Actively Researching Things

Embiggened research, development,
and engineering of some kind.

Cromulent Cloud conducts rigorous investigation into various subjects, develops outputs of a technical nature, and engineers solutions to problems we have identified or been told about.

Findings subject to revision. Scope of work negotiable. Not responsible for implications.

17
Published findings (net)
4–6
Active domains (approximately)
Unanswered questions
~40
Years of combined experience in things

What we do.
In broad strokes.

Our work spans several areas we have organized into the following categories for the purpose of having categories.

🔬

Applied Research

We take existing knowledge and apply it to specific situations, generating new knowledge that can itself be applied to future situations. The cycle continues.

⚙️

Engineering

Using established principles from the field of engineering, our engineers engineer things. The things are engineered to a satisfactory standard by the time we're done.

🧩

Development

We develop ideas, systems, and artifacts from a less developed state into a more developed state. This is done iteratively, or sometimes all at once near a deadline.

📐

Analysis

Data, systems, and situations are examined carefully by people who know how to examine things. A written summary is produced. Occasionally it changes something.

🛠️

Prototyping

Before a thing is fully made, we make a less-final version of it to see if the idea holds. The prototype is sometimes mistaken for the final product. We are working on this.

💬

Advisory

We share our opinions with organizations who would like opinions from outside their organization. Our opinions are informed by experience and also by having opinions.

Agile. Iterative. Buzzword-compliant.

Our methodology is fully agile, which means we do things in a flexible order and call the results intentional. We have a board. Items move across it.

Phase 01

Sprint Zero

A preparatory sprint in which no sprint work occurs. We use this time to plan the sprints, name the sprints, and have a brief disagreement about whether sprint zero counts as a sprint. It does not.

Phase 02

Iterative Discovery

We discover things, then rediscover them slightly differently two weeks later. By sprint four we have a nuanced understanding of what we should have asked in the kickoff. This is considered normal.

Phase 03

Stakeholder Alignment

Stakeholders are convened and their conflicting priorities are written on a shared document where they will remain, visibly unresolved, for the duration of the engagement. Alignment is declared anyway.

Phase 04

Continuous Delivery

Things are delivered on a rolling basis so that feedback can be incorporated before anyone has read the previous thing. Velocity increases until it is used as evidence that more meetings are working.

Phase 05

Pivot-Ready Architecture

At some point the requirements will change. We don't know when or why, but we have designed everything so that when someone says "actually—" we can nod slowly and say we anticipated this.

Phase 06

Post-Mortem & Scale

A blameless retrospective is held. Blame is distributed evenly across the process, which is blameless, leaving no one to blame. Learnings are documented in a place no one will check. We scale.

We are also conversant in the following:

Scrum Kanban OKRs KPIs North Star Metric Design Thinking Lean Startup DevOps Shift Left Move Fast Fail Forward Low-Hanging Fruit Boil the Ocean (avoided) Bandwidth Deep Dive Leverage Paradigm Shift Value Proposition Core Competency Holistic Approach Circle Back Action Items

Don't take our word for it.

Statements made by real individuals, reproduced with their knowledge, about work that occurred.

We brought them in to look into a thing and they came back with a report. The report had conclusions in it. We implemented two of them and one of them worked.
DB
D. Brockwell
Director of Ongoing Efforts, Pretendo Inc.
I wasn't sure what they were going to do when we engaged them, and I'm still not entirely sure what they did, but the situation is measurably better now than it was before.
MS
M. Stanhope
Head of Something Technical, Vague Ventures
Their team used terminology I recognized from the field, which gave me confidence. Their final deliverable was a document and also a second, shorter document summarizing the first.
RK
R. Kessler
Chief of Staff, An Organization

How to work with us.

We offer several modes of engagement, each corresponding to a different level of involvement from both parties.

Inquiry
Free
one conversation, no commitment
  • Tell us about your situation
  • We listen and ask questions
  • We share an initial impression
  • You decide what to do with it
  • No deliverable, no invoice
Start a Conversation
Program
Ongoing
retainer, terms by arrangement
  • Sustained research relationship
  • Multiple workstreams in parallel
  • Embedded advisory access
  • Priority on emerging questions
  • Quarterly review of everything
  • We become somewhat familiar with you
Inquire About Programs

Have something that needs looking into?

We are available to research, develop, and engineer things on your behalf. Reach out and describe what you have in mind. We will respond with a description of what we could do about it.