The quality of a DevOps partnership depends on the engineers doing the work—not only on the company name, proposal, or sales presentation.

At Techpipe, the engineers you meet during the assessment and pilot are the engineers assigned to your work. They take part from the first technical conversation, help define the pilot, and remain your primary team if we continue. This removes account-management layers, reduces information loss, and lets both sides evaluate the working relationship before production access or a long-term commitment is required.

This process is designed for CTOs and technical leads at product companies, web and development studios, and boutique digital agencies working around the globe.

Request an initial assessment or review our services first.

Start small, verify the fit, then expand

We use a staged process designed to answer the important questions early:

Do the assigned engineers understand your systems and constraints?
Can we communicate clearly without unnecessary intermediaries?
Can we deliver an agreed technical result within scope and on time?
Can we work within your security and access requirements?
Do both teams want to continue after seeing the work in practice?

  flowchart LR
    A["1. Initial assessment<br/>Information and material review"]
    B["2. Engineer interview<br/>Meet the assigned team"]
    C["3. Technical scenario<br/>Agree on a safe pilot"]
    D["4. Paid pilot<br/>Deliver a measurable result"]
    E["5. Long-term work<br/>Expand access and scope"]

    A --> B
    B --> C
    C --> D
    D --> E

The initial assessment and engineer interview are free. The pilot is paid, deliberately limited in scope, and does not oblige you to enter a long-term contract.

1. Initial assessment

We begin by understanding the problem, the environment around it, and the constraints that matter to you. This is not intended to become a lengthy discovery programme. We ask for the minimum information needed to prepare a useful technical conversation and identify a suitable pilot.

Depending on the task and what you are comfortable sharing, the review may include:

an architecture diagram;
relevant documentation;
selected repositories and CI/CD configuration;
monitoring data and incident history;
a list of current problems, risks, or bottlenecks.

You do not need to disclose everything. The review format is selected together after an initial conversation, with the smallest practical amount of information and access. An NDA can be signed before sensitive materials are shared.

The usual time from the first conversation to a pilot-ready proposal is one to two weeks.

2. Meet the engineers assigned to your work

The technical interview is held with the engineers proposed for your project—not with a sales representative relaying answers from an unseen delivery team.

You can use the conversation to:

explain the systems and operational context in your own terms;
ask technical and process questions directly;
evaluate how the engineers reason about risk and incomplete information;
discuss communication, availability, ownership, and escalation;
verify that the proposed team is comfortable with your tools and security rules.

Those engineers participate in defining and delivering the pilot. If the pilot succeeds and we continue, they remain the primary engineers working with you.

If the proposed team is not a fit, you can decline the team and stop before the paid pilot. There is no obligation to proceed.

3. Define a technical pilot scenario

After the interview, we jointly choose a small scenario that is useful to you and realistic to complete safely. The format is adapted to your current problem and to the level of information you are prepared to disclose.

A pilot can focus on:

improving one CI/CD workflow;
setting up or correcting observability for a defined component;
auditing a specific infrastructure area and implementing an agreed improvement;
migrating one service or workload;
removing a reliability bottleneck;
validating backup and restore procedures;
resolving a concrete infrastructure, deployment, or operational problem.

The scope, duration, price, required access, and success criteria are agreed individually before work begins. The result is defined by you: it may be a production-ready change, a validated implementation, a technical decision, or another concrete outcome relevant to the problem.

A shared workspace for ongoing work

We organize ongoing work in Redmine, our project management and client collaboration workspace. It provides a single place to track requests, technical decisions, progress, documentation, and operational events.

Each actionable request is created as an issue. An issue records the problem or objective, its priority, current status, responsible engineer, relevant discussion, and the resulting changes. This keeps work traceable and reduces the risk of decisions or important details being lost across email and chat conversations.

