Nobody understands the unique challenges facing the engineering team better than the team itself. The key is to bring this forward in a constructive way.

Through a series of surveys, interviews, and workshops, we explore the problems, opportunities, and gaps, drawing out feedback and ideas from all quarters of the engineering team through a safe and structured process. The end result is a “core dump” of the group mind that I then organise, work with the team to prioritise, and turn into a roadmap to support a step-change in outcomes.

Using a proprietary survey based on theories of psychological flow and my own observations of the key traits of healthy, high-performing teams, I quickly gain a snapshot of the individual and team dynamics that are helping or hindering effectiveness.

This approach provides instant feedback and improvement opportunities to each participant, as well as a group picture that I compare against statistically-significant samples to produce a detailed report on the state of the team, as well as next steps required to improve morale, retention, and productivity.

If you would like to see this for yourself, you can take the survey now.

Strategy and team are important ingredients to the success of any group, but in engineering in particular having the right tools, technologies, and rituals is essential.

Through structured feedback, I take the team through an inspection of best practices in software engineering. The results are use to identify the most important areas to remediate as well as the key strengths to build upon.

We then translate this into an actionable, agreed plan with clear deliverables and responsibilities.

One of the challenges of scaling a technology venture is that when technically outstanding individual contributors are promoted into leadership roles, a completely new skillset becomes the measure of their success. Far too often, startups and scale-ups under-invest in leadership support and then wonder why their “rockstar” teams are having trouble performing as a band.

I bring decades of hands-on leadership and thousands of hours of coaching experience to bear in helping technical leaders realise their fuller potential in a manner that is both authentic and impactful.

Read more from past clients in their own words about how coaching has helped.

Fast-growing companies can’t afford leadership gaps, especially at the top of the engineering function. I have had the pleasure of not only bridging this gap but accelerating the likelihood of success for my successors on a number of occasions. This key support at a critical time in the story of the business, and led to significant successful exits as the team went from strength to strength after my carefully-planned departure.

I have also worked with clients on a fractional basis for many years, providing a level of senior guidance and strategy often out of reach to all but the largest companies.

I have had the pleasure of working in this way with a wide array of technology-focused companies over the years. You can read about their results in their own words here.