Exceptional software isn't hard...

There are just 4,747 ways to screw it up! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

We rescue founders and executives from dumpster fire projects and help rejuvenate their burnt-out teams1.

"Those are things you just can't buy from much larger outsource companies." Jonathan Erwin , RedeApp CEO

1. It's ok if your team's in good (ish) shape...you don't have to be on death's door to get our attention.

Pain? So much pain!

The marketing folks say we should emphasize pain points. Any of this sound familiar?

  • Your team is hesitant (maybe even scared) to make changes or deploy to production systems.
  • Progress, when present, is slow and painful. One step forward...one-and-a-half, two, maybe even three steps back.
  • Your support team (maybe that's you?) is swamped because..."the product's reliability objectives are still aspirational".
  • Some team members may need to be fired. But are you sure and do you know which ones? Performance challenges that appear intrinsic may often be environmental.
  • You are losing ground to the competition.
  • Your developers keep leaving and you're not sure why.
  • You spend more time fighting fires than building features.
  • Nobody's setting clear priorities, driving momentum, or stepping up to lead. And it shows.
  • You have (or are) a strong leader who is setting clear, important, and often urgent priorities...that change at least three times a week.
  • Your devs spend more time in meetings than coding.
  • The software drives business priorites and limits opportunities rather than adapting easily to change.
  • Automated testing....what automated testing?

Why Us?

Here's what makes us different (and it's not the Font Awesome icons):

Powered by Level 12

LeanCTO is a venture Led by Randy Syring and powered by the team at Level 12 .

Historically, Level 12's CTO consulting was integrated with larger development projects. But, over the years, we've encountered a number of dumpster fire projects and burnt out dev teams that, for various reasons, couldn't engage Level 12 to help with development.

We've realized we can still help such projects/teams or, even better, prevent them from getting to that point. To that end, LeanCTO focuses exclusively on consulting and coaching to apply Level 12's software engineering experience and practices to external projects and teams.

Since we aren't doing the development work, our time investment is smaller and engagement costs are more accessible.

With LeanCTO being backed by Level 12 you won't find any consulting-only consultants here! All LeanCTO consultants are also involved in hands-on software development, managing active projects, and leading dev team members for Level 12 clients.

That is, all the school-of-hard-knocks lessons we've learned doing day-in-and-day-out dev work are what we teach and coach at LeanCTO. We're not offering hypotheticals or theory...we know this stuff works because we have the scars to prove it!

Ready to Engage?

  • We could add 19 more sections to this site, but...really, would you read them?
  • Sales usually sucks!. But, we have to start somewhere so let's tackle it head-on.
  • We've done this before. It only takes an email (maybe two) or a 15 min Zoom to know if we're wasting each other's time.

Have details you'd like to share? Send an email.

Chicken out? :o) You can keep a safe distance on LinkedIn.

Led by Randy Syring and powered by the team at Level 12 .

Serving startups, SMB, and mid-market alike with an emphasis on the Louisville, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and Nashville markets.

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