Thrifty technological consulting

Dzmitry Harachka
IT consultant / Founder and owner
of a software development service company
Agile, Scrum expert, CI/CD and Delivery practice
consultant
Thrifty technological
consulting by the founder
and acting CEO
My goal is to set the evolutionary path for your product development without fuss and hasty decisions as well as to nurture a value-oriented development approach among your engineers, establish Agile culture based on transparency and open dialog. At the same time, not to harm what you created, and keep your team.
stats
humans
lamp

Consulting Services for IT Product Development and IT Project Process Management

Solving
business challenges
  1. Creation of a plan to solve the company’s business issues associated with technological challenges or product management and delivery processes.
  2. Scaling up a complex product, overcoming the project technological crisis (including the struggle against accumulation of multiple technical debts, bugs in production).
  3. Solution of challenges related to the process organization and management: lack of a value-based development approach, low engineer team controllability, non-transparent processes for the company’s CEO, permanent “on-fire” mode in the project.
  4. Mediation between key product owners. Resolving long-standing conflicts and misunderstandings, establishing productive cooperation.
Supervision of project
management and product delivery processes
  1. Setting up development, quality assurance, software delivery processes
  2. Establishing a systematic and effective approach to problem definition, estimation and decomposition
  3. Organize and improve the planning, risk assessment and crisis management process
  4. Implementing Scrum methodology
Continuous Integration
and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD). Stabilization of product releases
  1. Development of a strategy for the implementation/ modernization of continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD). Stabilization of product releases.
  2. Implementation of a strategy for continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) modernization.
Technological
modernization
  1. Development of a long-term strategy to upgrade the technological part of your business.
  2. Implementation of the best engineering practices at the level of company culture, create self-organizing teams (test automation, continuous integration and delivery, etc.)
  3. New life for your software. Development of a strategy for architecture modernization and safe refactoring, including processes changes.
  4. Implementation of the Data Driven Testing approach to stabilize product releases. Determination of bottlenecks to cover them with 80% of automated tests. Architectural and leadership assistance in building a test automation framework.
  5. Development of a complex product with high component cohesion and legacy code.
Improvement
of the psychological atmosphere in the team
  1. Overcoming learned helplessness of specialists and psychologically difficult atmosphere in the team.
  2. Mediation of conflicts in the project, establishing a healthy psychological atmosphere in the team.

Feedback on cooperation with zmicer.consulting

rect

Over 10 Years of Experience as CTO, CEO,
and Scrum Master

The exclusivity of the offer lies in Dzmitry’s unique experience. Technological, operational, managerial, and business expertise are the competencies on which the proposed consulting service is built. Basing on his extensive experience in IT solution development, Dzmitry will assess the situation of your project from several sides.

Technological <br>level
Technological
level
Dzmitry has a high technical competence in software development
Organizational and managerial level
Organizational and managerial level
Dzmitry has experience in setting up and optimizing the product development and delivery process, managing IT departments in companies, and building processes of various divisions in his own company
Business <br>level
Business
level
Founder and director of a sound, successful IT company, investor, co-founder, and mentor of several IT products
Technical Background

Dzmitry is a Java expert with over 17 years of experience. He went through various stages of engineering development over the years: starting from Junior developer to Senior specialist with extensive experience and competencies in software development. Then, he worked as an independent specialist for several years: participated in long-term projects as an IT consultant and gained experience as an Agile implementer as part of an international team of highly qualified experts. The next stage of his professional development was creating his own IT service company specializing in Java.

In consulting, Dzmitry applies his qualifications as an engineer, architect, and CTO, and leverages technological skills obtained over years of operation to identify the core of product problems. He instills the best engineering practices in developers at the value level (extreme programming values, Unit testing, CI/CD implementation), guides project teams in solving complex engineering issues and quickly navigates the technical features of a product. Initiating and building a systematic process of managing technical debt is one of his strengths. Dzmitry has expertise in training IT specialists, too: he compiles educational programs, conducts lectures, and has many personal students in engineering, test automation, and management.

Having built departments for server and client-side development, test automation, DevOps, CI/CD consulting, etc., Dzmitry will be happy to apply his knowledge to your project.

