Consulting, product and talent

Decisions, not deliverables

Every other category on this site produces something that runs. This one produces the decision that comes before it — what to build, what to buy, what to stop, who to hire, and in what order.

The work covers ten situations. An established business that knows it has to modernise and cannot see the first move. An investor or acquirer who needs to know what a software company will cost to fix in the year after the deal. A product team where priorities change weekly and nothing finishes. A founder holding an idea and quotes that cannot be compared, because nobody has written the scope down. A funded startup with engineers and nobody senior enough to make the calls. A team that needs capacity now without a permanent hire. An organisation where every vendor demo looked impressive, the room has split into camps, and the decision has to survive an audit. A team that keeps being told to learn something and never does, because nobody has the time or a starting point. An owner told the whole system has to be rewritten, with no way to know whether that is true or a new developer's excuse. And a company where the one person who knows what to do when it breaks at night is going on leave.

What connects them is that the cost of getting the decision wrong is far larger than the cost of the engagement. A roadmap sets what a team spends the next stretch of work on. A diligence report sets a price. A vendor selection commits an organisation for years. That is what the fee is measured against — not the number of days it took to produce.

Two things hold across all of it. Every engagement is scoped in writing, with the number of interviews, the revision rounds and the point at which the work is complete stated in advance. And where evidence is missing, the report says so plainly rather than closing the gap with an estimate. A visible gap can be investigated. A quiet assumption cannot.