Starter · While you build
Team Diagnosis: find out what’s really slowing your engineering team
Everyone’s busy, and you’re not convinced it’s on the right things.
We listen up and down the org, then tell you what’s happening and what to fix first. Two to four weeks, from people who have led a team like yours.
A written assessment, and a prioritized fix list.
Is this the right Starter for you?
Check any that fit. If two are true, you’re in the right place, and your answers come with you to the form below.
What’s true now
Everyone’s busy. Progress on what matters has stalled. Trust is thin, and people don’t say what they think. Leadership is missing, or it keeps stepping into the weeds. Motivation has faded. Product and engineering are pulling against each other. Something’s wrong in the room and you can’t name it.
What’s true after
Your team is pulling in the same direction on what matters, and you know what to fix first.
Michael Martin · Founder & Engineering Lead
I was fired from a senior engineering leadership role. I found out afterward that conversations had been happening about me, not with me.
Before that, I watched a good manager live in anxiety for eighteen months until he quit. I watched a strong engineer come close to being fired over a fix he had been told not to prioritize.
I’ve seen this in several organizations since. It always wears the same handful of faces.
A team can’t set anything right until the people in it are.
What it usually turns out to be
Eight patterns. Most rooms have two or three. None of them mean anyone is bad at their job.
- No SurprisesBad news travels late, or not at all.
- The Cost of AnxietyWhat fear takes out of the work before anyone writes a line.
- The Blast RadiusWho a decision lands on, and who never hears it.
- Developing vs. DiscardingWhether people are grown or replaced.
- Context in AccountabilityBeing held to a standard nobody explained.
- Delegation AsymmetryResponsibility without the authority to meet it.
- Psychological Safety InequalitySafe for some people in the room, not others.
- The Dichotomy TrickFalse either-ors that end a conversation early.
Underneath all eight: a product team can’t do its best work without a good people leader.
Your timeline, start to finish
- 01One-on-ones up and down the org chart, IC to C-suite.
- 02We read the artifacts: Slack, tickets, standups.
- 03We score what we find against the eight.
- 04We tell you which are here, with evidence.
A written assessment, and a prioritized fix list.
Process, decision flow and team dynamics, written down, with a list you can act on with or without us.
- You can finally name what has been going wrong, with evidence.
- You know which thing to fix first, instead of fixing all of it at once.
- You can act on it with us or without us.
- Length
- Two to four weeks
- Price
- $5,000
Questions you’re probably asking
Can you lead the fixes, not just name them?
That’s where this starts. The diagnosis draws on years of leading engineering teams to find what’s wrong in your process, decisions, and people. When you’re ready for someone to lead the fixes, it continues as an Embedded Team leadership lane: $6,500/month per quarter lane, 3-month minimum. A lane is how much of one person’s focus is yours: a quarter, half, or all of it.
How much does an engineering team assessment cost?
A Team Diagnosis is a fixed $5,000, whether your org chart is shallow or deep. You get a written assessment of what is going wrong and a prioritized fix list, in two to four weeks.
How long does it take?
Two to four weeks, depending on how many people we interview.
What do we get at the end?
A written assessment of process, decision flow and team dynamics, plus a prioritized fix list you can act on with or without us.
What if the problem turns out to be me?
We tell you what we find, with evidence, and we are not unkind about it. Most rooms have two or three of the eight patterns we look for, and none of them mean anyone is bad at their job.
You finished a Starter. What now?
When you’re ready, it grows into a Partnership. It takes one of two shapes.
Most Team Diagnoses lead here
Embedded TeamWe join your team.
From $6,500/month
The fix list names what to change, and most teams can’t run the changes and the roadmap at once. The people who did the interviews stay on at a set cadence, leading the hard conversations and rebuilding how the team works until it holds on its own.
Learn about Embedded Team
Start here
Start your Team Diagnosis.
$5,000 · two to four weeks · fixed price, agreed before we start
You’ll walk away with
- A name for what’s been going wrong, with evidence.
- The one thing to fix first.
- A plan you can run with or without us.