Experience in Establishing Processes

Guided by Agile expertise and experience in organizing IT product delivery flows, Dzmitry quickly identifies weaknesses in project management and efficiently optimizes processes. Having skills in building management, sales, marketing, and development departments in his own company, Dzmitry applies a systematic approach to establish the processes from scratch, including establishing a culture in the team and creating plans for training and professional growth of employees.
For over 10 years, Dzmitry has been implementing Agile and Scrum in software development projects. The use of Scrum processes allows establishing regular deliveries of new product versions, ensuring teamwork transparency through daily stand-ups and demos of functionality created during the iteration. The analysis of achievements and problems of each iteration will be regularly held in retrospectives. Dzmitry will also help you establish reporting at all levels and integrate necessary tracking tools (Jira, Trello).

Dzmitry has a high degree of empathy and builds trust-based relationships with both the product owner and the team. This approach allows him to carry out transformations with no performance losses and increase the productivity of IT specialists. He will also help your team overcome learned helplessness.

Creation of His Own IT Service Company

As the founder of his own company, successfully operating for over 10 years, Dzmitry understands your concerns and “pains.” Thanks to his mindset of a business owner and investor, he efficiently solves issues related to moving by the company to a new level and its corresponding responsibilities to increase the product stability. He helps startups and early-stage enterprises introduce a management strategy.

A complex approach is a key to efficient consulting as it allows for the development of strategies, applying of which ensure product stability and company success. With a high level of empathy and wide practical experience in various IT roles, being a business person and a technology leader of his company, Dzmitry can quickly understand your pain points and provide workable strategies and solutions.

What Business Goals Can You
Achieve by Working with Dzmitry?

  1. Business entry to a higher development level
    By improving the product and processes, and, as a result, increase in profits, improvement of company public image and competitiveness.
  2. Entering new markets and clients' base widening
    Cooperation with larger customers, sales growth, international market entry (at a particular stage many technology companies are not ready for emerging challenges).
  3. Scaling of a complex product, overcoming a technological crisis on a project
    For business development in future and meeting current client's needs.
  1. Budget savings
    By implementing the best development and testing practices.
  2. Risk minimization and predictability
    Due to well-built processes.
  3. Team stability
    Stability and low turnover of valuable talents in the development team.
  4. Overcoming the learned helplessness of the team
    Proactive specialists with faith in themselves and a desire to develop your product.
  5. Сooperate with Dzmitry

Only Efficient
Consulting Tools

Personal<br> consultations <br>in a one-on-one format
Personal
consultations
in a one-on-one format
They include daily and/or weekly communication, during which the team sets goals, creates a plan and develops particular steps to address pressing issues
Business<br> transformation process support
Business
transformation process support
Dzmitry works with your company constantly: he communicates with the founders, is engaged in identifying challenges, and participates in the implementation of the proposed strategies. He also attends stand-ups, important meetings, communicates with the team, guides developers in solving technical issues
Business transformation <br>process support<br> + personal manager
Business transformation
process support
+ personal manager
Dzmitry appoints a manager for constant work with your company, who is deeply immersed in your processes, interacts with the team, performs organizational and management functions. This service type also includes training your team, conducting lectures, and personal communications to solve your issues aimed at obtaining a particular result

As practice shows, the third cooperation type allows you to achieve the highest result in the long term. It includes services such as personal management and allows you to sustain cultural team changes on a long-term basis. You can make sure in its efficiency by reviewing the implemented cases.

Review cases of completed projects
rect
rectangles

Involving Dzmitry in Your Project,
You Can Solve the Following
Challenges

Technical challenges of the product
  1. Product instability, bugs in production
  2. Accumulation of multiple bottlenecks in the product
  3. Irregular releases of new product versions (due to the lack of CI/CD)
  4. Product development complexity and high labor cost due to the high coherence of legacy code components
Process organization and management challenges
  1. Lack of a value-based development approach
  2. Low engineer team controllability
  3. Non-transparent processes for the company’s CEO
  4. Permanent “on-fire” mode on the project
Human resources challenges
  1. Learned helplessness
  2. Team nervousness
  3. High staff turnover
  4. Lack of a value-based approach and culture among engineers

Ignoring these challenges or responding to them late can lead to additional risks that negatively affect the profitability and scalability of the business. Building a strategy to address them requires significant managerial and technical experience. In such cases, the business owner needs the help of a specialist, who has an independent point of view on a specific situation and the project as a whole. This specialist should be able to offer the most efficient and safe solutions for the business.

