# TEL204: Client Onboarding: First 30 Days
https://www.telosready.com/skills/TEL204?v=1
What the first 30 days of a Telos BUILD engagement looks like — covering the onboarding process, parallel workstreams, weekly cadence, and how the customer experiences early progress. Use when a prospect asks what getting started looks like.

## Instructions
# Client Onboarding: First 30 Days

The first 30 days of a Telos BUILD engagement are about establishing the foundation — capturing context, setting up infrastructure, and delivering the first working software. The customer will not have a finished product at day 30, but they will have a live, working system with AI built in.

## What to expect

### Week 1 — Context and planning
No development happens in week one. The App Director's priority is to capture as much business context as possible before the first line of code is written.

This typically involves two or three focused two-hour sessions — ideally in person or by video — where the App Director and the customer talk through the business, not the software. The goal is to understand the domain: the language the business uses, the entities that matter, the processes that drive value, and the problems the new system needs to solve. The existing system is a reference point, not a blueprint.

After these sessions, the App Director goes away and produces a plan. Two workstreams kick off in parallel:
1. **Infrastructure** — The tech lead sets up the application architecture, hosting environment, and technical foundations.
2. **Milestone planning** — The App Director defines the first milestone: the specific set of functionality the customer will be able to use and test by a target date (typically end of week four).

### Weeks 2–4 — First delivery
Development begins. The customer should expect to see working software — not a demo environment, but a real, deployable application — by the end of the month. It will not be ready to release to end users, but it will be functional, it will include AI capabilities, and it will be multi-tenanted from day one.

A weekly check-in is established. The App Director demos what has been built, the customer reviews it, and priorities for the next week are confirmed. The customer should allow time around each session — a couple of hours before to prepare and a couple of hours after to review and respond.

## The customer's role

The customer is a participant, not a passenger. The App Director drives the process, but the customer provides the context, makes the decisions, and keeps things moving. A customer who is responsive and engaged gets faster, better results. A rough guide: **one structured day per week** is a reasonable allocation during BUILD mode, split across the weekly check-in, review time, and ad hoc questions.

## De-risking payments

Telos operates on a monthly subscription. By the time the second payment is due, the customer will have seen the first month of work. If delivery has not met expectations, the customer can slow or pause payments until output quality is restored. The goal is a partnership where the customer never feels they are paying for nothing.

## What is live at day 30

- A working application deployed to a real environment
- Multi-tenanted architecture in place
- AI agent harness embedded and operational
- Core domain entities and tools built out
- Weekly cadence established and running

Data migration, end-user rollout, and feature completion come later. Day 30 is the start of momentum, not the finish line.

# Client Onboarding: First 30 Days

The first 30 days of a Telos BUILD engagement are about establishing the foundation — capturing context, setting up infrastructure, and delivering the first working software. The customer will not have a finished product at day 30, but they will have a live, working system with AI built in.

## What to expect

### Week 1 — Context and planning
No development happens in week one. The App Director's priority is to capture as much business context as possible before the first line of code is written.

This typically involves two or three focused two-hour sessions — ideally in person or by video — where the App Director and the customer talk through the business, not the software. The goal is to understand the domain: the language the business uses, the entities that matter, the processes that drive value, and the problems the new system needs to solve. The existing system is a reference point, not a blueprint.

After these sessions, the App Director goes away and produces a plan. Two workstreams kick off in parallel:
1. **Infrastructure** — The tech lead sets up the application architecture, hosting environment, and technical foundations.
2. **Milestone planning** — The App Director defines the first milestone: the specific set of functionality the customer will be able to use and test by a target date (typically end of week four).

### Weeks 2–4 — First delivery
Development begins. The customer should expect to see working software — not a demo environment, but a real, deployable application — by the end of the month. It will not be ready to release to end users, but it will be functional, it will include AI capabilities, and it will be multi-tenanted from day one.

A weekly check-in is established. The App Director demos what has been built, the customer reviews it, and priorities for the next week are confirmed. The customer should allow time around each session — a couple of hours before to prepare and a couple of hours after to review and respond.

## The customer's role

The customer is a participant, not a passenger. The App Director drives the process, but the customer provides the context, makes the decisions, and keeps things moving. A customer who is responsive and engaged gets faster, better results. A rough guide: **one structured day per week** is a reasonable allocation during BUILD mode, split across the weekly check-in, review time, and ad hoc questions.

## De-risking payments

Telos operates on a monthly subscription. By the time the second payment is due, the customer will have seen the first month of work. If delivery has not met expectations, the customer can slow or pause payments until output quality is restored. The goal is a partnership where the customer never feels they are paying for nothing.

## What is live at day 30

- A working application deployed to a real environment
- Multi-tenanted architecture in place
- AI agent harness embedded and operational
- Core domain entities and tools built out
- Weekly cadence established and running

Data migration, end-user rollout, and feature completion come later. Day 30 is the start of momentum, not the finish line.