The project workspace also contains or links to the documentation needed to operate the system, including:

architecture and infrastructure descriptions;
deployment and recovery procedures;
operational runbooks;
repositories and CI/CD pipelines;
monitoring dashboards, logs, and related technical resources.

Monitoring and alerting systems can create issues automatically when they detect conditions that require investigation. These issues include links to the relevant dashboards and metrics, allowing engineers to move directly from an alert to diagnosis, remediation, and a documented outcome.

This approach creates a shared operational history: clients can see what is being worked on, why a change was made, what evidence was used, and how the issue was resolved.

4. Complete a small paid pilot

The pilot gives both sides evidence. You see how the assigned engineers investigate, communicate, document decisions, handle access, and deliver. We learn enough about your environment to judge whether we can support it responsibly.

Before starting, we agree on:

a bounded scope and explicit exclusions;
timing and communication expectations;
the intended technical result;
security and access requirements;
acceptance criteria and the final handover format.

Depending on the scenario, the handover may include code, Infrastructure as Code, documentation, an updated architecture diagram, a runbook, a technical report, or measurable before-and-after results. Only the deliverables useful to you are included; a pilot does not need to produce every type of artifact.

We assess the pilot against the points agreed in advance:

Area	What we verify
Scope	The agreed problem was addressed without uncontrolled expansion
Timing	Work and handover were completed within the agreed schedule
Communication	Progress, decisions, risks, and blockers were made clear
Technical result	The agreed outcome and acceptance criteria were met
Security	Your access, confidentiality, and operational requirements were followed

The pilot is a complete engagement of its own. You keep the agreed deliverables whether or not we continue.

5. Move to production and long-term work

Only after the team and working model have been validated do we plan broader production access and a longer engagement. Access is still limited to what the agreed responsibilities require; a long-term contract does not imply unrestricted infrastructure access.

The next engagement can take one of several forms:

Monthly infrastructure support for ongoing improvements, maintenance, and operational assistance;
Project-based delivery for a defined migration, platform change, reliability initiative, or other technical outcome;
SLA-based managed service with individually agreed coverage, response targets, responsibilities, and escalation rules.

Commercial terms, availability, coverage, and SLA targets are defined for each client. Monthly support can be ended on a monthly basis; the exact notice and handover terms are recorded in the agreement.

  flowchart LR
    A["Before the pilot<br/>No infrastructure access required"]
    B["During the pilot<br/>Minimum task-specific access"]
    C["After validation<br/>Production access by responsibility"]
    D["Throughout<br/>NDA, MFA, auditability, revocation"]

    A --> B
    B --> C
    D -.-> A
    D -.-> B
    D -.-> C

Working with your infrastructure

Access should follow the task—not the other way around. We design the assessment and pilot to work with documentation, selected configuration, sanitized data, or isolated environments wherever practical. Production access is introduced only after the pilot and only when the agreed long-term responsibilities require it.

Our baseline principles are:

minimum necessary access;
named accounts for assigned engineers;
multi-factor authentication where supported;
no shared credentials in informal channels;
access methods compatible with your policies;
documented approval, escalation, and revocation procedures;
prompt removal of access when it is no longer required.

Read Working with your infrastructure for the complete approach, including confidentiality, connection rules, and alternatives to full infrastructure access.

The supporting pages cover:

What happens if the pilot is not successful?

We close the pilot, hand over the agreed results, remove any access that was provided, and document the final status. There is no long-term commitment.

An unsuccessful pilot is still useful when it identifies a mismatch in scope, communication, technical approach, security requirements, or team fit before production access and operational dependency are created.

For shorter answers about contracts, communication, team continuity, access, and handover, see the FAQ.

Request an initial assessment

Tell us what is currently limiting delivery, reliability, or operational confidence. We will review the available context, identify what can be assessed without production access, and arrange a conversation with the engineers proposed for the work.

The assessment and engineer interview are free. You decide whether the proposed team and pilot scenario are worth continuing with.

Request an initial assessment