Working together
Working together
An engagement maps the work, builds a small number of workflows inside your own tools, and transfers them with the documentation and training to run them. It is designed to end.
The three stages
Map, build, transfer
The order is fixed, because building before mapping produces polished workflows for the wrong work. Each stage ends with something your team keeps, and each one needs people from your side.
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Map
Your team's work today, against the model.
Every activity the team does is listed with the people, tools and hours it takes, then set against how the same work would run with the model in place. The instrument is a capability map of activities across capability areas, each marked as it runs today and as it would run afterwards, with tool and media costs attached. It doubles as a plan for the next fiscal half, and it names the work the model will not touch, which is where the decision rights start.
Northbound does- Runs the interviews and builds the map
- Prices the tools and media against the activities that use them
- Proposes a build sequence, and says what it would leave alone
Your team does- An hour or so each from the people who do the work, once
- Access to read the existing tools, and to whatever messaging already exists
- One person who can say what the priorities for the half actually are
Your team keeps- The capability map, today against the model
- A costed build sequence for the half
- The first draft of the decision rights
How you can tell it is working You can point at an activity on the map and recognise it, including the hours. If the map does not match how the work really goes, it is wrong and it gets corrected before anything is built.
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Build
Workflows and checks, in your stack, with your people.
Each build goes into the team's own tools rather than a demo environment. A workflow takes approved inputs through drafting, review and sign-off to a finished asset. An instruction file records how the team does one specific job, versioned, so the method survives a change of staff or of model. The guardrails are the rules that hold whatever the model: the claims register as the only source for numbers, a second model reviewing the first, a named person approving before anything ships.
Northbound does- Builds the workflows and writes the instruction files
- Sets up the checks, the claims register and the approval gates
- Works alongside the person who will own each workflow
Your team does- An owner named for each workflow, with time in their week to build alongside
- Whoever signs off on customer-facing work, to agree what they are signing
- Someone who can grant the access a workflow needs in your stack
Your team keeps- Workflows running inside your own stack
- An instruction library under version control
- Guardrails written down and tested
How you can tell it is working Work is leaving a workflow and reaching a customer without anyone retyping it, and the person named as owner is the one running it, not watching it being run.
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Transfer
Documented, taught, handed over.
Every workflow is documented as it actually runs, not as it was designed. The instruction libraries move into your team's own repository. Decision rights are written down: which outputs a model may produce unreviewed, which need a named approver, and which stay entirely with a person. QA routines say how output is checked, how often and by whom. Training runs until the people who own each workflow have run it unaided. After that, Northbound is available by invitation rather than by retainer.
Northbound does- Writes the documentation for somebody who was not there when it was built
- Moves the instruction libraries into your repository
- Trains each owner, and then steps back while they run it
Your team does- Each owner available for the training, and willing to be the one who runs it
- A decision about where the documentation and libraries will live afterwards
- Someone accountable for the workflows once the engagement has ended
Your team keeps- The documentation and the instruction libraries
- The decision rights and the QA routines
- People who have run the work unaided
How you can tell it is working The handover checks below pass. The clearest one is simple: an owner runs their workflow start to finish from the documentation, with nobody from Northbound in the room.
Scope and duration
What makes an engagement longer or shorter
Scope is agreed before the build starts, from what the map finds. These are the things that move it. Northbound does not quote a duration before the map exists, because the map is what tells you.
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How much approved material already exists
A team with signed positioning, current messaging and a claims register can start building. A team without them has to produce that material first, because a workflow with nothing trustworthy to read is not worth building.
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How many workflows are worth building
The map usually finds more candidates than are worth doing at once. A small number built properly and owned beats a long list half-finished, and the sequence is agreed rather than assumed.
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What the stack allows
Tools that expose their own data and let work move between them are quicker to build against than tools that do not. The map prices this before anything is committed.
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How many people need to own something
Transfer is the stage that takes the time that people can give it. A team that can free up its owners finishes sooner than one that cannot.
Handover
What handover is, and what it is not
Handover is a technical event with checks you can watch. It is not the same thing as legal ownership of every component, and this page does not pretend otherwise.
Illustrative handover checks
Examples of the kind of check that can be agreed at the start of an engagement and confirmed at the end. They are not contractual guarantees, and the set that applies to your engagement is agreed with you.
- A named owner runs their workflow start to finish from the documentation alone, with nobody from Northbound present.
- A second person in the team repeats it, to show the documentation works for somebody who was not trained on it.
- The instruction libraries are in your repository, under your control, and a change made there takes effect.
- The decision rights name a real person for every approval the workflows need.
Ownership and licensing
The documentation, the instruction files and the workflow configurations built for your team during an engagement are built for you and move to you. That is separate from third-party components: the models, the subscription tools, any commercial library and anything your own suppliers licence to you all keep their own terms, and Northbound cannot transfer rights it does not hold. The precise wording belongs in an engagement agreement rather than on a web page, and it is an open item rather than a settled position.
Fee
What it costs
Engagements from
$18,000 a month
A defined scope, priced monthly, running for as long as the map, build and transfer take. The whole fee buys senior time inside your team: there is no junior layer and no bench.
Engagements at once
No more than three
The same person maps, builds and teaches on every engagement, so few run at a time. That is how Northbound works rather than a statement about this month; whether there is room to start, and when, is worth asking in an enquiry.