Strategy & Architecture - Strategy and architecture for AI initiatives
Some AI initiatives need an algorithm built. Others need scoping, architecture, and roadmap work before building starts. This service is for the second kind. It is useful when an initiative is stalled, when the architecture decisions in front of you are hard to reverse later, or when a team is moving from product ideas to the technical requirements and architecture that will deliver them.
When this fits
Useful when an AI initiative has stalled and you are not sure why, when the architecture decisions in front of you (build versus buy, vendor selection, embedded versus cloud) will be expensive to reverse, or when a team needs an experienced second opinion before committing.
- Built, not just advised. PhD researcher and AgriTech founder. The Väderstad IoT platform and AgriOpt both started as strategy and roadmap work that I then helped build. The strategy is informed by what actually happens once a team starts implementing it.
- Concrete recommendations. Strategy work that ends in a roadmap nobody can execute is not useful. The output is specific enough to build from: named tools, named tradeoffs, and a clear order of operations.
- Direct engagement. I work directly with your CTO, head of engineering, or technical founder. The person you talk to is the person doing the work.
Scoping and discovery
Before any roadmap, I spend time understanding the actual situation. What the team has tried, what worked, what stalled, and where the real constraints are. The aim of this phase is to get to a clear, shared picture of the problem before any solutions are proposed.
- Stakeholder interviews: Direct conversations with the technical leads, the people running the current systems, and the decision-makers funding the initiative. Different views surface different constraints.
- Technical audit: A look at the current architecture, the data infrastructure, and any existing AI work in flight. What exists, what is realistic to build on, what should be replaced.
- Problem framing: Restating the problem in technical terms. The problem as initially described is often a symptom of a different underlying problem, and the engagement goes better when that gets caught early.
Included in this phase
- Stakeholder interviews
- Technical audit
- Architecture review
- Data infrastructure survey
- Problem framing
Strategy and roadmap
From the scope, a written strategy and a prioritised roadmap. The work here is to turn many possibilities into a sensible order: what to do first, what to do next, what to put aside, and what to actively avoid.
Initiatives are ranked on value and difficulty. The output is a roadmap the engineering team can act on directly.
Included in this phase
- Roadmap
- Architecture proposal
- Prioritisation
- Risk assessment
Implementation support
I stay involved through the first build phase, either as advisor to the team executing the roadmap or as the person building a pilot project that tests the riskiest part of the plan before the wider initiative commits to it.
The aim is to stay involved through the transition from strategy to engineering, which is often the hardest part of the work. By the end, your team owns both the direction and the working system.
Included in this phase
- Pilot project
- Architecture review
- Technical sounding board
- Build versus buy