The Client

Valere is a premier technology consultancy that scales engineering capabilities for major tech firms. For engagements with partners like Caylent, Valere must ensure its subcontracted teams operate with the same discipline, security, and velocity as internal staff.

The Challenge: Scaling Without Losing Quality

Scaling a distributed engineering team introduces risk. It is not enough for a subcontractor to be a good coder; they must align with specific operational protocols to protect timelines and budgets.

Brayan and his team faced three specific friction points in onboarding these teams:

• The “Deep Work” vs. Communication Tension: Valere needed to verify if engineers understood how to balance deep technical execution with the requirement to respond to clients within four hours. Failure here leads to “black box” development and client anxiety.
• Scope Creep Risk: In agile projects, mid-stream client requests are common. Valere needed to ensure subcontractors knew not to just say “yes,” but to follow formal change control processes to avoid budget overruns.
• Security & AI Compliance: With the rise of generative AI, Valere had to strictly validate that no subcontractor would paste sensitive client data into public tools like ChatGPT—a critical compliance risk.

The Goal: Confirm 100% alignment on delivery expectations before project onboarding.

The Solution: AI-Driven Readiness Checks

Valere used Dactic to run a comprehensive understanding check. Rather than a simple checkbox survey, the AI engaged subcontractors in scenarios to test their judgment.

The Process:

1. Methodology Validation: The AI grilled participants on the “Definition of Done,” ensuring it wasn’t just “code written,” but included testing, peer reviews, and documentation.
2. Scenario Testing: Dactic presented scenarios about “story points” (verifying 1 point = 1 day) and scope changes to test if engineers would follow the correct escalation paths.
3. Security Audit: The platform explicitly asked about data handling workflows to confirm adherence to strict security protocols regarding client data and AI usage.

The Results: Proven Readiness

The initiative transformed “hope” into “proof” regarding team readiness.

Key Outcomes:

• High-Confidence Deployment: The data showed that most subcontractors rated their confidence in meeting expectations at a 4 or 5 out of 5, providing a green light for deployment.
• Identified Training Gaps: The system flagged that while technical understanding was high, some engineers struggled with the concept of “Agile Ceremonies” vs. “Deep Work.” Valere used this to create targeted guidance on managing asynchronous updates.
• Operational Consistency: The process confirmed a universal understanding of the “4-hour response time” rule, ensuring a consistent client experience across different time zones.

The Voice of the Customer

“Dactic helped us verify that our teams weren’t just technically capable, but operationally aligned. It allowed us to confirm that every engineer understood the ‘Caylent Way’ of delivery—from scope management to data security—before they wrote a single line of code.”

— Brayan Granados, Director of Product, Valere

Conclusion: The New Standard for Staff Augmentation

In the world of high-stakes consulting, alignment is everything. Valere proved that by using Dactic for Quality Assurance, you can scale distributed teams without diluting standards.

This case demonstrates that AI isn’t just for generating code—it’s for governing the humans who write it, ensuring that every team member is a true steward of the client’s trust.