Interesting Consulting Cases

Consulting on overcoming
the technological crisis
and improving the psychological atmosphere in the company that develops high-tech software
Creation of the unified system that helps new engineers quickly delve into a complex integration project

Over 17 Years of Experience
in IT

Experienced Java developer and architect, CEO, Founder of a successful software development service company, Master of Engineering sciences, IT conference speaker, SCJP/SCWCD, XP/Scrum expert.

A mathematician and programmer by education, Dzmitry is interested in modern genetics, paleontology, and physics (cosmology).

His great hobby is jazz music.

Java developer in international IT projects.

Lead Java developer, project coordinator.

Architect in international IT projects.

As part of an international team of experts, participates in the transformation of a major IT company as an Agile consultant.

Founder and CEO of his own IT company. Organizer of the international IT conference Solit (annually for 5 years).

Created his own educational program on Java, Test Automation, Frontend Development, Manual Testing.

Investor and owner of XML2Selenium product for test automation. It is a scalable Java-based platform for creating and controlling automated tests. Even QA engineers with no programming experience can build UI tests with this framework. The product is integrated with JUnit and runs over Selenium. 

Business trips and roadshows to the USA, Norway, EU countries (including the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Baltics, etc.).

Dzmitry provides IT business owners with personal consultations on various issues as an independent expert.

Thanks to Dzmitry’s managerial and strategic planning competencies, his IT company could preserve financial stability even amid the global crisis and pandemic. At the same time, sales volume increased and the customer base expanded. Dzmitry has also arranged an efficient remote work for the company’s employees while maintaining high-quality service.

10 Years as <br>Chief technology<br> officer (CTO)
10 Years as
Chief technology
officer (CTO)
Hundreds of IT projects have been successfully implemented under Dzmitry’s leadership.
10 Years of Experience in Setting Up Processes in Self-Organizing Teams
10 Years of Experience in Setting Up Processes in Self-Organizing Teams
Control over the Project Management Office.
Experience in building processes for various company departments:
project management, HR,
sales, marketing.
10 Years of Successful Business Management
10 Years of Successful Business Management
His own company has had no financial
debts or loans since its establishment. The company was created from scratch
as a service provider. Scrum and Kanban
are implemented in all company departments.
Cooperate with Dzmitry

Cooperation advantages

  1. Working on your project, Dzmitry examines your product, its architecture, management processes, and psychological climate in the team. Based on the analysis result, he shares with you an independent view that reflects the actual project state. The information received may not be enjoyable, but honesty in this matter is extremely important. You will be able to understand the scale of the issues, realize the current project situation, and accept the need to invest in particular practices and tools.

    Dzmitry has experience in building transparent Agile culture based on sincerity and honesty. All the questions in the cooperation process are resolved through dialog: you can openly speak about everything you doubt or disagree with. Joint decisions are made as a result of discussions, the outcome of which suits both parties. Having established such values in his company, Dzmitry successfully applies this approach to consulting and builds trusting long-term partnerships with clients that last 5 and more years.

    Honesty and openness
  2. Gradual and painless for the team transformations

    Employees often have internal resistance towards changes in the company. Dzmitry’s professional approach allows him to gradually and painlessly introduce new tools and practices. As part of consulting, Dzmitry explains the needs for the proposed solutions in plain language, shows the efficiency and performance of engineering practices (CI/CD, Unit tests creation, test automation) and Agile events in practice. As a result of this approach, the company owner and the team gain confidence in Dzmitry’s experience and trust him fully, which reduces the employees’ resistance towards changes. The team remains in its original composition even amid significant long-term changes. Most often all employees have the motivation to improve, but they lack knowledge, experience, and values to initiate and implement changes on their own.

  3. Dzmitry cooperates with customers from various countries including investors, C-levels, and company owners from the USA, the Netherlands, the UK, and India. Dzmitry also has partnership experience in the development of various IT solutions for clients from France, Germany, Ukraine, India, and Ireland. The background of cooperation with foreign customers allows him to be familiar with corporate culture and territorial features of various countries and establish working processes, focusing on their traditions, rules, and values.

