR), and Detection-as-code workshop (two to three days, hands-on with DetectFlow patterns against the team's existing detection content).
The shape carries a defined curriculum, a working-session structure (not lecture-heavy), and a written artifact at the end — typically the ADR or roadmap that the workshop produced. On-site delivery is preferred for decision-gate alignment workshops; remote delivery works fine for architecture overviews and the detection-as-code workshop.
What this isn't. Not a sales presentation; the workshop output is a tangible artifact the team uses after, not a deck the principal leaves behind. Not a substitute for an assessment; if the team is making a load-bearing architecture decision in the next quarter, the assessment is the shape that produces the defensible recommendation, and the workshop is the format that aligns the team around it. Workshops below $25K do not include the matrix bundle (engagement is too short to sustain the standing relationship); attendees receive the public methodology one-pager.
Choosing the shape
The questions that decide which engagement to pick.
The engagement-selection framework runs through three questions. What's the cadence the program actually needs? Weekly synchronous decision-gate participation (Embedded). Monthly strategic sounding-board (Advisory). One-time alignment around a defined topic (Workshop). Programs that need 24/7 on-call response need a different vendor entirely — none of the three shapes here cover that.
How load-bearing is the principal's involvement to the migration's success? If the migration runs on the customer's own team capacity with the consultant as advisor, Advisory Retainer is the right shape. If the highest-risk phases need direct architectural-review involvement, Embedded is the right shape. The deeper question is whether the customer is hiring the consultant for advice or hands-on engineering — and the framework answers it as advice either way. Teams that need the engineering should hire it, not retain it.
What's the relationship trajectory after the engagement closes? Programs that want the principal available for the next architectural decision twelve months out should plan for Advisory Retainer continuity. Programs that have a one-time alignment need but no ongoing relationship hold should plan for the Workshop format. The framework matches the engagement shape to the relationship shape, not the other way around.
Three shapes. Each with its own scoped boundaries.
Discovery call confirms the right shape — most engagements scope this in 30 minutes.