A consultancy that writes the software. We work out what the problem actually is, then the same people build the thing that solves it — and we run our own products the same way.
Advice that is never built is a document. Software built without the advice is a guess. Neither half is worth much on its own, and they are usually sold separately.
Discovery, requirements and architecture. Most of the value is in working out what the problem actually is, which is rarely what the brief says it is — and in writing down what is still unknown as plainly as what is settled.
The people who wrote the recommendation write the code. There is no hand-off to a delivery team that was not in the room, and no second discovery at the stage where it costs the most to find something out.
When advice and delivery are bought from different suppliers, the split is comfortable for both of them. If the estimate turns out to be wrong, the advice was sound and the build was at fault, or the other way around, and the client pays for the argument.
We do not have that exit. If the architecture we recommended turns out to be the wrong one, we are the people who have to make it work — which concentrates the mind at the only stage where changing it is still cheap.
Alongside client work we build and run software we own, in the same markets and on the same stack. It is where an approach gets tested before it is recommended to anybody else.
A firm that only ever spends other people’s money never finds out which of its opinions are expensive. Running our own products means the trade-offs we recommend are ones we have already paid for ourselves.
If you can describe what is going wrong, that is enough to begin. The first conversation is free, and more often than not it changes the brief.