IT consulting & advisory
Technology strategy, architecture reviews, vendor selection and due diligence — delivered as a recommendation you can act on, not a deck you file.
Consulting here means answering a specific, consequential technology question with enough rigour that you can act on the answer. Not a transformation programme, not a maturity framework — a decision you're stuck on, examined properly and written up.
The people doing it are engineers who are also delivering projects. That matters because architecture advice from someone who hasn't operated a system in five years tends toward the theoretically correct and the practically unaffordable.
Every engagement ends with a written document: the options, the trade-offs, a clear recommendation, and what it would cost. Yours to keep, share and act on with whoever you like.
We also build software. So when we're asked whether you should build something, we have an incentive to say yes. Pretending otherwise would be insulting, so here's how we handle it.
Advisory engagements are priced and contracted separately from delivery, and the fee doesn't change based on what we recommend. The recommendation is written to be executed by anyone — enough detail that another firm could act on it — and where the honest answer is to buy a product or keep your current supplier, that's what the document says.
If you'd rather remove the incentive entirely, say so up front and we'll agree in the contract that we won't bid on the resulting work. Several clients have taken that option, and we'd rather have the reputation than the follow-on project.
Six questions we're asked most often.
Technology strategy
What to build, buy, replace or leave alone over the next 12–24 months, sequenced by business value rather than by technical elegance.
Architecture review
An assessment of whether your current architecture will support where the business is going, what will break first, and what to do about it in what order.
Build vs buy
A structured comparison of building, configuring a platform, or buying off the shelf — with total cost over five years, not just the first invoice.
Vendor selection
Requirements definition, shortlisting, structured evaluation and reference checks. We take no commission from any vendor, which is not universal in this market.
Technical due diligence
For investors and acquirers: code quality, architecture, security posture, key-person risk and the remediation cost — before you commit capital.
Delivery diagnostics
Why software takes longer than expected here. Usually a mix of process, architecture and unspoken organisational constraints, and rarely the one people assume.
Three sizes. All fixed price, all ending in a document.
Advisory session
One focused question, one working session with the right people in the room, and a written answer within a few days. The right starting point for most.
- Output: written summary and recommendation
Assessment
An architecture review, build-vs-buy analysis, vendor selection or delivery diagnostic. Includes interviews, code and infrastructure review, and a presented findings session.
- Output: full report with options and costs
Fractional CTO
A senior engineer embedded part-time for companies that need technical leadership but aren't ready for a full-time CTO. Typically a few days a month.
- Output: continuous technical leadership
Four situations where a few days of outside review reliably pays for itself.
A big decision with no way back
Replatforming, a multi-year vendor contract, or committing to an architecture. The cost of an assessment is trivial next to the cost of being wrong for three years.
Delivery has slowed and nobody knows why
When each release takes longer than the last and every explanation sounds plausible, an outsider who has seen the pattern before is usually faster than another internal retrospective.
You're about to buy a company
Technical due diligence routinely changes the price or the terms. Finding out about the single unmaintainable service after completion is expensive.
Two internal camps disagree
Where a technical disagreement has become political, an evidenced external recommendation gives everyone a way to move forward without anyone losing.
Advisory answers a question; delivery builds a thing. They're contracted separately and the advisory fee doesn't change based on the answer. Plenty of advisory engagements conclude with a recommendation to buy a product, keep your current vendor, or do nothing yet.
Start a project
One paragraph describing the question and who's involved. We'll tell you whether it needs a half-day session or a full assessment — and sometimes that it needs neither.
- Reply within one business day
- Free scoping session, no obligation
- You keep the scope document either way