    Ability to work within different cultural and territorial contexts
  4. Opportunity to expand your IT horizon

    As a part of the cooperation, Dzmitry immerses business owners into complex concepts of IT processes and infrastructure, if they are not related to software development. He explains how small investments in working out technical debt are returned by product scalability in the future. With Dzmitry, you will immerse yourself in current processes and approaches to software development, will understand the peculiarities of IT project management, and will be able to take part in building processes within the team in the future. This approach increases your independence and allows you to apply the gained experience to other projects.

  5. Dzmitry will be able to build a product development strategy over several years using his skills of strategic planning and professional affairs, which will allow you to avoid mistakes after the end of the cooperation. Guided by the plan provided by Dzmitry, you will be confident in the future of your business.

    Predictable future of your product

It’s not difficult for me to say “no” in our communication. I always show clients the real situation on the project and say what I’m sure of, but not things you would be pleased to hear. I don’t play political games with the customer. I perform my work honestly without getting involved in company internal relationships. My vision allows me to assess the situation on the project from different angles, understand the interests of stakeholders, and harmonize the psychological situation within the team. My motivation is to make your life calmer and better.

How to Order a Consulting Service?

The algorithm of interaction can vary depending on the situation on the project and the selected tariff:
Your request
Your request

Upon the receipt of your request we will contact you and schedule the first meeting-acquaintance (up to 1 hour)

Agreement
Agreement

Signing a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) from our side

Meeting-acquaintance
Meeting-acquaintance

The first meeting-acquaintance at which you describe your challenges and requirements and get short feedback

Set of services
Set of services

Determination of the most convenient cooperation type, set of services, consulting tools

Detailed study
Detailed study

Detailed study of your request

Improving processes
Improving processes

Taking necessary steps to improve processes and the product

Analysis of the efficiency
Analysis of the efficiency

Analysis of the efficiency of the measures taken (retrospectives)

Send a request
Detailed study of your request
  1. Analysis of your business processes, management strategy, and organizational strategy
  2. Assessment of opportunities and challenges of your business (may include business analysis, acquaintance with co-founders, the team)
  3. Development and presentation of a plan to implement changes
  4. Introduction of our manager to your team for temporary process management on agreed terms, weekly meetings, team chats monitoring

Prices and Tariffs

The information in the tariff table is rather conditional. Particular nuances, issues, and challenges of each project are discussed during the initial communication with Dzmitry that is held free of charge. Such an approach is essential to find the most efficient set of services for your situation. You can be sure that Dzmitry will provide the optimal solutions that are really required and important for the successful functioning of your business.

Services
Choose a tariff
Basic
5000$*
Includes analysis and development of the strategy to change processes without long-term implementation supervision
Choose a tariff
Standard
Hourly payment (500$ per hour) or fixed price (from 20.000$), by prior arrangement
Focus on implementing changes in the project processes
Choose a tariff
Expert
Hourly payment (500$ per hour) or fixed price (from 20.000$ per 6 months) + bonus based on KPIs, by prior arrangement
This cooperation type will bring the most lasting effect and will allow implementing changes at the level of the development team’s culture
Includes analysis and development of the strategy to change processes without long-term implementation supervision
Focus on implementing changes in the project processes
This cooperation type will bring the most lasting effect and will allow implementing changes at the level of the development team’s culture
Cooperation period
1-1.5 months
3-6 months
from 6 months to 2 years
Initial communication (up to 1 hour) - free
One-on-one consultations with key project participants (1 hour)
4 consultations
10 consultations per quarter
25 consultations per half a year
Analysis and identification of the real causes of project issues
Quality assessment of product management and development processes
Solving business challenges of a company, project, product
Creation of a plan to solve the company’s business issues related to technological challenges or product management and delivery processes
Scaling up a complex product and overcoming the technological crisis in the project (such as the struggle with accumulation of a large number of technical debts and bugs in production)
Solving issues related to organization and management processes: lack of a value-based development approach, low manageability of the development team, non-transparent processes for the company’s CEO, permanent “on-fire” mode in the project
Mediation between key product owners. Resolving long-standing conflicts and misunderstandings, establishing productive cooperation
Implementation of technological improvements
Strategy development to implement/upgrade continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD), stabilizing product releases
Strategy implementation to modernize continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD)
Implementation of the best engineering practices at the company culture level, creation of self-organizing teams (test automation, continuous integration and delivery, etc.)
New life for your software. Strategy development for architecture modernization and safe refactoring, including process changes. Evolution of a complex product with a high component cohesion and legacy code
Long-term strategy development to improve the technological component of your business
Data Driven Testing approach implementation to stabilize product releases. Determination of bottlenecks to cover them with 80% of automated tests. Architectural and leadership assistance in building a test automation framework
Arranging and improving organizational and management processes
Dzmitry’s proactive participation in stand-ups, retrospectives, and other strategically important team meetings: focusing team members on what is important for the product, mediation (contributes to the experience transfer and culture building)
Participation in retrospectives
Supervising project management and product delivery processes
Overcoming learned helplessness of specialists, getting out of the psychologically difficult atmosphere in the team
Project team mentoring by Dzmitry (conducting practical team trainings, feedback, strategic sessions according to the plans)
Project conflicts mediating, establishing a healthy psychological atmosphere in the team
A dedicated manager who manages your project team (or participates in managing, supervising)

