Choose support around the capability your team needs to keep: practice, guidance or delivery alongside the business.
Choose a workshop for a bounded learning goal
A workshop is useful when the team needs a shared starting point or one practical skill. Set a learning outcome, use a controlled exercise and leave a checklist participants can apply to their work. A lecture without practice is unlikely to change the workflow.
Choose upskilling when habits need to change
A team programme combines repeated practice with feedback. Begin with a skills baseline, create exercises for each role and assign a workplace task between sessions. Review what participants can explain and demonstrate, not just whether they attended.
Choose consulting when the next decision is unclear
If the team does not know which use case to prioritise, what the dependencies are or whether to buy or build, use a consulting engagement to frame the decision. Define the questions and the deliverable before commissioning delivery.
Choose an embedded engineer for sustained delivery
A forward deployed engineer works within the company’s operating context. Agree an internal sponsor, availability, access, review cadence and ownership of release decisions. Pairing and documentation should start early so the company can keep the progress.
- Name the first outcome and the decision maker.
- Agree what the engineer owns and what your team owns.
- Include handover and capability transfer in the engagement.
Illustrative example
A team that needs both a new skill and a delivered tool
Operations colleagues want to learn AI-assisted prototyping, while the business also needs a dependable request-tracking app.
- The decision
- Scope the learning outcome and delivery outcome separately. Use a workshop for approved practice, then assign a delivery owner and review milestones for the app.
- The check
- Participants demonstrate the practice task. The delivery owner separately reviews the app's permissions, failure paths and handover; completing the workshop does not approve the app for use.
Put it to work
Leave the conversation with a useful first step.
Write the gap in one sentence: ‘We need to understand…’, ‘We need to learn…’ or ‘We need to deliver…’. Choose the engagement that addresses that gap, then define a concrete result to review.
A support brief with the team’s starting point, the capability to develop and a way to judge progress.
What should your team be able to carry forward without external help?
Free editable notes for your team. No email needed.
Prefer to prepare it yourself?
Workflow owner operating kit
An automation works, but nobody knows what to do when it stops. Review an illustrative example and the requirements before choosing this starting point.
Explore the toolkit preview ↗A specific task in mind?
Inspect a focused first engagement before enquiring.
When you need support
Where would an engineer beside your team make the difference?
Describe the initiative, the people involved and the progress you need. We’ll agree responsibilities and a bounded first goal together.
Review forward deployed engineering ↗