You're not stuck. You're tangled.
Your team is working harder than ever. Why isn't it getting easier?
Matthew Wallace, fractional CTO: a part-time technology lead for CEOs and owners whose business already runs on software, new or decades old. Nashville.
Only one person understands the old system? I get it written down and tested, and put a second person on call.
- Pick a card
- Turn it over
- Keep what's yours
- Send it to Matthew
Which one kept you up last night?
It's never only the software, only the process or only the people. It's how the three fit together.
Do any of these sound familiar?
The long version
The one I hear most has its own page, written plainly, with the five signs it is this and not capability.
Where does work get stuck?
Follow one change from idea to customers. Pick where it waits longest.
Why this is the first question
The loud cards are symptoms. Standups multiply, sprints carry over, and someone suggests hiring ten engineers. The jam is usually one system nobody owns, and the whole queue waits behind it.
What if one fix loosened everything else?
I find it, fix it, and stay until it holds without me.
Two weeks
What is really going on?
Software, process and people, drawn on one page.
One month
What one change helps most?
One change in the right place.
The ninth week
Will it hold without me?
Until it lives in the code, the process and the team, not in anyone's memory.
What would you fix first?
The long version
Two weeks mapping the system: the architecture, the pipeline, the incident log, and who owns what, drawn on one page. One month on one change: not a transformation, the one joint that loosens the next five.
Then I stay until it no longer depends on me: owners in the repo, checks in the pipeline, decisions on paper, numbers pulled straight from production.
Has this worked for anyone else?
Maintenance mode to the most profitable department in the company. Then they asked me to run it.
More donations the year after we changed how the platform was built and run.
Of legacy, moving to a new architecture over five, one slice at a time.
No figures claimed
Does one of these sound like yours?
How much help do you need?
A technology lead, sized to the problem. Agents do the donkey work. Your people stay in charge of it.
One technical decision, one hour: rewrite or keep, build or buy, hire or fix.
1♦A working technology lead for your system, without the full-time hire.
2♦The whole technology organization, when the change has to outlast the quarter.
12♦What would you put in place first?
The Second Opinion
One technical decision, one hour: rewrite or keep, build or buy, hire or fix.
- Booked when you need it
- A straight answer, including when it is the wrong idea
- Cheaper by the hour past ten hours
The Lead On Call
A working technology lead for your system, without the full-time hire.
- Two working sessions a month on your system
- Text and email during business hours
- No slides, no theater
The Year
The whole technology organization, when the change has to outlast the quarter.
- Regular time with leadership and the team
- A technical roadmap and targets we agree on
- Travel when being in the room matters
Annual commitments are preferred, because moving an architecture takes longer than a quarter. This is senior executive time, priced like it. It fits a company where one wrong technical call costs more than the advice.
Have I been where you are?
VP of Technology at iostudio, twenty years of shipping. I read the system before I touch the team.
Write to me: hello@615.io
I have untangled every one of these. Which is yours?
The long version
Twenty years of shipping software, from Flash to WebXR to agents. Solutions architect, lead engineer, VP of Technology, and owner. I have rebuilt a technology organization from the inside and replaced systems that had run for fifteen years. I read the system before I touch the team.
Along the way: VP of Technology at iostudio, features millions of League of Legends players used at Riot Games, a VR heart explorer built by 615io, full-scale AR mining tires for Bridgestone. And a developer community in Nashville I started in 2006 that is still running.
Guide Automatic answers
Matthew Wallace is a fractional CTO for CEOs and owners whose business already runs on software. Nashville, since 2013.
Matthew Wallace is a fractional CTO for CEOs and owners whose business already runs on software. Nashville, since 2013.
Will the hard part actually work?
Matthew Wallace, founder of the 615io studio. We build the first working version of training, medical and AI software, for teams with a budget to prove it. Nashville.
- Pick a card
- Turn it over
- Keep what's yours
- Send it to us
Too complicated to explain on a slide?
Each of these started as a proof of concept on the hardest part.
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Why we built it
A CT scan is a stack of flat slices. Treating a child born with congenital heart disease takes seeing the whole heart in three dimensions.
The hard part, proved first
Could we load a 3D model from a CT scan into a VR headset in real time?
What it became
A heart a surgeon can stand inside, scale up and cut open before the day of surgery, built for research and training.
Which of these have you been handed?
The long version
For twenty years the work has been making hard, physical things easy to understand for people who are not experts: a thirteen-foot tire, a child's heart, a house under construction.
The heart started with one question: could a 3D model from a CT scan load into a VR headset in real time? The Bridgestone tire started with another: could huge agricultural and mining tires be scanned and put into AR for training? The house asked whether a WebXR model could teach pest control employees to inspect a home with no knowledge of its layers, materials or structures.
Technicians learned what each part of a house is called before they ever crawled under one. ShareXR started as a prototype and became a product.
All three, with what went wrong on each: the work.
What do you need built?
Pick the closest one. If something simpler would do, we will tell you.
When would we tell you not to build it?
When it would only live in a slide deck. When an AI agent has not been tested and cannot be shut off. When the data underneath has never been checked. When a video would teach it just as well. When you could rent it.
What are you least sure about?
You can't slap AI on it and call it done. We build the agent, the checks around it, and the point where a person says yes. The hard part comes first, at a fixed price agreed before we start.
Which of these is the plan right now?
What you actually get
A fixed-price week. It ends with the hard part built and tested, or with a written finding that it should not be built. Both are results.
- The prototype, or the written finding, whichever the week produced.
- Every line of source, in your repository.
- The roadmap: what to build next, in what order, and what it depends on.
- The assumptions we did not get to, named and ranked.
- A fixed price, agreed before we start.
Is this the wrong fit for you?
Five times we will talk you out of it.
Still here? Which of these is next to you?
What we believe
Immersion first, always second-guessed. We still tell clients when a plain web page is the right answer.
Shipped beats demoed. We are judged on what survives production traffic, real data, and the third month of use.
One team, whole stack. Nothing is lost in a handoff that never happens.
Nashville-built, remote-native. You work with the people writing the code.
A small studio in Nashville. You work with the people writing the code. Founded Nashville's Flex and Flash user group in 2006. It is still running.
A small studio in Nashville. You work with the people writing the code. Founded Nashville's Flex and Flash user group in 2006. It is still running.