Staging environment
Free Lesson

How to Scope the Problem Before You Write a Line of Code

Part of Building an AI GTM Engine

Hosted by Paden Gayle

Wed, Oct 7, 2026

6:00 PM UTC (30 minutes)

Virtual (Zoom)

Free to join

166 students

Invite your network

Go deeper with a course

Become a Forward Deployed Engineer: The Future-Proof Path for Software Engineers
Paden Gayle
View syllabus

What you'll learn

Where the Same Scoping Skill Applies Across Roles

The same scoping skill, whether you're a Forward Deployed Engineer or building your own GTM systems and revenue tools

What Breaks When You Skip Scoping Before You Build

Two failure patterns that waste build time, burn stakeholder trust, and leave you with a tool nobody adopts

A Four-Move Framework for Scoping Any AI Engagement

The exact questions to ask in one conversation, before you touch a tool or write a single line of code

Why this topic matters

Every AI build starts with a vague ask, and most people skip straight to the tool. That's where builds go wrong. The stated ask is rarely the real problem, and by the time the gap shows up, you've spent the budget and trust. I built this framework scoping engagements as a Forward Deployed Engineer, and it holds for any AI build, customer-facing or internal. I'll walk the moves live, on a cold prompt, so you can judge if the reflex is learnable.

You'll learn from

Paden Gayle

Founding FDE @ Notion | O'Reilly Author | Ex-Google, Bloomberg

I'm a founding Forward Deployed Engineer at Notion, where I built the technical delivery model our team uses to run high-stakes enterprise migrations. I'm also writing The Forward Deployed Engineer's Handbook for O'Reilly, the first definitive guide to the role.

Before Notion I was a Software Engineer at Google and Bloomberg, building certificate authority infrastructure and large-scale data platforms. I've also coached 600+ engineers through career transitions into top companies.

I teach this because I'm doing the job right now, not summarizing it from articles. Everything in my workshops comes from live engagements: real scoping decisions, real security reviews, real stakeholder fights. If you want to break into Applied AI, learn it from the trenches.

See all products from Paden

Sign up to join this lesson

By continuing, you agree to Maven's Terms and Privacy Policy.