A short, opinionated read on how we structure pods, sequence deliverables, evaluate production agents, and protect the executive cadence we install. Methodology is not a deck. It’s a way of being in the room.
Not values. Not aspirations. Rules. If we break one, we owe you an explanation in writing before the next sync.
No agent gets deployed without a named C level sponsor whose KPI it moves. If we can’t find the sponsor, the agent isn’t worth shipping. The technical work follows the human accountability, not the other way around.
The model breaks if the data is stale. Phase 03 always lands Layer 02 (Data Foundation) and Layer 03 (Systems of Record) integration before any Pillar 2 or Pillar 4 agent goes near production traffic. No exceptions.
Every production agent has a regression eval set that runs weekly. Drift in accuracy, latency, or stakeholder perceived quality is logged into an incident report we walk through with the executive sponsor each month.
A dashboard nobody opens is worse than no dashboard. We install the cadence first, Friday CRO, Monthly CMO, Quarterly CPO, and configure dashboards to fit the meeting, not the other way around.
Phase 03 ships against two anchor partners. The temptation is always to onboard ten. We resist. Iteration speed inside a tight pilot beats coverage every time, and the wave 2 rollout from a working pilot is half the calendar of an unfocused expansion.
Run phase fees are anchored to outcomes we agreed on at Design. If we miss the headline KPI two quarters in a row without a documented external driver, we discount, or end the engagement with a clean handoff.
Sympatheia engagements are run by a single pod that scales between phases. Same faces, growing surface area. We don’t hand you off between teams.
Three senior practitioners run the six week diagnostic. Heavy on partner program experience and partner economics; light on engineering.
Scales from 5 in Design to 7 9 during Build. Adds the engineering depth to ship agents into your environment without disruption.
The continuous operations team. Lighter weight than Build, but the same senior practitioners. They run alongside your alliance team.
A working example of how Phase 01 unfolds in practice. We sequence interviews, data work, and synthesis so the executive read out lands on a fully evidenced memo, not a directional impression.
Three day kickoff. Stakeholder mapping session with the engaging executive. Data access provisioning. Identification of the eight executive interviews and the data set we’ll work from.
One hour structured interviews with CRO, CMO, CPO, CCO, CFO, Partner Exec, VP Sales, and 1 2 anchor partners. Transcript synthesis into the stakeholder alignment grid.
Deep dive into the partner P&L. Eight quarter look back across partner sourced, partner influenced, and direct revenue. Leakage analysis at each lifecycle stage. Per partner P&L modeled.
Test of five canonical queries against your data foundation: account partner matching, partner health scoring, certification velocity, MQL attribution, forecast reconciliation. Pillar by pillar readiness scorecard built.
Internal synthesis week. Memo drafted to a 30 40 page board grade artifact. Risk register, opportunity register, and phased roadmap drafted. Pre read sent to engaging executives 72 hours before read out.
Two hour executive read out. Three structured outcomes from the room: (1) memo signed off, (2) Phase 02 scope agreed, (3) executive cadence committed. If readiness isn’t there, we agree the foundation engagement scope instead.
If we proceed, Phase 02 mobilizes within two weeks of read out. Same engagement partner. Same operating model architect. Build pod adds engineering by week 8 of the broader engagement.
Every agent we ship comes with a weekly regression eval. The framework below is what we install during Phase 03 and operate continuously thereafter. It’s the artifact that keeps an "AI for partnerships" engagement from drifting into "magic box that nobody trusts."
Held out test set per agent, refreshed monthly with new partner data. We track precision and recall against ground truth labels, e.g., did the Co Sell Router pick the partner that won the deal, did the Health Monitor flag the account that actually went at risk.
Wall clock time from input trigger to actionable output. Co Sell Router latency from deal registration to Slack room creation. Forecast Reconciliation latency from data drop to variance memo. We have explicit SLAs per agent.
A monthly anonymized stakeholder survey. Seven questions per agent, clarity, actionability, accuracy felt, time saved, integration with workflow, trust, recommendation. Quantified and tracked over time.
Red team probes per agent on adversarial inputs, hallucination tests, prompt injection probes, data leak tests for PII and partner sensitive info. Run weekly; results held in the Run phase incident log.
We’re opinionated about how to structure the commercial relationship. Below are the three structures we default to, chosen at Design once we know the scope.
A fixed fee per phase, paid at gate. Right for Phase 01 (Assess) and Phase 02 (Design), where the scope is known and the deliverable is the artifact, not the outcome.
A base monthly fee anchored to a headline KPI bonus (or discount). Right for Run, where we’re carrying the outcome with you and have direct line of sight on the agents driving it.
Build phase contracted as fixed fee with a Run phase rollover written in. Right when we’ve agreed at Design to be the embedded operator post launch, gives both sides incentive to ship a Build that holds at Run.
The fastest way to know if we’re a fit is to walk through a real engagement. We’ll bring a redacted Phase 01 memo from a comparable client and walk you through how the pod operated, what we missed, and what we changed in Phase 02 as a result.
Book a methodology walk through