LockedIn FDE Field Report — quarterly publication template

Template ID: LL-FDE-FIELD-Q-001
Template version: 0.1.0
Status: proposed editorial/research template; no quarterly finding, source count, survey result, market statistic, or forecast is supplied

Working title: The State of Forward-Deployed Engineering — [Year] Q[Quarter]
Publication class: source synthesis / field intelligence / study report / mixed (select one)
Publication ID and version: [pending]
Evidence window and cutoff: [pending]
First published / corrected: [pending]
Corporate and individual authors: [pending]
Guarantor and independent review: [pending]
Archive/DOI, license, citation: [pending]

Do not convert this template into a published report by filling it with plausible statistics. Every objective statement and chart needs an approved claim receipt.

Executive signal

Write 150–250 words answering:

• What changed in the field during the evidence window?
• Which change matters most to accountable executives and practitioners?
• What is primary-source observation, what is LockedIn interpretation, and what remains unknown?
• What should a hiring or deployment leader do differently now, if anything?

Include one sentence that states the evidence boundary and one that states what the report cannot establish.

Quarter at a glance

Use no more than four evidence-backed indicators. Each card contains:

INDICATOR LABEL:
VALUE / STATE:
DENOMINATOR AND TIME WINDOW:
SOURCE / STUDY / RECEIPT ID:
WHAT CHANGED FROM PRIOR QUARTER:
UNCERTAINTY OR COVERAGE LIMIT:
WHAT THE READER MUST NOT INFER:

If a comparable prior-quarter measure does not exist, write baseline not established; do not manufacture a trend.

1. Role and labor-market signals

Analyze primary employer records, official announcements, public job specifications, partnerships, workforce programs, and dated labor-market sources under a declared collection method.

Required disclosures:

• source universe and inclusion/exclusion;
• search/collection dates and deduplication;
• company/geography/language/role coverage;
• whether a record is an announcement, plan, open role, filled role, or observed deployment;
• title normalization and adjacency rules; and
• why counts are descriptive of the source set, not the entire market.

Suggested sections:

• Where FDE work is being named, expanded, trained, or reorganized
• What employers are asking practitioners to own
• Where title inflation or role ambiguity appears
• Adjacent roles and boundary movement
• Signals that are plans rather than observed outcomes

2. The capability ledger

Report additions, removals, splits, merges, context limits, evidence-maturity changes, and open disputes for the 10 domains and 55 families.

CAPABILITY / FAMILY:
CHANGE THIS QUARTER:
EVIDENCE CLASS AND SOURCE IDS:
DECISION RECORD:
DISSENT / NEGATIVE CASE:
EFFECT ON TASK, RUBRIC, OR INTERPRETATION:
STATUS: proposed / pilot / approved for study / retired / rejected

Ontology movement is not a performance trend.

3. What real work evidence looks like

Use authorized, deidentified, or synthetic examples to explain one capability through:

Operating context → consequential problem → constraints → decisions/rejected alternatives
→ hands-on work → artifact/evidence → failure/change → observed outcome → attribution limits

Do not publish customer details, private code, credentials, identity, or a polished composite that could be mistaken for a real case. Label composites/synthetic examples conspicuously.

4. Research program state

Report actual state, including zeroes and blockers:

Include participant flow, nonresponse, withdrawal, exclusions, deviations, and limitations when any real study exists.

5. Measurement and integrity dashboard

Publish only measures defined in an approved analysis plan:

• task/form/rater coverage;
• missing, invalid, interrupted, held, and withdrawn records;
• agreement/reliability/decision consistency with uncertainty;
• rater drift and adjudication/appeal state;
• accessibility/accommodation coverage and barriers;
• security, leakage, integrity, privacy, and participant-rights events;
• open corrections, suspensions, retractions, and retired artifacts; and
• reproducibility and archive verification state.

No green status without a named threshold, owner, evidence, and current review date.

6. Executive and practitioner perspective

If interviews/surveys are authorized, report sample, recruitment, question wording, mode, dates, weighting/analysis, denominators, uncertainty, missingness, conflicts, and claim receipts. Quotes require specific authorization and re-identification review.

If no field study exists, use a transparent source synthesis titled Questions leaders should test, not What executives told us.

7. Field note: real versus performative FDE signals

Use a bounded editorial analysis structured around evidence:

Add or change rows only through sourced reasoning; do not estimate a pass percentage.

8. Method and source appendix

Include:

• research questions and decision relevance;
• source/study inclusion and exclusion;
• collection and analysis dates;
• coding, reviewers, agreement, and deviations;
• data/materials availability;
• AI-use, funding, conflicts, sponsor role, and limitations;
• complete source table with stable URLs/DOIs, version/status, and access date;
• claim receipt register;
• chart data tables and downloadable machine-readable data;
• correction route and version history; and
• suggested citation, archive, identifier, and license.

9. Editorial and visual contract

• One clear claim per chart.
• Put status, denominator, time, uncertainty, and source beside the mark.
• Use accessible text/data tables and color-independent encoding.
• Distinguish observed data, source synthesis, proposal, synthetic example, and unavailable evidence visually and in text.
• Avoid named-person rankings, fake dashboards, decorative pseudo-data, tiny footnotes, or cumulative totals presented as current-quarter activity.
• Link every indicator to its method and claim receipt.

10. Release checklist

• Every count and finding reproduces from frozen evidence.
• Every public claim has an authorized receipt for its exact wording and surfaces.
• Market statements use dated primary sources and distinguish announcements from observed activity.
• Sample, denominator, nonresponse, missingness, uncertainty, and transportability are visible.
• Null, negative, contradictory, failed, stopped, withdrawn, and corrected evidence is represented.
• No person, company, partner, or source is implied to endorse LockedIn Labs.
• Authors, reviewers, funding, conflicts, AI use, rights, archive, and corrections are complete.
• Public and machine-readable versions agree.
• Publication decision binds the exact package digest.