Working Together

The firm sells you a team, not a person. This has its own advantages and disadvantages. The person who impresses you during the initial stage is typically not the same person doing the actual work. Once the contract is signed, the project gets delegated to other people.

When you talk to me, you can be assured that I am the one carrying out the work throughout the whole engagement. It gives additional assurance in qualifications of the person working on your project, outcomes quality, and it reduces the traction caused by handing-off and re-explanations.

You have the assurance that you will be working with highly qualified consultant.

Furthermore, an individual advisor is not influenced by external incentives. Firstly, many firms have agreements with vendors to sell their specific solutions. Secondly, the firm typically has an interest in extending the engagement or upselling, because they have a bench of staff to be utilized. I don't - my direct interest is in solving your problem correctly, since my personal reputation is dependent on outcomes and not shared with other members of the company.

Working with a firm has some advantages: more people in case of sudden expansion of the scope, and available cover if one specific person becomes unavailable. For most of what I do – engineering leadership, recovery, technical assessment, or architectural decisions - that extra capacity usually is not what's needed. If it is, that needs to be discussed.

More on the background this judgment comes from →

I manage my bandwidth carefully to avoid overcommitment. Therefore, I maintain carefully balanced workload to ensure steady progress on each engagement.

I keep documentation and knowledge bank on client side up-to date, so your team does not depend on any information I keep in my head.

My professional experience is rooted in traditional staff positions, not an independent client list. The testimonials available on this website are excerpts from my work peers’ and managers’ references, and they are completely verifiable on my LinkedIn page.

I deliberately avoided naming some of the companies cited on this website. Contractually I am unable to use their names beyond LinkedIn and similar websites. All track records are part of my documented work history and verifiable at my LinkedIn profile.

Usually, the return on investment in technical specialists is measured by avoided loss. Examples are a measurable drop in critical incidents, compliance deadlines met or product delivery being pulled back on track.

Even so, many companies require CTO only for a fraction of a standard working week. This is particularly relevant for small companies and startups. Hiring a full-time CTO on in this market will cost well above my monthly rates.

Most of my recent work was executed in the highly regulated markets of banking and insurance across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). This included specifically compliance-focused projects monitored closely by the Central Bank of UAE and the State Bank of Pakistan. If your business domain is outside banking or insurance, it is worth a direct conversation rather than making assumptions.

A negative team response typically indicates that the engagement and external advisor’s role in it were not framed clearly from the very beginning. Typically, in the first weeks of any engagement, a clear explanation of my work scope and limitations of my role to the team is crucial for the team’s support. Once team is assured, that I am not here to replace someone’s role or judgement, but to execute specific calls – the collaboration starts running more smoothly.

I prefer to discuss all my technical concerns directly, with all stakeholders in the room. The final decision is always yours, but I provide comprehensive explanations and reasoning supporting my point, as well as pros and cons for every solution.

I push back whenever I believe it is necessary. My reputation depends on being right more often than not.

The work process depends on working model.

For technical advisory we will have a fixed block of hours weekly for whatever requires attention that week – architectural reviews, technical decision, or vendor call. Additionally I will reserve extra ad-hoc availability for anything urgent.

For embedded leadership, the working week looks like a normal week within the team: standups, technical decisions, direct involvement into delivery and engineers` mentoring.

The project-based involvement will require more presence than the technical advisory model, and less involvement than embedded leadership. This will be decided based on required scope.

Both, depending on the engagement. Technical advisory is providing external advice: architectural decisions, vendor evaluations, and others – without day-to-day involvement. However, embedded leadership is fully hands-on, as part of delivery. Team mentoring and new channels roll-out typically requires low-level participation including code reviews and demonstration of engineering / architectural decision frameworks to the rest of the team.