05Advise
Discovery calls, scoping sessions, and translation running in both directions. Most of it happens before anyone quotes a number.
Discovery
People open with the symptom they've already decided is the problem, usually phrased as a product they think they need. Discovery calls are where you get underneath that to the operational issue driving it, then write it up as requirements and constraints the engineering team can scope against. Being technical enough to follow both halves of that conversation is most of the job; I can't write down a constraint I didn't understand.
Scoping
I take part in scoping sessions with the engineering team, then carry scope, risk and timeline back to whoever has to approve it. Both directions lose something if you let them. One way you get a quote for something the client never asked for; the other way you get a decision-maker agreeing to a timeline nobody explained the risk in. Most of the job is making sure neither of those goes unsaid.
Verticals
My clients are mostly construction firms and nonprofits, and the two run on very different constraints — how work gets coordinated in the field, what a grant-funded budget cycle will and won't permit, who in the organization is realistically going to administer the thing once it's installed. I do the reading on both before I recommend anything.
Tooling
Lead research was eating my week, so I built an internal lead qualification agent on Microsoft Copilot Agent Builder. I tested it against leads I'd already qualified by hand and it was wrong often enough, and confidently enough, that I'd stopped trusting its output, which makes it worse than no agent at all. You stop checking. I rebuilt it on Claude Projects.
Where I've done this
June 2026 — Present
F8 Consulting
I qualify inbound and outbound leads for cloud infrastructure and managed service engagements, mostly with construction firms and nonprofits. Most of it is discovery calls: working out the operational issue behind a request, then writing it up in terms the engineering team can scope against. I sit in on those scoping sessions and carry scope, risk and timeline back to whoever signs off. I also built an internal lead qualification agent on Microsoft Copilot Agent Builder, then rebuilt it on Claude Projects after testing turned up accuracy gaps in the first version.