Request your free project review
No cost, no obligation. I'll call you personally.
16+ years
Leading technology initiatives
253
Companies I’ve worked with
1,000,000+
Engineering hours delivered under my leadership
26
Engineers on my team today
THE 10/10/10 RECOMMENDATIONS
Specific. Defensible. Hand-written for your project (it's not a template).
The below are real recommendations from past sessions and clients, anonymised. Yours will be different, that's the point. Notice what they have in common: each one is a problem someone had been avoiding, delaying, or couldn’t see.
What’s working and why you shouldn’t touch it
10 things to keep doing
“Your two-week release cadence. It’s the only thing keeping scope honest.”
“Postgres. You don’t have a problem with your database, it's a query problem.”
“The senior dev who owns integrations. He’s not underperforming, he's just underpaid.”
What’s quietly costing you money and momentum
10 things to stop doing
“Stop rebuilding the mobile app. The web app is where your revenue is.”
“Letting the vendor run sprint planning. That’s your roadmap, not theirs.”
“Paying for three overlapping monitoring tools nobody reads.”
What changes your trajectory from next week
10 things to start doing
“An owner for every system. Right now, four have none.”
“Weekly ship notes to the exec team. Trust is your real backlog.”
“A definition of done. Half your ‘finished’ features aren’t.”
STEP 1
Request a session
Tell me what you’re building and where it hurts. I screen every application personally; this only works when there’s something real to look at.
STEP 2
The working session
We open the hood together: your project, tech stack, team structure, and vendor setup. I do the diligence live and think out loud. You see exactly how I reach every recommendation.
STEP 3
You get your recommendations in writing
Thirty specific recommendations (keep doing, stop doing, start doing) with the reasoning. Yours to keep and act on, with your team or with mine. No invoice and no obligation.
I screen applications. Here’s the honest criteria.
This is for you if…
You’re building, about to start, or in the middle of something that matters to revenue: a product, platform, or internal system
Budget and ownership for the work already exist inside your organisation
You’re willing to open the hood of whatever exists right now: repos, roadmap, and team structure
You want thirty honest calls, including the uncomfortable ones
It’s not for you if…
Nothing is funded or planned yet; there’d be nothing real to assess
You’re collecting a free roadmap to hand to the cheapest offshore quote
You want validation, not honesty
frequently asked questions
Asked before almost every session
Here's everything people usually want to know before they apply, answered the way I'd answer them on a call.
Why is this free?
Because it’s how I win clients. I’d rather not pretend otherwise. Some of the thirty recommendations will be things you can act on tomorrow, on their own. Take them and run, genuinely! Some will need senior hands: an accountable technical owner, engineers who’ve done it before, or both. That’s what I do for a living. I embed as a fractional CTO, and I bring a 25-strong software and cloud engineering team when one’s needed. If the recommendations shows work worth doing together, we’ll both know it by the end of the session before the recommendations are even sent over. If it doesn’t, you keep the thirty calls and we part as friends. No invoice for the session. No follow-up sequence. No obligation.
Is this a sales pitch in disguise?
The commercial interest is stated above, not disguised. What it isn't: a slideshow about Halcrow, a quote ambush, or a follow-up sequence. One session, thirty written recommendations, one reply from me.
What do we need to share?
Whoever knows the build best, and the real picture — roadmap, team structure, vendor arrangements, ideally a look at the architecture or codebase. The more honest the input, the sharper the recommendations. Sanitised inputs get sanitised outputs.
Will you sign an NDA?
Yes. Standard practice — most sessions run under one.
How does it actually work?
A session together inside your technology, then I go away, absorb it, and personally write your 10/10/10 — 10 things I'd keep, 10 I'd stop, 10 I'd start, with the reasoning, in plain English. Written by me, not generated from a template.
How long until we get the recommendations?
Within 2 days of the session.
Who should be in the session?
The person accountable for the project and whoever knows the build best — often that's two different people, which is itself informative. Vendors optional; sometimes better without, and I'll say which I'd prefer once I've seen your application.