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The Pragmatic Path

Wrestling with a software project that no longer ships?

You've tried the expensive consultant. You've tried the two-week training. You've tried the ceremony framework with the certificate. Yet, here you are.

There's a pragmatic path out. It doesn't involve a framework you buy. It looks more like the thing on the right — small, concrete, working in front of your eyes.

Let's talk through your situation

A 30-minute call. No slides. No pitch deck.

Live Playground — type → shape

Inferred shape

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Edit the code. See the inferred shape.

Sound familiar?

Six symptoms of a project that needs ropes, not metrics.

  • AI is "obviously important" — nobody's said what problem it solves in your product.
  • Your developers ship features; they don't have ten hours a week for vector databases.
  • The offshore pilot turned into contract-management overhead.
  • A consultant came, inspired everyone, left a deck, changed nothing.
  • Test coverage is up. The project is still broken.
  • You do Scrum perfectly. It doesn't feel agile.

The six customer-frames

You probably see your project in one of these.

Each frame names a pattern we've watched repeat across teams. Empathy first — then the re-frame.

Frame 01 — AI-Transfer Gap

"AI is obviously important. We just don't know how to use it for us."

You've shipped a ChatGPT wrapper nobody uses. Management wants AI in the product by Q3 and hasn't said what problem it solves. The vendor demos keep promising the same three things.

What's actually missing is the bridge — from "AI is capable" to "AI delivers measurable value in your product, on your codebase, maintained by your team". The bridge is engineering, not a platform.

Frame 02 — Team-at-the-Edge

"Our people are good. They just can't keep up in daily business."

Your developers build 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 you need is not a replacement team. You need know-how transfer into the team you already have — so your product carries your team's fingerprints, not a consultant's.

Frame 03 — Body-Shop Trap

"Fifty cheap developers won't solve this."

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. Software craftsmanship is not an arbitrage play. Pair-program with senior help for a quarter, keep the result forever.

Frame 04 — Two-Week Shine

"The expensive consultant worked. For two weeks."

You paid. Everyone was inspired. There was a deck. Then the normal gravity resumed and you were back where you started — minus a budget line.

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. Not slide 42.

Frame 05 — Metrics on a Dying Project

"We added tests, coverage, analyzers. The project is still broken."

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 pragmatic question is always the same: does this change produce value now, or over time? If neither — cut it.

Frame 06 — Scrum-Industry Inversion

"We're agile. Why doesn't it feel like it?"

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, certified process police, velocity dashboards, rigid frameworks stamped onto teams that don't fit them.

Schema-F Scrum is not agile. That is the mistake being repeated for forty years in German engineering teams. Consulting for agility. Not for the Agile Industrial Complex.

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, Manifesto signatory · ronjeffries.com
The Agile Industrial Complex imposing methods on people is an absolute travesty. Martin Fowler, Manifesto signatory · martinfowler.com
The word "agile" has been subverted to the point where it is effectively meaningless. Dave Thomas, Manifesto signatory · pragdave.me
You can implement Scrum perfectly and not be in the least bit agile. Allen Holub · x.com

How we work together

Engagements, not deliverables. Equal weight, no ranking.

Shape 01

AI Adoption Review

A diagnostic engagement for product teams that know AI belongs in the roadmap but aren't sure where. Output: a shortlist of AI moves that fit your product, your stack, your team — with effort and risk estimates you can defend in the next board meeting.

Shape 02

In-House Upskilling Sprints

A short, high-bandwidth engagement that leaves your own developers able to ship the next thing without outside help. Pair-programming, reviews, dedicated spikes around a real problem — not a workshop deck. Delivered on your codebase, with your people.

Shape 03

Architecture Second Opinion

A neutral, time-boxed read of where your system is heading. You get a written argument — what's working, what's decaying, what moves next — plus a conversation with a senior voice who is neither selling you a replatform nor defending the status quo.

Shape 04

Pragmatic Delivery Review

For teams stuck in ceremony theatre. We identify the two or three practices that actually produce value and recommend what to drop — starting from the Agile Manifesto, not the framework textbook.

Shape 05

Hands-on Engineering (selective)

When the problem is so nested — AI + functional architecture + DSL + developer tooling — that a tool-hire makes sense, I take on the build, pair with your team, and hand it back fully documented.

Proof — artefacts, not testimonials

Things I've already built and shipped.

I'd rather show than claim. No invented quotes, no fake logos — just public work with dates.

This is the kind of thing I build for clients — prototyped in the hero of a landing page.

Objections, answered

Likely questions.

Sounds expensive.

Less than hiring a senior full-time. Scoped explicitly; no retainer trap.

Can you do this remotely?

DACH and remote EU, both supported. Onsite workshop possible for team-facing engagements.

We already have an agency.

An agency builds more capacity. I make your existing team capable. Different job.

We don't use F#.

Good — most of my client work is C#/.NET, TypeScript, and the mix everyone actually has. F# is how I think; it's not a prerequisite.

We only need help for two weeks.

Then you don't need me. I'm interested in engagements that leave something standing after I'm gone.

About

Why me for this problem.

Ronald Schlenker — fifteen years in .NET, creator of FsHttp, TypeFighter, and several other OSS libraries the F# community uses. Recognized F# Expert (F# Foundation, 2019). Co-founder of the PXL Clock — a programmable hardware product that is itself a working example of pragmatic engineering: small team, in-house discipline, shipped without a framework textbook.

The reason this page is written the way it is: every time I see a dying software project, it died the same way — buzzword compliance replacing engineering judgement. The consulting I sell is the opposite of that.

Based in Frankfurt. Work with DACH and remote-EU teams. Trading as PureState IT Consulting.

Let's talk through your situation.

A 30-minute call. Describe the project. I'll tell you whether I'm the right fit — and whether I think the shape matches one of the engagements above.

hello@schlenkr.dev