FDE in question. What Forward Deployed Engineering means for incowia 

With the third part, we conclude our LinkedIn series “FDE nachgefragt”. It began with a question put to around 20 German enterprise organisations, asked in business units, IT and procurement. Is Forward Deployed Engineering a new model, or a new label for something that has long existed? 

In parallel, our heads of practice published their own series on enterprise architecture, identity governance, integration and software architecture. Their shared finding is clear. Speed is a real gain, but it does not replace verifying whether a result holds up, both functionally and architecturally. 

For incowia, Forward Deployed Engineering is therefore not a job title but a client-facing delivery model. A Forward Deployed Lead holds the client context together and brings into the team the expertise the task actually requires. 

• One accountable contact. 

• A flexible team. 

• Shared responsibility for the result. 

We put this into practice in four fields: Forward Deployed Integration Engineering, Forward Deployed Identity Engineering, Forward Deployed Enterprise Architecture and Forward Deployed Software Engineering. 

The full article, with a practical example and three checking questions for business units, IT and procurement, is available on LinkedIn (in German). (Link to article) 

The series at a glance Part 1 · Part 2 · Part 3