The first conversation is free. If your question turns out to be one decision rather than an engagement, we will answer it there and point you at our shorter consulting option instead.
Most expensive technology mistakes are not made by bad engineers. They are made in rooms where nobody present could evaluate the claim being made, on a timeline that did not allow anyone to try. By the time the problem is visible in the numbers, the money is already committed.
Strategy that never survives contact with the engineering team, because nobody checked whether it could be built before it was approved.
UntestedThree proposals, three very different numbers, and no one internally who can tell which one has quietly left out the hard half of the work.
No baselineNo single decision was wrong. Fifty small ones accumulated, and now every change touches four things nobody wanted to touch.
DriftThe recommendation happens to be the thing the recommender sells. It may still be correct. You have no way of finding out.
ConflictedAnyone can hand you a conclusion.
Ask to see the reasoning, and watch how many can.
That is what we actually sell. Not a verdict, but a recommendation with its working shown, written so your engineers can attack it and so your board can take it to somebody else for a third opinion.
Six areas, and in a real engagement they rarely stay separate. A cost problem turns out to be an architecture problem, and an architecture problem turns out to be an ownership problem. Each page below covers what that practice looks like on its own.
Structurally, yes, and a consultancy that claims otherwise is telling you something false in the first five minutes. A firm that also builds has an interest in your answer being "build it". So it is worth saying exactly how that is handled, rather than leaving you to hope.
The two things we recommend most often are: build less than you planned, and keep more of what you already have.
Neither is the profitable answer. Both are usually the correct one. Advisory work is scoped and paid for as advisory work, the recommendation is written down with its reasoning and its rejected alternatives, and you are free to take it to any other firm and have them pick it apart. If the right answer is that you do not need us, that is what the document will say.
It is also the reason we would rather be judged on month six than on how impressive the proposal looked in week one. If the plan we recommended fails, we are the ones who have to sit in the room and explain why. That concentrates the mind in a way an anonymous answer never does.
Most relationships start with the first and move to one of the others only if there is a reason to. Consultancy that runs for months without producing a decision is a cost centre wearing a suit.
One to two focused weeks to find out whether the problem you described is the problem you have.
1-2 weeksAn outside technical voice on call, for the decisions that keep arriving after the first one.
MonthlyFor when the plan is agreed and the constraint has become delivery rather than direction.
ScopedDeliverables your team can act on without us in the room. If the only artefact from an engagement is a memory of a good meeting, nothing was bought.
Findings from the code, infrastructure, security and delivery review, ranked by what each one is actually costing you.
Sequenced work with the reasoning attached, written to be read by the people who sign and checked by the people who build.
Where the risk is real, a working proof of concept that tests the assumption before the full commitment is made.
Workshops, mentoring and a documented handover, so the capability stays in the building after the engagement ends.
The difference between advice and experience is having been there in month six, when the plan met real users and something had to give. Everyone offering you an opinion should have that, and most of the people in this market do not.
Hands-on experience per engineer, across agencies, product companies and enterprises. Advice from people who still write code.
Small on purpose. The person in your review is the person doing the work, not an account manager relaying it back.
We build, ship and run our own products, so we carry the pager too. More on how we work.
Take it to your board, your engineers, or a competing firm for a third opinion. It is written with the reasoning shown precisely so that it can survive that.
We will sign a mutual Non-Disclosure Agreement any time you want one, at no cost. You can read the exact document we use before you ask for it.
Our consulting service under Services is the short form: a single question, usually a few days, ending in a written recommendation. Cheaper, faster, and often all that is required.
Consulting under Services is a short technical second opinion: one decision, usually a few days, ending in a written recommendation. Consultancy is the longer form of the same honesty. It runs across strategy, architecture, transformation, cloud, delivery and governance over weeks or months, involves your leadership as well as your engineers, and is measured on whether the organisation can execute afterwards. If your question is one decision, start with Consulting and save yourself the money.
The incentive exists, so we handle it in the open rather than claiming to be above it. Advisory work is scoped and paid for as advisory work, and every recommendation is written down with its reasoning and its rejected alternatives so you can take it to another firm and have them pick it apart. In practice our two most common recommendations are to build less than planned and to keep more of what you already have, and neither of those is the profitable answer.
Documents your team can act on without us in the room: an assessment of what exists, a roadmap or architecture blueprint, and where it helps a working proof of concept rather than a slide claiming it would work. Every engagement ends with a walkthrough session where your people are encouraged to argue with the conclusions, because a recommendation nobody challenged is a recommendation nobody checked.
A discovery sprint is one to two weeks and is where most engagements start, because it is the cheapest way to find out whether the problem you described is the problem you have. Strategic advisory runs as a monthly arrangement for as long as it is useful. Implementation support is scoped to the work itself. All three are priced in writing before anything begins, and any of them can be stopped.
Yes, and that is usually the point. Your engineers generally already know where the problems are and have often been saying so for a while. Frequently the most useful thing an outside voice does is make an internal argument audible to the people who control the budget. We are not there to replace an internal team or to get a vendor fired, and an engagement that turns into either helps nobody.
No. We hold no reseller agreements and take no referral fees, so there is nothing to disclose and nothing steering the recommendation. We have built and operated on AWS, Google Cloud and Azure and will say plainly where one genuinely fits your case better, including the cases where the honest answer is that your current provider is fine and the migration would cost more than it saves.