MEMO · TO prospective partners, participants and mentors · RE the mechanics of the problem pipeline
How it works
How a problem becomes a cohort's work, and what comes out the other end
The homepage states the model in three steps. This page sets out what happens at each stage: how a partner's problem is scoped and disclosure-tiered, how a mentor supervises the cohort's work, what a participant leaves with, and how the arrangement is paid for.
The problem pipeline
From submission to a scoped, disclosure-tiered record
- 01
Submission
A partner organisation submits a problem it has defined but does not have the capacity, or the mandate, to staff internally. The intake form captures the domain, the problem statement, the desired outcome, the constraints, the confidentiality posture, the access participants would need, and the target timeframe. It routes to a pipeline handled separately from participant and mentor enquiries.
- 02
Scoping
Praxora Lab scopes the submission before it reaches a cohort. Scoping settles three questions: what confidentiality exposure the problem carries, what access participants genuinely need (a working data sample is not the same as production access), and whether a realistic outcome exists within a cohort's stated duration. A problem that cannot be scoped to a safe, time-bound piece of work is not assigned to a cohort.
- 03
Disclosure tier assignment
Once scoped, the problem is assigned a disclosure tier before any cohort sees it. The tier governs what can be published about the problem, and by whom it must be approved. Both tiers are set out below.
| Tier | What is published | Approval required |
|---|---|---|
| Public tier | Sector, organisation size band, domain and problem class, stated without identifying detail. | Standard scoping sign-off. No further approval is required to publish at this tier. |
| Named tier | The organisation's name and other identifying detail, where the organisation agrees to it. | Written partner approval, given per instance. Approval for one problem does not carry forward to future submissions from the same organisation. |
The default is the public tier. A problem moves to the named tier only where the partner has approved that specific instance in writing.
The mentorship model
A practitioner mentor, not a lecturer
Each cohort works under a practitioner mentor: someone who has delivered this kind of work themselves, not someone presenting it. The mentor reviews the cohort's work against a stated quality gate at defined points in the engagement and is accountable for what the cohort produces. That accountability is what allows a partner to treat cohort output as reviewed work rather than unsupervised coursework.
This should be stated plainly. Delivery work is performed by supervised participants, not by employed consultants. The mentor supervises and reviews; the mentor does not perform the work in the participant's place, and Praxora Lab does not represent cohort output as consultant-grade delivery independent of that supervision.
Mentors are recruited and evaluated separately from the delivery bench described here. See mentors for the time commitment, compensation basis and cohort load that applies to the mentor role itself.
What you produce
A portfolio artefact describing the work, not a certificate
At the end of a cohort, each participant leaves with an artefact: a description of the problem's scope, the constraints it was worked under, and the participant's own contribution to the outcome. It is written to be read by someone assessing whether the participant can do this kind of work, not to certify that a course was attended.
No certificate, accreditation or qualification is issued at any point. Where this artefact is referred to elsewhere on the site, that word is doing the actual work: it is evidence of a contribution to a real, scoped problem, not a credential.
What a participant may display from that artefact outside the engagement, and under what conditions, depends on the intellectual property position agreed with the contributing partner. That is set out on the confidentiality and IP statement.
Both sides of this engagement pay Praxora Lab, as stated on the homepage. Read the full arrangement.
Where to start
Three intake paths, one for each side of the pipeline
- Submit a problem
For an organisation with a scoped problem and no internal capacity to staff it.
- Apply
For an individual seeking a place in a cohort.
- Become a mentor
For a practitioner willing to supervise a cohort's work against a stated quality gate.
Not ready for any of these? Email a question first.