Consulting

Straight answers before you spend the budget

Sometimes the most valuable thing an engineering partner can do is tell you not to build something. Our consulting work is deliberately short, independent of any build contract, and it ends in a written document you can hand to your board.

Scope

What this covers

A consultant presenting to colleagues in a meeting room
01

Architecture review

An independent read on whether your current design holds at three times the load, where the failure points sit and what the three highest value changes would be.

02

Technical due diligence

For investors and acquirers: code quality, key person risk, security posture, licence exposure, infrastructure cost and a realistic estimate of what the roadmap will actually take.

03

Build versus buy

Costed comparison across three to five years including integration, maintenance and the switching cost of getting it wrong. We have talked clients out of builds more than once.

04

Security assessment

Threat model, dependency and secret scanning, access review and a prioritised remediation plan with effort estimates against each item.

05

Modernization roadmap

A staged plan to get from the current system to the target, sequenced so business value lands early and no stage requires a freeze on feature work.

Stack

What we build it with

Tools are chosen per project and justified in an architecture decision record. This is what we reach for most often in this practice.

Architecture decision recordsC4 modellingThreat modellingCost modellingLoad and capacity testingStatic analysis

Deliverables

What you actually receive

  • Written report, typically twenty to forty pages
  • Prioritised findings with effort and impact against each
  • Costed options, including the option of doing nothing
  • Working session with your engineering and executive teams
  • No obligation to engage us for the build

Questions

What clients ask first

How long does a review take?
Two to six weeks depending on system size. Due diligence under a deal timeline can be compressed to about ten working days.
Will you recommend yourselves for the build?
We charge a fixed fee for the review and state plainly where we have an interest. Plenty of our reviews end with a recommendation to hire in house or stay with the incumbent vendor.
Can you review a system you did not build?
That is the point. Independence is what makes the report worth reading.

Need technology consulting?

Send a short brief and a senior engineer will read it. You get a written response with our honest read on scope, risk and cost within one business day. No discovery call required to get a real answer.

  • A senior engineer reads every brief
  • NDA signed before you share anything sensitive
  • No sales sequence, no automated follow ups