Comment (*): Every project is unique and may require methods of work not listed above. Therefore, it is possible to cooperate according to an individual approach and tariffs ($500 per hour). We are ready to consider your situation and provide flexible cooperation terms.

Questions

Why might I be interested in ordering consulting from a third-party expert?

Communication with an experienced third-party expert has a lot of advantages even for skillful CEOs, executives, and top-level managers:

  1. A professional outside view of your project. In consulting, Dzmitry always takes into account the technological, organizational, and business levels of the company processes. This triad allows him to take a closer look at your project from all angles, deeply analyze current issues, and provide the most efficient solutions.
  2. Analysis and identification of the real problem source in the project. Dzmitry’s consultations will allow you to understand the real state of the company’s affairs. The source of project problems is not always obvious: it can lie in technical nuances, incorrectly built processes, inefficient communications, and a combination of several factors.
  3. Identification of complex psychological issues, having been formed over the years. Indirect causes that are difficult to identify can have a huge impact on the project. The common cause of project stagnation can be learned helplessness, which prevents the team from getting off the ground even with the firmest strategy. Another reason causing problems is the psychological state of a “spin”, when the owner is deeply dissatisfied with the current status and no longer believes in the team while being too busy to change anything. In this state, the owner doesn’t have any internal energy to solve the issues, understand the team, and set the right direction. As practice shows, the state of emotional detachment from the problem allows executives to obtain the most objective picture and determine the real cause of problems.
  4. Mediation and reaching mutual understanding among the co-owners of the product or the company. Dzmitry’s exclusive experience provides another important advantage when your company has several co-founders with different expertise (CTO, COO): Dzmitry will find a common language with each of them. He can also become a mediator between the company co-owners in situations when they can’t agree for a long time on the common business development strategy or plans. Such situations are typical in case of project issues that have not been resolved for a long time.
Order thrifty consulting
I do not want to share the information regarding the company’s problems and am afraid of its disclosure.

Indeed, company owners are often afraid of that, it is natural and understandable. The consultant needs to dive into the problem details to provide an efficient service and bring results, which requires the client’s sincerity and transparency in communication. The business owner or the stakeholder should be as honest as possible about the problems their company faced. These issues are sometimes very delicate, and this information is really difficult to share with a third-party specialist.
Besides, the owner finds himself in a psychologically difficult situation: he needs to admit that he cannot solve the problem without help despite his wide experience and knowledge. Not all executives are ready for this level of transparency. Some business owners are also afraid that the conversation can be recorded and used to discredit and degrade the image of the company or a particular specialist.
Turning to Dzmitry, you can be sure that your confidentiality concerns are groundless. He has been operating in IT for over 20 years and values his reputation. He cooperated with hundreds of clients and developed his own company over these years. Building a consulting service based on his name is a balanced decision, which defines his activity as the provision of high-quality service in compliance with all confidentiality aspects.
We always sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) prior to the first consultation. The second important factor is that Dzmitry builds a strategy based on the stated challenge with no need to obtain information about other company’s affairs and plans. His vast experience, intuition, and professional feel allow him to handle issues from the point of view of the problematic without diving into confidential nuances. You tell only what you think is necessary.
Dzmitry’s goal is to process a particular request while maintaining the cooperation balance with the client. The principal partnership rules are discussed at the very beginning: points of contact and boundaries are determined jointly. When communicating with other stakeholders or employees, Dzmitry clearly understands what framework he should not go beyond. If he sees in the process of consulting that the issue covers confidential points, requires communication with top management, or touches on delicate issues, the possibilities of work in this field are negotiated separately.

