Strategy is what
stops you building the wrong thing.
Senior-level technical thinking before you commit budget, hire engineers, or sign a vendor. Often the most valuable engagement a business has with us is the one where no code gets written.
Platform consolidation — Q3 review
Most failed software projects are
scoping failures —
not engineering ones.
The expensive mistakes are made early. The wrong architecture, the wrong build-vs-buy call, the wrong vendor, the wrong sequencing — these decisions cost ten times more to undo than to make well in the first place.
Consulting is the thing we do before everything else. It's also the thing we sometimes do instead of everything else — when the answer is this is the wrong project or build less, license more.
- A board ask the team can't size in their head
- A vendor decision worth more than €250k
- A rebuild proposal that smells too clean
- Two or three internal teams arguing past each other
- Due diligence on someone else's stack
- A decision your team has already made and just wants validating
- A presentation deck for an internal political fight
- A search for a contractor — that's a different conversation
- Anything where the brief is make us look good
Six questions strategy belongs in front of.
Not exhaustive. These are the conversations where, in our experience, two weeks of disciplined thinking has saved clients six months of expensive course-correction.
Build, buy, or license — which?
The most expensive decision in any IT roadmap. We model TCO over five years, weight it by your edge, and put a number against each path.
Is this rebuild actually worth it?
Sometimes yes, often no. We diagnose the real source of pain — code, architecture, organisation, or product — before anyone agrees to start over.
What should the team look like?
Hiring is architecture. We design the team shape implied by the system — and challenge the system if the team shape isn't viable.
Are we on the right cloud / vendor?
Concentration risk, exit options, hidden contractual clauses. We read the fine print most engineers don't, and most lawyers don't understand.
How do we due-diligence this?
Pre-acquisition technical DD on someone else's stack: code quality, architecture risk, key-person dependencies, hidden tech debt.
What does the three-year plan look like?
A written technology roadmap with sequencing, dependencies, and named inflection points. Not a slide. Not a vibe.
Everything we say — we put in writing.
The Brief
14–22 pages. Verdict in section one. Reasoning, calls, risks, and numbers across the rest. Tight enough to read on a flight.
Architecture diagram set
Current state, target state, transition. Three diagrams, not thirty — each readable in under a minute, each with a written annotation.
TCO & ROI model
A spreadsheet your CFO can reconcile, with assumptions named, sourced, and editable. Defensible to a board. Reusable annually.
Decision log
Every architectural call, the alternatives considered, the reasoning, and the named conditions under which we'd revisit it. Lives forever.
Vendor & build-vs-buy memo
Each candidate evaluated against the workload — pricing, lock-in, exit path, hidden risk — with a recommended call and the runner-up.
Hiring & team-shape plan
The roles implied by the architecture: seniority mix, sequencing, and named risks in your local hiring market. Costed.
Five phases — designed against the way consulting normally fails.
Listen
Three to five interviews across leadership, engineering, and operations. We ask what the brief doesn't.
Read
Code, contracts, dashboards, and the last twelve months of post-mortems. The truth is rarely in the deck.
Frame
Reduce the question to a single decision tree, with the actual constraints named — not the politely stated ones.
Stress-test
A second senior architect argues against the recommendation. If it survives the argument, it goes in the brief.
Write
One document. Verdict on page one. Reasoning across the rest. Reviewed line-by-line with you before signing.
SECOND-PAIR-OF-EYES —Every brief is challenged internally before it leaves the studio. The verdict that survives is the one you receive.
Three rooms we're often in.
The framing changes by audience — the rigour doesn't.
Founders & CEOs
You need a defensible technical narrative — for the board, for fundraising, or for your own conviction. We give you the numbers and the language.
- Board-ready technology narrative
- Pre-fundraise tech section
- Build vs buy verdicts that don't waffle
CTOs & Heads of Eng
You have the conviction; you need the air-cover. Or you're new in seat and want a frank read on the estate before you commit to a direction.
- Architecture & reliability second opinion
- First-90-days estate review
- Senior-level outside conviction
Investors & PE
Pre-acquisition technical due diligence, or post-acquisition value-creation planning. We read code, not pitch decks.
- Pre-deal technical DD
- 100-day technical value plan
- Concentration & key-person risk read
Three shapes of strategy work.
Strategy Brief
A single, decisive question — answered in writing. Two to four weeks, fixed scope, fixed fee.
- 14–22 page written brief
- Architecture diagrams + TCO model
- 90-min walkthrough · all stakeholders
Architecture Engagement
Deeper than a brief — designing the target architecture itself, not just the verdict on whether to build it.
- Full target-state architecture set
- Decision log + ADRs in your repo
- Build sequencing & team-shape plan
Fractional CTO
A senior architect embedded in your leadership cadence: weekly review, standing escalation path, board-level air-cover when you need it.
- Weekly leadership cadence
- Quarterly written review
- Standing on-call for board moments
↪ Indicative. Every engagement is scoped from a written brief — fixed-fee strategy work has no hourly creep, by definition.
The two-week brief that stopped a €1.8M rebuild before it started.
“We hired them to design the rebuild. They told us — politely, with the numbers — not to do it. Best money we ever spent on consulting.”
The questions we hear on every first call.
Mostly versions of is this independent, what if we still want to build, and why not a Big-Four consultancy. Fair questions.
Q · 01
Is this real consulting, or a sales pitch in a trench coat?
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Is this real consulting, or a sales pitch in a trench coat?
Q · 02
Why not McKinsey / Accenture / a Big-Four consultancy?
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Why not McKinsey / Accenture / a Big-Four consultancy?
Q · 03
What if we want you to build it after?
+
What if we want you to build it after?
Q · 04
How do we make sure it actually lands inside the org?
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How do we make sure it actually lands inside the org?
Q · 05
Can the brief be NDA-locked / share-restricted?
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Can the brief be NDA-locked / share-restricted?
What's the decision your team can't stop arguing about?
Bring it to a 30-minute call. No deck on our side, no slide on yours. We'll tell you, honestly, whether two weeks of disciplined thinking would be the cheapest move you make this quarter.