Glossary
The terms these documents use, in one place. Underlined terms elsewhere link here and show their definition on hover.
- Alpha
- The second stability level. Works, but is still taking shape. Expect frequent breaking changes and bugs.
- Assumption
- A condition an estimate currently depends on, such as which payment provider will be used, written in the notes of the Focus or project it affects. If an assumption proves false, the estimate may change.
- Beta
- The third stability level. Settled enough for real use. Breaking changes and bugs are occasional. We aim to announce breaking changes ahead of time, but can't always.
- Block
- A fixed-price portion of one engineer's time, talent, attention, and focus for one iteration. It supports focused work on the client's needs and the engineer's shared engineering contribution. A block is never shared between engineers. Blocks come in three sizes: Flex (1 unit), Core (2 units), and Dedicated (4 units).
- Capability
- Something a Feature can do as part of its job, such as rescheduling an appointment or exporting a report. Features gain and lose Capabilities over time without becoming new Features. Each Capability has its own stability level.
- Capacity Payout Allocation
- A percentage of a block's Capacity Payout Basis allocated to someone for that block: the engineer payout (Engineer Share, 60%), team support (Team Support Share, 3% for each available teammate), a Team Lead payout (Team Lead Share, 5%), and partnership earnings (Partnership Share, 5%). Every block has an engineer payout and a Team Lead payout, because someone always fulfills it and they always belong to a team; team support depends on how many teammates are available, and partnership earnings apply only to some blocks. Each is worked out from the basis independently, so none reduces another, and none is a percentage of the client's price. Every allocation is earned only when the block is fulfilled, not when the client buys it.
- Capacity Payout Basis
- Exalynt's compensation value for a Flex, Core, or Dedicated block: its capacity units × $1,750. Every Capacity Payout Allocation on a block (the engineer payout, team support, the Team Lead payout, and partnership earnings) is a percentage of it. It isn't the client's price or paid to anyone itself, and it's the same for every engineer, whatever their level or wherever they live.
- Capacity unit
- The measure of a block's size: Flex (1 unit), Core (2 units), and Dedicated (4 units), a 1:2:4 model. Capacity Payout Bases scale cleanly with units, and each block has its own client price. Estimates are sized in capacity units, not hours, and show clients what those units cost and take on each block.
- Checkpoint
- The end of an iteration, where Exalynt shows the client what was done and learned, recommends what to do next, and the client decides whether to buy another block.
- Client effort range
- The internal planning range for focused client attention in a block, e.g. 30–40 hours for Dedicated. Engineers normally plan at least the lower end for the client's work; the upper end allows more when the work needs it. It guides allocation and sizing. It is not a quota, a value floor, or a timesheet target, and it is not billed or reported to clients.
- Contribution
- What Exalynt retains from a block: the client's payment minus the block's Capacity Payout Allocations and any other direct costs, such as a coupon. It is not profit: it keeps Exalynt running, and what's left beyond that is its buffer.
- Coverage window
- The hours an operations plan provides human response, in a timezone named in the service agreement. Only time inside the coverage window counts toward a response target.
- Critical incident
- Production is unavailable, a core business workflow is unusable without a practical workaround, or there is suspected active data loss or compromise.
- Effort reference
- The approximate overall engineering effort behind a block, e.g. ~40 hours for Dedicated, including focused client work and ordinary shared engineering contribution. It communicates scale; it is not hours exclusively for the client, and not hours purchased, guaranteed, or tracked.
- Engineer payout
- What an engineer earns for fulfilling a block: Capacity Payout Basis × Engineer Share, the Capacity Payout Allocation every block has. It is earned when the block is fulfilled, not when the client buys it. It covers both of a block's responsibilities, focused client work and shared engineering contribution, and is known before the work starts, from the block's basis.
- Engineering Capacity
- What Exalynt sells: engineers' time, talent, attention, and focus, applied to the most valuable work for the client, along with the shared engineering contribution that sustains the quality of that work. It is sold in blocks, not hours.
