01 · The team“Our people are good. Why are we falling behind on new tech?”
Because your developers ship the product that pays the bills. They don't have ten hours a week to read about vector databases, agent frameworks, or computation expressions. The tools move; the team holds the fort.
What closes that gap is not a replacement team. It's know-how transferred into the team you already have — so the next thing carries your team's fingerprints, not a consultant's.
02 · The body shop“Can't we just hire fifty contractors?”
No. You've seen the offshore model. You've seen the staffing agency. You end up managing more contracts than code. Quality is a lottery. The knowledge leaves with the contract.
In-house stays. Boost is brought in. Pair-program with senior help for a quarter — keep the result forever.
03 · The two-week shine“We paid for an expensive consultant. Two weeks it was great. Now what?”
Then normal gravity resumed, and you were back where you started — minus a budget line. Slide 42 doesn't maintain itself.
A useful engagement ends with something your team owns: an architectural decision they can defend, a tooling chain they can rerun, a piece of code they wrote with help and now maintain alone. Not a certificate.
04 · Metrics theatre“We added tests, coverage, analyzers. The project still limps. Why?”
Because automated tests on a cold project don't revive it. Coverage dashboards are a green light on a dead engine. Unit tests around broken architecture preserve the breakage.
When a project has fallen in the well, ropes from above are the answer — not more metrics. The question is always the same: does this change produce value now, or over time? If neither — cut it.
05 · Agile, actually“We're agile. So why doesn't it feel like it?”
Because the Agile Manifesto was seventeen developers saying one thing: trust motivated people and let understanding emerge from the work. The industry that grew on top of it sells the opposite — rigid ceremonies, process police, velocity dashboards, Schema-F stamped onto teams that don't fit it.
Schema-F Scrum is not agile. That's the mistake German engineering teams have been repeating for forty years.
“The Agile Industrial Complex imposing methods on people is an absolute travesty.” — Martin Fowler, 2018
“It breaks my heart to see the ideas we wrote about in the Agile Manifesto used to make developers' lives worse, instead of better.” — Ron Jeffries, 2018
06 · How we work“Okay. How do you actually work?”
Short. Scoped. Against a real problem on your codebase, with your people in the room. Five shapes, equal weight, no package ranking:
- AI Adoption Review — a shortlist of AI moves that fit your product, your stack, your team.
- In-House Upskilling Sprints — pair-programming and spikes that leave your developers able to ship the next thing alone.
- Architecture Second Opinion — a written argument about what's working, what's decaying, what moves next.
- Pragmatic Delivery Review — the two or three practices that actually produce value; what to drop.
- Hands-on Engineering — selective, for problems nested enough that a tool-hire makes sense.
07 · Remote“Can you do this remotely?”
Yes. DACH and remote EU, both supported. Onsite for team-facing workshops when it earns its flight.
08 · The agency“What about our existing agency?”
Different job. An agency builds more capacity for you. I make your existing team capable of building it themselves. Neither is a replacement for the other.
09 · F#“We don't use F#.”
Good. Most of my client work is C# and .NET, TypeScript, and the mix everyone actually has. F# is how I think; it is not a prerequisite for working with me.
10 · Two weeks“We only need help for two weeks.”
Then you don't need me. I am interested in engagements that leave something standing after I'm gone. A fortnight glow-up isn't that.
11 · Cost“Sounds expensive.”
Less than hiring a senior full-time. Scoped explicitly; no retainer trap. If an engagement can't justify itself on a single page of outcomes, it shouldn't exist.
12 · Why you“What makes you different?”
Honestly — every dying software project I've seen died the same way: buzzword compliance replacing engineering judgement. The consulting I sell is the opposite of that.
Fifteen years in .NET. Recognized F# Expert (F# Software Foundation, 2019). Creator of FsHttp — invited by Don Syme into the official fsprojects organization. Co-founder of the PXL Clock, a programmable hardware product shipping from a small team without a framework textbook.
I'd rather show than claim.
13 · Start“Okay. How do we start?”
One email. Tell me where the project is stuck, not what you want to hire me for — I'll suggest the smallest engagement that would actually move it.