By Kris Drouet, Engineering Executive, in partnership with KORE1 AI implementation cost after a successful POC usually lands at three to five times the pilot price, because inference at real volume, data work, evaluation, and the people who run it are never inside the demo number. The pilot priced a rehearsal. Production prices the run. … Read more
By Tom Kenaley, President and Senior Partner, KORE1 An engineering org chart runs on six staffing ratios, and only one of them has real research behind it. That one is span of control, and it lands near six engineers per manager. Everything else on the chart is convention borrowed from a company that looked nothing … Read more
By Kris Drouet, Engineering Executive, in partnership with KORE1 Yes, engineering managers should still code, but keep it under 40% of your week and off the critical path. Your team size sets the number, not a rule you read somewhere. He told me he was still shipping. That was the word he used, and he … Read more
By Kris Drouet, Engineering Executive, in partnership with KORE1 When you inherit an engineering team you did not hire, diagnose the system before you judge the people. Most of what reads as individual underperformance is your predecessor’s operating model still running, and it will produce the same results with anyone sitting in those seats. The … Read more
By Kris Drouet, Engineering Executive, in partnership with KORE1 Team Topologies is an org-design model with four team types, stream-aligned, platform, enabling, and complicated-subsystem, plus three interaction modes. Most companies need two of them. You split a team when its cognitive load outgrows one complex domain, not when its headcount crosses a number. A CTO … Read more
KORE1 ranks first among fractional CISO companies in 2026, placing security executives directly on your team as W-2 contractors with a 17-day median time to first qualified candidate. SideChannel is the strongest dedicated vCISO firm for mid-market companies that want former-CISO-only leadership. FRSecure leads on verified Clutch reviews among pure cybersecurity consulting firms, and Integris … Read more
By Tom Kenaley, Senior Partner and President, KORE1 A Chief Revenue Officer costs $313,000 to $374,000 in base salary across the middle of the U.S. market, on-target earnings usually land near double the base, and most searches run 8 to 14 weeks. None of that is the decision that determines whether the hire works. That … Read more
By Kris Drouet, Engineering Executive, in partnership with KORE1 Four delivery metrics predict engineering velocity: change lead time, deployment frequency, change fail rate, and failed deployment recovery time. Story-point velocity and sprint completion rate predict almost nothing, because both are calculated from the estimate rather than from the delivery. I sat in a quarterly business … Read more
By Kris Drouet, Engineering Executive, in partnership with KORE1 An engineering budget gets approved when every line names an owner, a unit of measure, and a date. Finance rarely rejects the work itself. It rejects requests it cannot audit, rank against a sales hire, or defend to a board. Twenty-five years in and I have … Read more
By Mike Carter, Director of Partnership Success, KORE1 Choose an executive search firm by testing four things before you sign: who personally runs your search, how the firm proves its market map, what its off-limits list blocks, and what the guarantee actually replaces. Everything else in the pitch meeting is decoration. Logos on a slide. … Read more
