Pre-Engagement Planning

Pre-engagement planning sets the consulting team up before kickoff. The goal is to clarify scope, access needs, stakeholders, and likely risk areas before the first client workshop.

Planning inputs

Collect what is available:

• Statement of work or engagement brief.
• Known business outcomes and deadlines.
• Client organization map.
• Existing architecture or platform documents.
• Known cloud providers, runtime platforms, and tools.
• Compliance, privacy, or customer requirements.
• Prior incident or audit context.

Preparation checklist

• Identify executive sponsor and day-to-day contact.
• Confirm scope, non-goals, and success criteria.
• Draft initial stakeholder interview plan.
• Prepare evidence request list.
• Identify likely access requirements.
• Review relevant blue book sections for the engagement shape.
• Prepare kickoff agenda and discovery workshop outline.

Access planning

Ask for read access before write access. Start with repositories, pipeline history, cloud inventory, observability, incident records, and service catalog data. Delay privileged access until there is a specific need and approval path.

Watchouts

• Sales context is useful but may be incomplete or optimistic.
• Do not assume the named problem is the root problem.
• Access delays can dominate the first week if not requested early.
• Clarify data handling rules before receiving exports or screenshots.