Advice from someone who lives with the same decisions.

What a consulting engagement covers

Consulting here is short and specific. We agree the days before anything starts, so you know the bill, and the answer reaches you while the decision is still open. It’s for decisions where being wrong is costly: an architecture that won’t scale, a platform that’s become the constraint on the business, an AI programme stuck in pilot, which is most of the AI calls I get.

From your side it starts with a call and a pile of things you already half know. Then I read what there is, the code, the architecture, whatever reporting exists, and I sit with the two or three people who know where the problems are, because what decides whether an architecture review is any use to you is whether the people who live with the system will say the awkward part out loud in front of me. After that we take an hour or two, I tell you what I’d do, and you argue with me. Bring the person who disagrees with you, because that hour is better for it.

It’s short on purpose. There’s no onboarding month and no team of mine to keep busy. And if what I find is that the thing worrying you isn’t the problem, you have that for the price of a day or two of technical advisory.

You get a recommendation and the reasoning behind it.

• AI & automation strategy
• System architecture
• Feasibility & prototyping
• Technology due diligence
• Modernisation planning