Specialist augmentation
A named specialist in your team, or a delivery engagement in ours.
Both put senior MaxIron people on your estate, and they are different purchases. One is directed by you and priced on time, the other is directed by us and priced on an outcome. The table below separates them on the four questions that decide which you should be buying.
Two purchases, one type of person
Directed by you, or directed by us
Read the first three rows first. Direction, risk and pricing basis move together, and once you know which side of those you want the rest follows.
A MaxIron specialist inside your team
Named individual, your governance, your priorities, a day rate and an end date. You keep the delivery risk.
A MaxIron delivery engagement
Our team, our sequence, acceptance criteria you signed, a price and a date. We carry the delivery risk.
Who directs the work
You do. Your backlog, your sequence, your change board. Our specialist argues their corner and then works the priority you set, which is the whole point of the arrangement.
We do, against a scope and acceptance criteria you signed. We come back to you at gates rather than at stand-ups, and a change of priority is a change of scope.
Who carries the delivery risk
You. The specialist is accountable for their own work and for saying when the requested change will not achieve the outcome. Whether the programme lands is your call and your risk.
We are, against the acceptance criteria. If the integration does not pass its test, that is ours to fix inside the agreed price and date.
What it is priced on
Time, at a day rate per named individual, with a notice period and an end date in the engagement letter. You can see what you are buying and when it stops.
The outcome, as a fixed price or a capped estimate against a defined scope, with a change mechanism for anything outside it.
Where the knowledge ends up
In your team, by design. Pairing on real change, runbooks written while the reasoning is fresh, and decision records for anything a future maintainer would otherwise guess at.
In the handover pack and the documentation set, transferred at the end. Deeper on the artefacts and thinner on the daily habits, because your people were not in the delivery seat.
When it is the right call
Your team is capable, owns the estate, and is two people short for one quarter. The gap is depth or capacity, and it has a date on it.
The work is a defined block with an acceptance test: an upgrade, a migration, an integration rebuild. You want a price and a date rather than a rate and a rota.
Where it is the weaker fit
Cost per hour. Senior people who argue with your design are not the cheapest way to fill a seat, and we will not put a junior in an embedded chair and supervise from a distance.
Anything the scope cannot yet describe. A fixed price against an unclear scope is bought as certainty and delivered as change control.
Which call is right
Three routes, including the one that is neither
The third route is the most common misdiagnosis in this conversation, and the most expensive to discover in month three.
Embedded specialist
Talk about an embedded seat →You are on it if
You have a named platform owner, a working change board, and a backlog blocked on depth rather than on time. The window is a quarter or two, and a permanent hire arrives after it closes.
The wrong move here
Asking for a role rather than an outcome. A request for a Maximo developer for six months, with no named deliverable, is a seat, and the engagement drifts into permanent staffing.
MaxIron delivery engagement
See how delivery is scoped →You are on it if
The work is describable end to end and testable at the end: a MAS upgrade, a data migration, an integration rebuild. You want the risk on our side of the table.
The wrong move here
Fixing the price before the scope is testable. Where the scope is still moving, run a short paid discovery and price the delivery afterwards.
Neither, yet
See a managed arrangement →You are on it if
Nobody owns the estate. No design authority, no functioning change control, no named platform owner, so any senior person you insert absorbs decisions that should be yours.
The wrong move here
Buying an embedded specialist to fill the ownership vacuum. The gap reopens the day they leave, so settle accountability first.
How the exit is tested
Four checks, agreed at kick-off rather than in the final fortnight
Writing the exit test at the start is the single choice that stops an embedded seat turning into permanent staffing. Every check is witnessed by someone on your side.
- X1
Your named receiver runs the runbook unaided
- Passes when
- The person named at kick-off performs the procedure end to end, on a real change rather than a rehearsal, with our specialist watching and not intervening.
- Witnessed by
- Your platform owner
- X2
Every non-obvious decision has a record
- Passes when
- One decision record per rejected alternative, filed where your team already keeps them rather than in our tooling.
- Witnessed by
- Your design authority or technical lead
- X3
Open items and known risks are listed, not tidied away
- Passes when
- A written list of what is unfinished, what we found and did not fix, and what we would do next.
