FDE AcademyA free field guide for forward deployed engineersGitHub

Part VI

Scale

Turn repeated needs into reusable capabilities, while retaining an accountable operator.

Example: move common integrations and evals into a maintained package with customer-specific configuration.

Chapter 11

Generalize and hand off

Updated

Make the next deployment cheaper to deliver and maintain.

Read

  • Forward Deployed Engineering Scoping, generalization, hiring, and customer empathy from a team builder.Focus: Read the customer-workaround example and discussion of generalization. Apply: Write the underlying job, smallest acceptable solution, and conditions that would justify productizing it.
  • What FDE means at OpenAI Start with a business outcome, then make the solution repeatable.Focus: Focus on customer-defined evaluations and replacing repeated custom implementations with reusable capability. Apply: Identify one repeated field constraint and propose a shared change with a second-deployment test.
  • Nick Wong, Special Projects Engineer A concrete account of finding an unowned problem and turning it into a product opportunity.
  • Team Topologies · 2nd edition BookCognitive load, team boundaries, and interaction patterns.Focus: Read for team boundaries and interaction modes: collaboration, facilitation, and service consumption. Apply: Name when an embedded engagement ends and how the customer team gets a supported service afterward.
  • Eliminating Toil · The Site Reliability Workbook BookMeasure operational work and choose worthwhile automation.Focus: Read identifying, quantifying, and prioritizing toil; inspect the case examples. Apply: Record support time per successful task and compare automation cost with recurring manual effort.
  • Agents CLI · lifecycle and deployment reference Inspect an integrated scaffold, evaluation, deployment, and observation workflow.Focus: Review lifecycle commands, evaluation, infrastructure, CI/CD, observation, and upgrade paths. Apply: Create a vendor-neutral package checklist and have a second engineer deploy from the documented inputs.
  • Day 37: User research and customer cloud Focus: Day 37: the runbook test, security review, observed stalls, and findings routed into fixes. Apply: Have a peer follow the runbook without coaching. Record blocked steps and give each finding an owner.

Do

  • Separate customer-specific configuration from reusable components.
  • Write a product feedback memo with repeated evidence and tradeoffs.
  • Have another engineer operate the workflow using only the handoff.

You are done when: A maintainable package, an accountable owner, and a measured second-deployment cost.