- Engineering Team
- A long-lived group of Exalynt engineers, 2 to 6 including its Team Lead, who work together, support each other, and build shared practices. Teammates are paid team support for helping fulfill each other's blocks. Teams exist independently of clients: each engineer belongs to exactly one team, and each team is assigned to one or more clients and gets to know their business and software. Exalynt looks to a client's assigned team first when the client buys capacity, but engineers can contribute anywhere in Exalynt. Teams provide continuity, not exclusivity.
- Estimate
- A planning range for a project: what its Focuses, and the project, would cost and take at Low, Mid, and High on each block. It is Exalynt's best judgment from what is known today, not a quote, fixed price, or delivery date.
- Feature
- A named product function that fulfills a distinct user or business job, such as Customer Scheduling or Online Payments. A Feature keeps its identity as its Capabilities and implementation change. Each of its Capabilities has a stability level, and its Maturity shows how complete and stable it is.
- Focus
- A piece of work an estimate is organized by, whatever it is: a new Feature, or an improvement or enhancement to an existing system. Each has a name, an optional description, notes, and a T-shirt size, and is shown with what it would cost and take on each block.
- GA (Generally available)
- The fourth and most stable level. Generally available and stable. It keeps working as it does today; breaking changes only come in a new version.
- Infrastructure pass-through
- Servers, databases, storage, email, SMS, AI usage, domains, certificates, and other third-party services billed at cost, with no markup, for software Operated by Exalynt. It is not Exalynt revenue, and operations plan prices are not based on it.
- Introduction
- A partner putting a prospective new client in touch with Exalynt through their partnership. It counts when it's identifiable before the prospect is already in conversation with Exalynt, and a new client is attributed to one partnership.
- Iteration
- The one week in which a block is allocated and fulfilled, ending in a checkpoint. A longer iteration is an exception, made only when the work warrants it.
- Level
- The kinds of problems an engineer has the experience to lead: Associate, Mid, Senior, or Principal. Every engineer owns their work end to end and is held to the same standard, and each piece of work goes to the engineer it suits. It doesn't change pay, and doesn't depend on tenure or location.
- Maturity
- A high-level indication of how complete and stable a Feature or a project is, based on what's known today, shown as a percentage. Each Capability counts 0% while it's a draft, 25% at Prototype, 50% at Alpha, 75% at Beta, and 100% at GA. A Feature's Maturity is the average of its Capabilities, and a project's is the average of its Features, each counting the same. It's separate from status, which says whether work is happening, and from stability, which each Capability has and which says how much you can rely on it. Bugs don't affect it. It isn't a verdict or a grade: as software keeps evolving, new work starts at the bottom of the scale, so Maturity can go down as well as up and may never reach 100%. 75% or more is healthy for most businesses.
- Operated by Exalynt
- The operating choice where Exalynt takes ongoing responsibility for running a client's product in production, under an operations plan. Every product Exalynt operates needs one. The client pays for engineering in blocks as usual, and for infrastructure and third-party services at cost.
- Operations plan
- A recurring monthly service for a product Exalynt operates in production: Essential, Standard, or Extended, from $399 a month per product. Each plan defines a specific set of production responsibilities and coverage commitments. It prices accepted responsibility, coverage, and readiness, not incident hours or infrastructure.
- Partner
- A person or organization enrolled in the Exalynt Partnership Program: an Exalynt client, engineer, or established external partner who has chosen to enroll and accepted the partnership terms. A partner introduces new clients when they genuinely believe Exalynt can help, with no quotas or sales obligations. It isn't an owner, legal partner, agent, or employee of Exalynt.
- Partner Hub
- The planned self-service place for partners to enroll, make and follow introductions, understand their partnership earnings, and manage payout information. It isn't available yet.
- Partnership
- A partner's place in the Exalynt Partnership Program, held by a person or an organization. The introductions made through it and the earnings they produce belong to it, and its earnings are paid to its payee, not to whichever person made an introduction.
