Technology Consulting
Architecture audits, build-vs-buy math, and roadmaps — from a team that also builds, so every recommendation is one we would be willing to deliver ourselves. Written, costed, and prioritized, so it survives the meeting it was presented in.
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{ 01 } — Consulting process
Diagnose, decide, and leave you the map.
Good consulting ends with decisions you can act on — with or without us. Every engagement produces a written, costed, prioritized plan, and every recommendation names its trade-offs, because a recommendation without trade-offs is a sales pitch.
Diagnose
- Architecture & code audit, hands on the repo
- Process & team review — how work actually flows
- Cost baseline — licenses, cloud, people
- Incident & outage history
- Stakeholder interviews across levels
Decide
- Build vs buy vs fix, with five-year math
- Risk ranking — what bites first
- Prioritized roadmap with dependencies mapped
- Budget & timeline ranges, not false precision
- Trade-offs written down, option by option
Enable
- Vendor-neutral recommendations
- Hiring plans & interview rubrics
- Vendor shortlists & negotiation support
- Execution support if wanted
- Quarterly check-ins against the plan
Slide-deck consulting is cheap to write because the writer never has to build it. Our recommendations carry delivery risk we routinely accept ourselves — advice we would stake our own delivery on — which keeps them honest in a way no methodology can.
That includes saying when the answer is buy not build, keep not rewrite, or that the problem is process, not technology. The audit report says what we would do with our own money — including the options that make us nothing.
The method is deliberately boring: read the code, interview the people, baseline the costs, then write the options down with their trade-offs attached. The value is not a clever idea in a meeting — it is a document your team can execute the following Monday, with us or without us.
{ 03 } — What we advise on
The decisions that are expensive to get wrong.
Architecture audits
A written state-of-the-system report: risks ranked, debt priced, and what to fix first — with the evidence attached.
Build vs buy
Five-year cost math on licenses versus custom — integration, migration, and exit costs included — with a recommendation either way.
Technology roadmaps
Quarter-by-quarter plans that survive contact with budgets — dependencies mapped, quick wins separated from deep work.
Legacy & rewrite decisions
When to refactor, when to strangle, when to rewrite — and when the honest answer is leave it alone.
Team & vendor guidance
Hiring plans, vendor evaluations, and second opinions on proposals — spec in hand, before you sign.
Technical due diligence
Pre-investment and pre-acquisition reviews: what the codebase is actually worth, and what it will cost to keep.
{ 04 } — The method
No branded framework. Just the disciplines, in order.
Every audit runs the same sequence — discovery, analysis, decision artifacts, follow-through — because the sequence is what keeps opinions out and evidence in.
{ 05 } — Formats
Engagements sized to the question.
Diagnostic sprint
Two weeks inside your operation — interviews, system access, cost baseline. Ends with the map, the roadmap, and a cost model you own outright.
- Fixed price, fixed scope
- Interviews + hands-on system access
- Findings yours to execute with anyone
Fractional CTO
Senior technical leadership, part-time — for teams between full-time hires, or ahead of the first one.
- Weekly cadence, standing agenda
- Hiring, vendor & budget oversight
- Architecture sign-off on the big calls
Project advisory
A second pair of eyes on a build you are running — before problems become rewrites.
- Milestone & architecture reviews
- Code audits at agreed checkpoints
- Escalation on call when it wobbles
{ 06 } — Deliverables
Advice you can execute, not a deck.
Every engagement ends with artifacts your team can act on the following Monday — written to be executed by any competent team, including yours.
Systems, integrations, costs, and risks documented as they actually are — often the first time anyone has written it down.
Every finding ranked by likelihood and blast radius — so the argument about what to fix first is over before it starts.
What to fix first and why, with dependencies mapped and quick wins separated from deep work.
Honest math per system — including the options that make us no money.
When buying wins, we shortlist and help you negotiate — spec in hand, from your side of the table.
We can stay to deliver the roadmap, or hand it to your team with full context — the plan works either way.
{ 07 } — The symptoms
Signs the decision needs outside eyes.
Consulting earns its fee where a decision is expensive, hard to reverse, and argued about internally without new evidence arriving.
{ 08 } — What changes
Decisions made once, on evidence.
Before
Decisions argued by opinion, revisited every quarter.
After
Decisions argued from a written cost model — made once, revised on evidence.
Before
A vendor’s proposal is the only description of the work.
After
An independent spec and shortlist — negotiated from your side of the table.
Before
The roadmap is a wishlist ordered by whoever spoke last.
After
A sequenced plan with dependencies, budget ranges, and quick wins separated from deep work.
Before
Technical debt is invisible until it becomes an outage.
After
A risk register with owners — debt paid down deliberately, not by incident.
Before
The consultant leaves and the knowledge leaves too.
After
Findings written to be executed by any competent team — including yours.
Where this applies
Get expert guidance on the decision itself.
Book a free consultation call — a senior team member replies within one business day with real thoughts, not a sales script.
Frequently asked questions
The audit fee is the same either way, and our reports regularly recommend buying or keeping — a bad build recommendation would land back on our own delivery team.
A written report: current-state findings, risk ranking, costed options, and a prioritized 90-day and 12-month plan you can execute with anyone.
Read access to the repositories and infrastructure, an hour with each key stakeholder, and your cost data — licenses, cloud, headcount. NDAs come first, and the findings are yours regardless of what you decide next.
Yes — second opinions on scope, price, and architecture are a common short engagement, delivered in days.
No leverage pyramid — the seniors who interview you write the report, and the report recommends what we would do with our own money. It is shorter, blunter, and written to be executed rather than presented.
If you want — audit and roadmap stand alone, and the same team can execute them, which is exactly why the plan is written to be executable.
{ Sources }
Standards and regulators referenced here
- StranglerFigApplication — replacing a system incrementally rather than at once — Martin Fowler
- Cybersecurity Framework — NIST
- The Scrum Guide — Scrum.org