Build Better Software Faster.

Higher Productivity

Higher Quality

Higher Value

Elevated Customer Satisfaction

More Joy

What Others Say

Hi, I’m Tobi.

I help software companies to develop better software faster and have more fun in the process.

Higher productivity, higher quality, happier customers and employees.

No one-size-fits-all.
No off-the-shelf solutions.
No BS. 

Just tangible results.

How does that work? It depends. 😉

Tobias Mende
Hands-on Technical Advisor & OrgDev Consultant

I achieve this through …

  • 💡 creating AHA moments,
  • 🧑‍💻 actively working in and on the company as a software engineer, tech lead, CTO or coach,
  • 📈 focusing on developer experience, bottlenecks, and hidden potential,
  • 🧑‍🏫 targeted interactive training and needs-based (technical) coaching for teams and managers,
  • 🌐 a holistic view of entrepreneurship and software development,
  • 🫂 a focus on humans and their interactions,
  • 😍 my contagious enthusiasm for the 3 Cs: culture, code and collaboration paired with many years of experience in software development, leadership and entrepreneurship.
 
(among other things)
Photo by Natalia Schuchardt (https://nataliaschuchardt.de)

Your Benefits

When working with me, you will have the following benefits (and more):

  • A flexible “joker” that adapts to the needs of your organization with 15+ years of experience in software engineering, developer experience, and leadership
  • “Not my job” doesn’t exist for me. If it’s what I can add the most value with, I’ll do it.
  • Over a decade of experience in software engineering, architecture and distributed systems
  • Years  of hands-on experience in the startup eco-system and with leading remote teams
  • A critical and empathic sparring partner to challenge your ideas and help you find better solutions
  • The symbiosis of deep technical expertise and deep social skills.
  • Full cost control, full transparency, full flexibility: We collaborate. As intensively as necessary, for as long as necessary and on the important topics

Choose me as a partner who will help you drive success for your team and organization. We can work in English or German.

A Simple Approach

  • 💬 We discuss your needs and if and how I can help you.
  • 🎯 We define the objectives and scope of our collaboration.
  • 🤝 We collaborate. As long as needed and as much as needed.

Full transparency, fair pricing

  • We define monthly limits appropriate for the objectives.
  • You get billed for hours worked, not for contingents.
  • You never pay more than we agreed on.

(Past) Topics

The following is an incomplete and shortened list of topics I have helped clients with.
I am sharing it as an inspiration about topics where I might positively impact your organization.
Still, my interest, experience, and capabilities are not limited to this list.

  • Development of tech strategy and vision
  • Building and developing high-performing teams and organizations
  • Building leadership communities for cross-team alignment
  • Introducing OKRs and other approaches for focus and alignment
  • Facilitating team sessions for better alignment and a real “we” feeling
  • Coaching leaders in supporting and building high-performing teams
  • Introduction of distributed decision-making processes
  • Creating clarity about the “how” of org scaling
  • Definition of role profiles and development of a (tech) hiring strategy
  • Hiring lead engineers and CTOs
  • Onboarding engineers and creating better onboarding processes
  • Optimizing team structures/topologies and architecture for improved flow and reduced communication overhead
  • Creating platform teams for infrastructure and developer experience
  • Transformation of “Testing Teams” into “Enabling Teams of QA Experts”
  • Preparation for upcoming technical due diligences
  • Achieving SOC2 and ISO 27001 compliance without negatively impacting developer productivity and experience
  • Leading cross-team efforts for architecture refactorings
  • Training for tools, processes, and methods
  • Facilitation of team coding sessions
  • Leading collaborative architecture mapping sessions for a common architectural understanding and documentation of the status quo
  • Facilitation of retrospectives and incremental development of better ways of working
  • Technical and agile coaching for teams, managers, and other individuals for more know-how, improved team dynamics, and intrinsic motivation
  • Improving software quality by introducing automated tests, better practices and standards
  • Making and documenting (architectural) decisions
  • Introducing continuous integration and continuous deployments
  • Optimizing and automating processes
  • Reducing pipeline lead times (often about 70% or more)
  • Migrating to the cloud (and from the cloud)
  • Refactoring legacy applications into services
  • Introducing and improving monitoring and alerting
  • Introducing and optimizing “Infrastructure as Code”
  • Developing knowledge bases
  • Defining and introducing incident management processes
  • Defining and collecting metrics and signals for a better understanding of developer experience and productivity
  • Reducing software and infrastructure complexity
  • Automating dependency updates
  • Optimizing cloud and infrastructure costs
  • Introducing technical risk/debt inventories to increase transparency and simplify prioritization of investments
  • Finding and removing bugs, scaling impediments, and performance bottlenecks
  • Defining and driving initiatives for improved developer experience and -productivity
  • Introducing incremental product development
  • Finding smaller increments and working in shorter feedback loops
  • Defining and collecting metrics and feedback for data-driven product development
  • Aligning product and tech strategy
  • Implementing features
  • Developing prototypes
  • Facilitating product strategy workshops
  • Establishing a product discovery process

My Values

The following values guide my personal and professional life and shape interactions, work, and decisions.
These values define who I work with and how we work together.

Impact

I positively impact the world, nature, and the people around me. My activity improves the work and life of humans and increases connection and community.

Trust & Openness

I trust in people and openly share information and my perspective as I trust that people are good and use it with the best intent.

Empathy & Connection

I meet people with empathy and seek connection as I believe we are stronger together and everybody is giving their best.

Autonomy

People are at their best when they have freedom and pursue self-determined activities. I share knowledge freely to foster the independence and autonomy of the people around me.

Learning & Growth

Lifelong learning is the foundation for continuous and increasing positive impact. I see mistakes, disagreements, and new perspectives as opportunities to learn and grow.

Known From…

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Get in Touch!

I invite you to schedule a free 30-minute Discovery Call with me below.

During this call, we can get to know each other better and find out if I am the right partner for you.
I can also answer any questions you might have.

I am looking forward to meeting you.