Order thrifty consulting
How can I be sure that a third-party specialist who is not immersed in the historical, managerial, and financial nuances of the company will not harm my business?

Dzmitry never denies your achievements. The primary consulting principle is not to harm or destroy what was created by the client. Dzmitry sets transformational and evolutionary direction, preserving all the team members, and never provides quick solutions that can harm your business. Initially, he examines the situation comprehensively and systematically, makes decisions on the development of the company and processes after a thorough analysis and assessment of all risks.
Dzmitry adheres to the explanatory communication style and immerses you in the context. His task is to provide multiple options, give advice on company development, and explain why it is better to act in one way or another. The final decision is always made by you.

Order thrifty consulting
What if I disagree with Dzmitry’s work style and proposed solutions?

The first introductory meeting with Dzmitry is free. You will be able to understand how convenient it is for you to work with him, whether your mindset and values coincide, and after that decide on further cooperation.
Thanks to the flexibility of tariffs, you can start your cooperation with communication and then add additional services in the process of partnership development. For example, you can have a series of personal meetings with Dzmitry. Then, when the level of your trust increases, you can introduce Dzmitry to your board of directors. You can move to closer cooperation over time, join Dzmitry to your team directly, organize training for managers, etc. That way you will be able to gradually introduce him to the company after making sure that all the decisions made are efficient.
Finally, you can stop the cooperation at any moment. You receive effective ideas, insights, and pieces of advice at each stage of consultation. Therefore, you can be sure that investing even in several consultations will benefit you.

Order thrifty consulting

Reviews

Dmitry Evlanov's review of consulting

“Dzmitry Harachka is able to take into account the interests of everyone. The project is very difficult, with a large amount of technical and organizational debt. And the fact that it was possible to accomplish a serious organizational transformation without rattling a saber, and at the same time to retain talents and not allow demotivation – that’s no small feat.
I especially liked that Dzmitry did not just give specific advice, but directly managed the process of cultural development transformation. An extremely rare combination of technical skills, empathy and mediation skills. Not everyone knows how to be a leader for both management and engineers.”

Dmitry Evlanov's review of consulting
Dmitriy Evlanov
СЕО и founder of Simmakers.com
Client's review

We turned to Dzmitry to accelerate the development of our product and overcome the technological crisis. The project had difficulties with delivery planning, assessing tasks and risks. Releases were disrupted and passed with delays. We wanted to sooner resolve the issue of release instability, scale the product and implement effective technological approaches.
Though we entrusted a lot to Dzmitry, there was always a feeling that everything was under control and that the solving of our problems was delegated to the professional. During the consultations, he explained in detail the benefits of different tools and practices, and argued each solution. We recommend Dzmitry as an attentive consultant who takes care and respects what you have created.

Client's review
Product Founder (company name under NDA)

Tell us about your project

Tell us more about your company and problems, we will be happy to help.
Fill out the form below or send us an e-mail.
Send us a message
Tell us more about your company and problems, we will be happy to help.
Fill out the form below or send us an e-mail.
rect
Get FREE checklist «How do you know if your project is in danger?»
photo

Greetings! My name is Dzmitry Harachka. Specially for you, I have prepared a checklist that will help you determine if your project is in danger and provide a clear quantitative assessment of the complexity of the situation.

In the process of creating this document, I applied many years of my experience in managing, coordinating, supervising and consulting on more than 100 IT projects. Every checklist item is a reflection of the most common challenges I have seen in the development teams during my consulting practice.

Moreover, the checklist contains a large number of practical tips: this will help you move forward in solving problems on your own.