Independent technology strategy and CTO advisory for growing businesses - a senior outside perspective, and candid challenge, on the decisions that will shape the next few years for your business.
Start a conversationPlenty of technology organisations under real pressure continue to function. But they are working without direction - reactive, stretched, and rarely able to lift their heads enough to think past the next release. Long-lived technical debt goes unresolved and releases feel slow and ungainly. The nimble startup approach can no longer support a maturing business with high expectations.
This isn't a failure of the teams themselves, but rather the absence of a strategic imperative to guide daily behaviours. The good news is it is fixable, and businesses can lift themselves out of this situation to become the mature organisation they want to be. The solution is to connect what the business is trying to become to what the technology function actually builds and how it behaves.
Engagements are shaped around what the technology organisation in a business actually needs, focused on five areas.
A confidential sounding board for the person carrying the technology agenda - priorities, trade-offs, influencing upward, and building a team that can operate without them in the room.
Where the estate is now, where the business needs it to be, and a roadmap that connects the two - including honest options analysis on whether to continue, rebuild or re-platform.
A practical review of delivery, engineering practice, DevOps, security, reliability and continuity - prioritised by impact, feasibility and business value.
Examine how the business keeps creating new value rather than only maintaining what it already has, through process, culture and a tolerance for uncertainty - and applying new tools to take it to the next level.
Structure, reporting lines, roles and capabilities, leadership model, career paths and culture - because how you organise should be a strategic choice, not a consequence.
Ramekin Strategy is the consultancy practice of Oliver Deakin, working with technology leaders in businesses whose ways of working have not kept pace with their ambitions.
Oli's background has been in technology leadership and strategy across a wide range of domains, from large corporates to small businesses. He started as a software engineer, close to the code, but over time recognised that technical delivery is often disconnected from the business outcomes and long-term vision it is meant to serve. Through roles as CTO, board advisor and as a strategic and organisational leader, he has made it his mission to help the businesses he works with achieve their best with technology and people.
Much of the value in an outside adviser is the perspective they can give you. They have seen many of the same issues before and how they were solved, have no position or reputation to defend, and nothing to lose by saying the thing several people in the room are already thinking. Mix in years of setting the direction and leading the teams that had to deliver on it, and you get a viewpoint that is usually impossible to attain from within the organisation.
The aim is always the same: a technology function that knows where it is going, and keeps going there long after the engagement has ended.
If your business is ready for its next stage, this is where to start.
An introductory conversation costs nothing, and we will rapidly explore whether there is an opportunity to improve.