The boutique advantage no longer comes from a smaller team charging by the hour. It comes from compute owned by the client and discernment owned by the partner.
Billable hour. Partner rate, leveraged through associates.
Outcome unit. Priced against the system that ships.
Expand scope, extend timeline, protect utilization.
Compress timeline, narrow scope, retire the engagement.
PDF deliverable. Vendor retains the working files.
Source code, infrastructure, and documentation transferred on day one.
Re-engage the vendor to update anything.
Operate, fork, or replace us without permission.
Quarterly steering committees, annual retainer renewals.
Weekly increments shipped to production, no committee required.
Status decks reviewed in conference rooms.
Live dashboards, queryable on demand by either side.