In short
A developer who works inside your business, on your problems, with your people, instead of taking a spec back to an office.
Forward deployed means the builder is in the room. They sit with the operator, watch the work, build the prototype against the real system, and hand it to the person who will use it. The spec is the conversation.
It is faster because there is no translation layer, and it is better because the builder sees what the operator actually does, which is never what the org chart says.
Month one is forward deployment: we build from day one, next to the people who do the work. The four practices are taught by doing them next to someone.
Example
What it looks like.
forward-deployed.mdplain text
Early in month one: the developer sits with the office manager for an hour, watches her build the weekly schedule by hand, and has a prototype running against her calendar by the end of the day.Related
Read next.
- Ninety-day transformationA fixed three months, in and out. Build in month one, live by day 30. Adopt in month two. Own in month three, when we hand over the keys, the instructions and the files.Read the definition
- vibe codingBuilding software by directing an agent in plain language, iterating fast, shipping before you would have finished the spec the old way.Read the definition
- prototypeReal software, small in scope, that a subject-matter expert can run today. Not a mockup, not a slide. The unit of the first month.Read the definition