Your team is smart. Your product is good. Why does every new technology still feel like a decision you'd rather outsource?
You don't need fifty cheap developers. You need your own team sharper than last quarter — and the know-how to stay that way. Outside help, brought in where it counts. Skill and ownership, kept in-house where they belong.
Four situations we hear almost every week. If two or more fit, we should probably talk.
Your people are good. They can't keep up in daily business.
They build the product that pays the bills. Between standups and tickets, there's no ten-hour slot for vector databases or agent frameworks.
Fifty cheap developers won't solve this.
You've seen the offshore model. You ended up managing more contracts than code. The knowledge left with the contract.
The expensive consultant worked. For two weeks.
A deck, a burst of inspiration, then normal gravity resumed. You went back to the same problems — minus one budget line.
AI is obviously important. You don't know how to use it for you.
The ChatGPT wrapper nobody uses. The vendor demos promising the same three things. What's missing is the bridge — not another platform.
In-house stays.
Boost is brought in.
Software craftsmanship is not an arbitrage play. It's a skill your team carries — to the next project, the next hire, the next product decision. The sensible thing is not to replace it. It's to sharpen it, pair with senior help for a quarter, and keep the result forever.
That's the only frame this engagement works in. Outside help where it's useful. Ownership and know-how staying exactly where they belong: with your people.
05 — Engagement shapesHow we work together
Five shapes, equal weight. Each shape is an outcome, not a deliverable. The flagship — upskilling your own people — sits first on purpose.
01 / flagship
Outcome · your team ships the next thing without outside help
In-House Upskilling Sprints
A short, high-bandwidth engagement that leaves your own developers able to build and defend the next move. Pair-programming, reviews, dedicated spikes — around a real problem in your codebase, not a workshop deck. The week after we stop, your team keeps going. That's the whole point.
02
Outcome · a shortlist of AI moves that actually fit you
AI Adoption Review
A diagnostic for product teams who know AI belongs on the roadmap but aren't sure where. You leave with shortlisted moves scoped to your stack and your team, with effort and risk estimates you can defend in the next board meeting.
03
Outcome · a written argument for the next architectural move
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 a replatform nor defending the status quo.
04
Outcome · fewer ceremonies, more shipping
Pragmatic Delivery Review
For teams stuck in ceremony theater. 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.
05
Outcome · a built thing, documented, handed back
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.
06 — Six situationsWhich one is yours right now?
Each situation starts with what you're probably feeling. The reframe follows — the practical move that actually works.
i.
“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. So the gap widens — 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.
ii.
“Fifty cheap developers won't solve this.”
You've seen the offshore model. You've seen the staffing agency. You ended up managing more contracts than code. Quality was a lottery. The knowledge left 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.
iii.
“The expensive consultant worked. For two weeks.”
You paid. Everyone was inspired. There was a deck. Then 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.
iv.
“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.
v.
“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.
vi.
“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.
Schema-F Scrum is not agile. Consulting for agility — not for the Agile Industrial Complex.
07 — Proof, not testimonialsThings built and handed back.
Public artefacts, dated, all of them still running with someone else in charge. That's the whole thesis of this page, compressed.
The questions we hear before we start — answered plainly, so you don't have to ask first.
We already have an agency.
An agency builds more capacity. That's a different job. What I do is make the team you already have more capable — so the next decision, the next architecture call, the next AI move happens in-house. Agencies scale output. Upskilling sprints raise the ceiling.
Sounds expensive.
Less than hiring a senior engineer full-time. Scoped explicitly — defined start, defined end, defined outcome. No retainer trap, no open-ended monthly invoice.
Can you do this remotely?
DACH and remote EU, both supported. Onsite workshop possible for team-facing engagements where a full day in one room actually moves things. Otherwise — high-bandwidth pair sessions work well.
We don't use F#.
Good — most client work is C#/.NET, TypeScript, and the mix everyone actually has. F# is how I think; it's not a prerequisite for working together.
We only need help for two weeks.
Then you probably don't need me. What I'm interested in are engagements that leave something standing after I'm gone — a team, a tooling chain, a defensible decision. Two weeks rarely does that honestly.
What does a typical sprint actually look like?
Usually four to eight weeks. Two to four hours of pair work per day, in your codebase, on a real problem. Plus async review and written notes that stay with your team. We pick the problem together in the first conversation — that's the point of a first call.
09 — AboutI don't replace teams. I sharpen them.
Ronald Schlenker — fifteen years in .NET, creator of FsHttp, TypeFighter, and several OSS libraries the F# community uses daily. Recognized F# Expert (F# Foundation, 2019). Co-founder of the PXL Clock — a programmable hardware product that's 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 dying software project I've ever seen died the same way — buzzword compliance replacing engineering judgement. The consulting I sell is the opposite of that.
FrankfurtDACH & remote EUTrading as PureState IT Consulting
The job isn't to swap your team out. It's to give them the sharper tools, the harder questions, and the patient pair-work — so the thing they build next is stronger than the thing they built last. That's the whole engagement.
Let's talk through your situation.
One email. Tell us where your team is and what the next thing needs to be. We figure out together whether an upskilling sprint, a review, or something else is the right shape — or whether you don't need outside help at all.