- Witnessed by
- Your project sponsor
- X4
The end date holds
- Passes when
- The date agreed at kick-off is met, or an extension is proposed in writing with a reason and a new end date. Not a rolling renewal.
- Witnessed by
- Your sponsor and the MaxIron engagement owner
The shape of an embedded seat
What you are actually buying
No proposal required to read this. The amber panel is the part that decides whether the engagement works.
- Typical length
- One to two quarters
- Seniority
- Senior only
- Priced on
- A day rate per named individual
- Named before contract
- Yes, with CVs
- Governance
- Yours
- Assurance
- ISOQAR certificate 27274
Scoped around a named outcome with a date, and extended only in writing against a new one.
Every embedded seat is filled by someone who has held the same responsibility on a live estate.
With a notice period and an end date in the engagement letter.
You interview the individual. A substitution is proposed, not made.
Your stand-ups, change board, architecture review and service management. We do not import a parallel process.
Work is delivered inside the ISO/IEC 27001:2022 and ISO 9001:2015 management systems certified under that number.
What this needs from you
- A named person with real time in their week to receive the handover and do the work at least once
- A working change board, or a decision on who signs a production change while we are there
- Access on day one. A specialist waiting three weeks for a login is a specialist you are paying to wait
- The last four weeks of the engagement protected for handover rather than backfilled with new scope
Roles we fill
Six shapes, and when each is better bought as delivery
Each role names the case where a scoped delivery engagement is the better purchase, because half of these requests arrive as the wrong one.
Solution architects
Functional consultants
Developers
Data specialists
MAS platform engineers
Application support specialists
Fit assessment
Three limits, including one that disqualifies the engagement
The first is the one we would rather raise in a first meeting than discover in month three.
Augmentation is the wrong answer when nobody owns the estate
With no design authority, no change control and no named platform owner, a senior specialist absorbs decisions that should sit with you, and the day they leave the estate is as ownerless as before. That is route three above, and we will say so in a first meeting rather than in month three.
Knowledge transfer needs somebody to transfer it to
X1 above is the test, and it fails when your named receiver has no time in their week. Where your team has no capacity to absorb, say so and we will plan a support relationship instead of a transfer that cannot land.
The exit costs you something in the last four weeks
Reading, running the runbooks and taking ownership of open risks all take your people away from other work. We would rather set the date, hold it, and be recalled for the next defined piece than become structurally necessary.
Specialist augmentation, frequently asked questions
- How is an embedded specialist different from a MaxIron delivery engagement?
- On four things, set out in the table above. You direct an embedded specialist and carry the delivery risk, and you pay a day rate for a named individual. We direct a delivery engagement and carry the delivery risk against acceptance criteria, at a fixed price or capped estimate. Both are legitimate. Which one fits depends on whether the work can be described and tested up front.
- Which roles can you provide, and do we choose the individual?
- Six shapes, all senior: solution architects, functional consultants, developers covering the Maximo Integration Framework and automation scripts, data specialists, MAS platform engineers and application support specialists. You see CVs and interview the individual before contract, and a substitution is proposed rather than made.
- Is knowledge transfer part of it, or an extra?
- Part of it, during the work rather than in a session at the end: pairing on real change, runbooks written while the reasoning is fresh, and a decision record for every rejected alternative. Check X1 above is the test, and it needs a named person on your side with time to receive it.
- When is augmentation the wrong answer?
- When nobody owns the estate. With no design authority, no change control and no named platform owner, a senior specialist absorbs decisions that should be yours. In that shape we propose application support with an explicit boundary, or a managed arrangement where accountability is written down.
Bring the backlog and the date it has to be done by.
Tell us the outcome rather than the role. We will say which of the three routes above you are on, what shape of specialist that needs, and what your team has to free up to pass check X1. If the answer is route three we will say that too.
Bring this to the first call
- The named outcome and the date it has to be finished by
- The backlog itself, however rough, and which items are blocked on depth rather than on time
- Your governance: change board cadence, design authority, and who signs a production change today
- The named person who would receive the handover, and how much of their week is realistically free
- Whether the estate has an owner today, and who your team would go to if we were not there