IT Consulting

Straight answers on strategy, architecture, and what to build next. Here is how a consultation works.

  • Build, buy, or integrate
  • System reviews
  • Migrations
  • Choosing software
  • Second opinions

From a question to a decision

Four steps, and you can stop after any one of them.

  1. Before any commitment

    A first conversation

    You describe the situation and the decision in front of you. We ask the questions that matter: who depends on it, what it costs today, and what happens if nothing changes.

    You get an honest first view, and whether it is worth looking any closer.

  2. If it needs a closer look

    We look at what you have

    We read the documentation, look at the systems and the code, and talk to the people who use them every day, because they usually know where the problems are.

    You get an agreed list of what we will look at, before we start.

  3. Written down

    A recommendation in plain English

    The options, what each would cost and risk, and the one we would choose in your position, with the reasons. Short enough to read in one sitting.

    You get a document you can share with your team, your board, or another supplier.

  4. Your call

    You decide what happens next

    Do it yourselves, take the plan to somebody else, or have us build it through Software Development. The advice is the same either way.

    You get a plan that belongs to you, with no obligation to us.

Questions worth a second opinion

Build, buy, or integrate?

Whether the software you need already exists, whether what you have can be connected, or whether it really does have to be built.

Is our system worth keeping?

A review of an existing application, its code and its hosting, before you spend any more on it.

How do we move off the old system?

A plan for replacing or migrating software in stages, so the business keeps running while it happens.

Is this quote reasonable?

A second opinion on a proposal from another developer or vendor: what is missing, what looks padded, and what to ask.

Why ask a developer

We build and run software for a living, including our own products, Secret Drop and File Drop. The advice comes from people who live with the consequences of their own recommendations, and if the right answer is a package off the shelf, we will say so.