Who we are.
A small, family-run software practice in the Malvern Hills. There are three of us — including the dog, who insists.
Most of what is good about a small practice comes from being small. Decisions are made by the people who do the work. There is no escalation chain. There is, however, a dog.
Peter Lee
Software Engineer · Twenty Years of Practice
Pete is the principal engineer at the practice. Over twenty years of software experience across commercial, financial, private and public industries — long enough to have seen most of the methodologies come round twice, and to have learned which ones survive contact with reality.
He has a particular fondness for the discipline of requirements gathering and specification writing — work that is unglamorous but, he insists, the difference between projects that land on time and projects that don't.
What he values most about the work is the relationships. Over the years he has mentored a great many developers, and considers it a fair measure of a career.
- Discipline
- .NET / Cloud / Architecture
- Tenure
- Twenty Years
- Industries
- Financial · Public · Retail · Engineering
- Notable Trait
- Will write the spec before writing the code
Nicola Lee
Operations · Quality Assurance · Considered Counsel
Niki joined the practice from Pete's previous company. She keeps everything organised, watches the wider currents of web and tech, and brings a quality assurance discipline to the work that shows up in the small details — the kind of details that clients notice without quite knowing they are noticing them.
She also brings perspective. When the work threatens to disappear into its own internal logic, she is the one who steps back, asks the unobvious question, and saves a great deal of time.
Her background is in personal administration for the finance, law and housing industries — fifteen years of it. She is also a qualified massage therapist and qualified in animal management; both careers were curtailed when she was diagnosed with chronic migraines. The role she holds now was designed around that — her hours are her own — and the practice is unambiguously the better for it.
Outside of the work, she volunteers as a dog training assistant and dog walker, which is convenient given the third member of the company.
- Discipline
- Operations · QA · Strategy
- Tenure
- Fifteen+ Years
- Also Qualified In
- Massage Therapy · Animal Management
- Notable Trait
- Asks the question no one else thought of
Lily
Greeter of Clients (Whether They Like It Or Not)
Lily is the third member of the practice and would, in her own assessment, prefer to be considered the queen chief moral officer.
She greets every visitor on arrival. Consent is not always sought. Performance reviews have been favourable.
Small, by intention.
It will remain so.
A small practice gets to do things a larger one cannot. We answer our own letters. We work with clients we like. We design roles around the people who fill them, rather than the other way around. We take on what we can do well, and politely decline what we cannot. We have, as it happens, no upselling team — and no plans to start one.
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