- Partnership earnings
- The Capacity Payout Allocation a partnership earns when a new client its partner introduced buys Engineering Capacity: the Partnership Share, 5% of the Capacity Payout Basis, on capacity bought in the 12 months after the client's first qualifying paid purchase, earned when that capacity is fulfilled, not when it's bought. It isn't a percentage of the client's price, and operations plans and infrastructure are excluded. Exalynt bears it; the client's price and engineer payouts don't change.
- Project
- A group of related work that together produces a broader client outcome. A project's estimate is the sum of its Focuses' estimates.
- Prototype
- The first stability level. Explores an idea so we can choose a direction. Its data may be fake, and it may change completely or be thrown away.
- Response target
- How soon a person acknowledges a critical incident and starts investigating, counting only time inside the coverage window. It's a service target, not a contractual SLA, and it doesn't guarantee a resolution time.
- Reusable IP
- The libraries, tooling, and frameworks Exalynt brings to every engagement. Exalynt keeps them; clients own the custom software built for them.
- Self Operated
- The operating choice where the client takes responsibility for running its production software and pays for infrastructure directly. No Exalynt operations plan is needed, and capacity costs the same. Moving it onto a plan later takes separately scoped onboarding.
- Self-funded block
- A block Exalynt buys for its own projects, such as open source, its own tooling, or charitable work. Engineers are paid the same as for client work.
- Sponsor
- The person who acts as the client for a self-funded block: sets the goal, attends the checkpoint, and decides whether to buy the next block.
- Stability checklist
- What each stability level generally includes, area by area, such as tests, security, monitoring, and documentation. It's what Exalynt aims for at each level, and a guide to how stable something really is, not a gate.
- Stability level
- How stable a piece of work is, so everyone knows what to expect from it: Prototype, Alpha, Beta, GA. Work can move up quickly, even within one iteration.
- T-shirt size
- An engineer's coarse judgment of how much capacity and uncertainty a Focus carries: S, M, L, XL. Each size maps to a Low, Mid, and High range of capacity units: S is 1–3 units (Mid 2), M is 3–6 units (Mid 4), L is 6–12 units (Mid 8), XL is 12–24 units (Mid 16).
- Team Lead
- The one engineer on each Engineering Team who helps it coordinate, collaborate, develop, and succeed, and who keeps continuity with the clients the team supports. When the team can't agree, the Team Lead has the final say on technical direction and other team decisions, used sparingly. It's a responsibility, not a traditional manager or necessarily a promotion: the Team Lead keeps fulfilling blocks and enhances the team rather than replacing anyone, so every engineer still owns their work end to end and their relationship with the client. Any level can hold it.
- Team support
- The 3% of the Capacity Payout Basis paid to each of the fulfilling engineer's available teammates on a block: the members of their Engineering Team with some availability that week, other than the Team Lead and the engineer. Up to 4 teammates can be available on a full team, and each is paid the same share, so a block pays more team support the more are available. It's paid by availability, for the reviews, pairing, and shared context teammates give each other, and is a Capacity Payout Allocation earned when the block is fulfilled.
- Value
- Value is meaningful progress toward something that matters to the client. The test: What can the client now do, do better, or decide because of this work? Capacity, hours, and activity are not value on their own.
Frequently asked questions
Why does Exalynt talk about capacity instead of hours?
Clients buy fixed-price blocks, not time. A block's effort reference in hours describes the approximate overall effort behind it, including shared engineering contribution; it isn't hours exclusively for the client, and it isn't purchased, guaranteed, tracked, or an hourly rate. See Engineering Capacity.
Is the Capacity Payout Basis the client's price?
No. It is a compensation value set per capacity unit, separately from client prices, so client price changes don't change engineer payouts or any other allocation. The premium on smaller blocks is in client prices only. See The Capacity Payout Basis.
Is the contribution the same as profit?
No. It is what's left after Capacity Payout Allocations and other direct costs, and it pays for running the company before any profit. See How the money flows.