Rory Gibson - fractional and interim CTO

Making technology teams effective

I'm a consulting Chief Technology Officer.

I work with companies and investors to solve technology problems.

Examples of how I work:

as your part-time ('fractional interim') CTO for a period of time
performing Technology Due Diligence on potential acquisitions
to coach and mentor your CTO, VP Engineering, Engineering Director, etc
as an advisor to your board or CEO, giving you impartial and impactful advice about technology
as a Non Executive Director
to give you a technology assessment of how well your engineering (and product!) teams are working
for specific projects around architecture, Big Data and security

I have two decades' experience of building, running and leading technology teams - development, architecture, team leadership, agile and project management, tactics and strategy. I've worked in the public sector, in agencies, in startups, in gambling, fintech, marketing tech, big data and enterprise software; whatever area your company works in, I can help.

Clients

What I do

Fractional / Interim / Consulting CTO

Many startups don't need to hire a full-time CTO. Getting an experienced one is expensive! Not only that, but many of the CTO's with the chops to help your company scale up are no longer hands-on enough to help you build the thing in the first place.

I often engage part-time with startups and scale-ups who want a good combination of strategy and tactics, from someone who's still close enough to the code to be able to tell what works and what doesn't (and why).

Bringing me in part-time (what we call being a "fractional CTO", because you get a fraction of me!) gives a good price / performance ratio. If that sounds like it might be helpful to your business please get in touch.

Due Diligence

I regularly undertake technology-focussed Due Diligence reviews for Venture Capital and Private Equity houses. These range in scope from quick summaries to multi-day (or multi-week!) deep dives.

Sometimes I do this informally for companies who are planning to raise money (or who have made some changes), and want an objective opinion on how well they're doing.

If either of these services are of interest, please email me to talk. References are available upon request.

My style

Since about 2002 I've been an advocate of agile and of the XP practices. I've always believed in the agile manifesto more than I have in commercialised methodologies like Scrum, SAFe and so on. I tend to look at tech and people problems from first principles, and to start by simplifying wherever possible.

I believe that teams make software, and that a boss's responsibility is to help, and get the hell out of the way. I try to practice Radical Candor in my management, and if I finish a day feeling that I've been kind, honest and helpful then I'm doing OK. There's more about how I work in my Manager README.

Paying it forward

If you're a startup founder, or an aspiring tech leader, or a person with an idea or a problem, and you think that an hour of talking to someone like me might help you out of a hole, I'd like to help . You can have an hour of my time; call it free tech consultancy, or founder therapy :) Bonus if you're from an under-represented group. In person. London (West End or central), daytime, somewhere with coffee.

Email me if you're interested, or you want to intro someone who might be.

Articles

2022 in review

Older articles

I've written a fair amount over the years. Here's a sample of some of the more popular posts from the last while.

Where to find me

I'm usually rorygibson in online communities. There is another Rory Gibson, but he is an actor in Hollywood and he is not me.