Jamie Taylor — fractional CTO and technology consultant, Leeds.
Companies bring me the technology decisions that are too important to guess at, and too infrequent to justify a full-time hire.
Latest position 7 Aug 2026
Make Time: Why Focus Is an Energy Problem, Not a Discipline Problem
Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky's Make Time argues that focus follows energy and design, not willpower. Ten quotes from the book, and what they mean for developers and engineering leaders.
What the work produced
Outcomes75%
faster feature delivery, measured against DORA metrics across a globally distributed team
Ligentiatwelve months
£25,000
of hardware the business had been told it needed, and turned out not to
Small business assessmentone review
0deploys
to ship a new report type; report definitions live in configuration, not code
Bossie Hurleyplatform build
3months
from a blank page to a launched platform for analysing scientific data at scale
Sage PublishingMVP stage
1month
from no coding experience to a production React application, with mentoring
Journalist, self-fundedone engagement
Each figure links to the write-up it came from, including how it was measured. Numbers without a client and a source are marketing, not evidence.
What people call me about
EngagementsEvery senior technology decision lands on one person, and that person is running out of hours.
Fractional CTO
You're weighing an acquisition, and the code is the part nobody in the room can read.
Technology due diligence
You're scaling faster than the architecture was built for, and you need to know what breaks first.
Architecture and security reviews
Your engineers are using AI tools, and nobody agreed on what good looks like.
Agentic development and AI adoption
Your leadership team keeps having the same argument about direction, and it never quite resolves.
Technology strategy workshops
You have good engineers who've stopped growing, and no one senior enough to pull them up.
Engineering leadership development
The thing needs building, and standing up a permanent team to build it is the wrong shape.
Software development
Clients
Ligentia/
Billion-pound enterprises and two-person startups, usually at the point where a technology decision has become too expensive to get wrong.
The record
195 pieces since 20192026
Writing
Make Time: Why Focus Is an Energy Problem, Not a Discipline Problem
7 Aug
Writing
Stop Vibe Coding: The Foundations of Agentic Development
31 Jul
Writing
Learning to Think Again: Rethinking Lessons from Adam Grant for Technical Leaders
24 Jul
Writing
“Just Throw AI At It” Is Not a Strategy
17 Jul
Writing
The Willingness to Have Your Mind Changed: Listening Lessons for Tech Leaders
10 Jul
News
RJJ Software Returns to Greenhead College to Kick Off Step Into Your Future 2026
9 Jul
Writing
From Author to Editor-in-Chief: The Shift That’s Already Here
3 Jul
Writing
The Secret Language of Great Leadership: Lessons from "Supercommunicators" for Tech Leaders
26 Jun
Writing
Building Psychological Safety in Your Development Team: Practical Strategies for Leaders
19 Jun
Writing
Start With Why: The One Thing AI Can’t Generate
12 Jun
Case study
Higher Quality, Shipped Faster: How Ligentia’s Engineering Team Got There With Claude Code
8 Jun
Writing
When Your AI Chatbot Becomes Someone Else’s Free Compute: The Pepper Lesson
5 Jun
Writing
Stop Chasing the AI Moonshot: The Case for Small, Deliberate Wins
5 Jun
Writing
Rest: Why Stepping Away From the Screen Is Part of the Work
29 May
Case study
Shipping Reports Without Shipping Software: Building a Data-Driven Reporting Platform
27 May