Agency Playbook

A practical guide for agencies and consultancies implementing AI coding assistants for clients.

Understanding Client Contexts

Client Assessment Framework

Before recommending patterns, evaluate:

  1. Risk Tolerance

    • Conservative: Established enterprises, regulated industries
    • Moderate: Growth-stage companies, competitive markets
    • Aggressive: Startups, innovation-focused organizations

  2. Technical Maturity

    • Legacy systems and technical debt
    • Modern infrastructure and practices
    • Cloud-native and DevOps culture

  3. Organizational Readiness

    • Developer openness to AI tools
    • Management support and budget
    • Existing innovation processes

Client Engagement Phases

Phase 1: Discovery and Assessment

Patterns to Review:

  1. Philosophy and Mindset - Set expectations
  2. Risk Assessment - Evaluate readiness
  3. Framework Selection Guide - Tool evaluation

Deliverables:

  • Readiness assessment report
  • Risk analysis and mitigation plan
  • Recommended implementation approach
  • ROI projections

Phase 2: Pilot Implementation

Patterns to Apply:

  1. Core Architecture - Foundation setup
  2. Initialization Process - Getting started
  3. Real World Examples - Practical demos

Deliverables:

  • Pilot environment setup
  • Initial use case implementation
  • Performance metrics baseline
  • Pilot evaluation report

Phase 3: Production Rollout

Patterns to Implement:

  1. Team Workflows - Team collaboration
  2. Deployment Guide - Production deployment
  3. Observability and Monitoring - Operations setup

Deliverables:

  • Production deployment
  • Monitoring and analytics setup
  • Training materials and documentation
  • Handover and support plan

Pattern Selection by Client Type

Startup Clients

Recommended Patterns:

  • Start with low-risk patterns
  • Focus on velocity and iteration
  • Minimal governance overhead

Key Patterns:

  1. Building Your Own AMP - Custom solutions
  2. Parallel Tool Execution - Speed optimization
  3. Feature Flag Integration - Rapid iteration

Mid-Market Clients

Recommended Patterns:

Key Patterns:

  1. From Local to Collaborative - Team adoption
  2. Authentication and Identity - Access management

Enterprise Clients

Recommended Patterns:

  • Start with high-risk patterns awareness
  • Comprehensive governance from day one
  • Integration with existing systems

Key Patterns:

  1. Enterprise Integration - System connections
  2. The Permission System - Access control
  3. Performance at Scale - Enterprise scale

Regulated Industry Clients

Recommended Patterns:

  • Compliance-first approach
  • Extensive audit trails
  • Zero-trust security model

Key Patterns:

  1. Sharing and Permissions - Data classification
  2. Risk Assessment - Compliance evaluation
  3. Observability and Monitoring - Audit trails

Common Client Objections

"Our code is too sensitive"

Response Patterns:

  • Implement The Permission System
  • Start with non-sensitive projects
  • Use on-premise deployment options
  • Demonstrate security controls and compliance

"AI will replace our developers"

Response Patterns:

  • Focus on augmentation, not replacement
  • Show Real World Examples
  • Emphasize skill development opportunities
  • Demonstrate productivity gains for existing team

"It's too expensive"

Response Patterns:

  • Calculate ROI with metrics from pilots
  • Start with small team trials
  • Compare to developer salary costs
  • Show Performance Tuning for cost optimization

"We don't trust AI-generated code"

Response Patterns:

Pricing and Packaging

Assessment Package

  • 2-week engagement
  • Readiness assessment
  • Tool evaluation
  • Implementation roadmap

Pilot Package

  • 4-6 week engagement
  • Environment setup
  • Use case implementation
  • Team training
  • Success metrics

Implementation Package

  • 3-6 month engagement
  • Full production deployment
  • Integration with existing systems
  • Comprehensive training
  • Ongoing support setup

Transformation Package

  • 6-12 month engagement
  • Organization-wide rollout
  • Process transformation
  • COE establishment
  • Continuous optimization

Success Metrics

Leading Indicators

  • Developer activation rate
  • Tool usage frequency
  • Feature adoption rate
  • User satisfaction scores

Lagging Indicators

  • Velocity improvement
  • Bug reduction rate
  • Time to market decrease
  • Developer retention improvement

Resources and Tools

Assessment Tools

Implementation Resources

Case Studies