What I do now
Agentic Practices (2026 to now). I'm the founder and lead facilitator, and Agentic Practices runs two programmes. The programme for teams is an eight-session AI adoption masterclass for engineering teams, with office hours between the sessions and a closing hackathon where teams build on their own work. The AI Bootcamp for business leaders is for non-technical leaders who want to teach Claude their voice and rules, learn to check Claude's work, and build a working tool for their own business. The first AI Bootcamp cohort starts in December 2026. I also built this website, the booking flow and the payment flow with Claude Code, using the same practices I teach.
Leadership Nomad (2011 to now). Through Leadership Nomad I work as a fractional CTO. I help clients line technology plans up with business goals, evaluate their tech stacks and architecture, and coach their teams in Agile, DevOps and Lean, and now in using AI in their daily workflow.
How I work
I build agile, self-organising teams around lean principles, and I put the engineering practices that support those teams in place: test-driven development, pair and mob programming, test automation and small releases. Most of my work is coaching people while they work on their own problems.
I bring AI into a team the same way, through coaching on the team's own problems. I train teams on the latest AI tooling and keep them working to lean principles, with test-driven development, pair and mob programming, test automation and small releases. Training alone falls short, so I also guide teams in building AI into their daily workflows. In all of this work, I want people to grow, collaborate well and enjoy what they do.
Where I've worked
Most of my results come from the roles below, which are listed newest first.
- Afrolabs, Engineering Manager (June 2024 to now). I coach developers and teams across several client engagements, run open spaces where developers from different clients learn and practise together, and coach teams on using AI in their daily work.
- Magna BC, Fractional CTO (February 2021 to now). I run an engineering department of five cross-functional teams: DevOps engineers, developers, test engineers, business analysts and product owners. Since I started at Magna BC, the software delivery cycle has shortened by 75% and deployment frequency is up 400%. Unit testing is now standard, with an average of 90% code coverage. Getting an average developer contributing took three months and now takes under three weeks, and retention is up 50% over three years. I have also trained and coached four teams to use AI tooling in their daily work.
- Firefinch, CTO and Chief Architect (October 2018 to now). I oversee the iOS and Android apps, the technology roadmap and the AI augmentation of how Firefinch delivers software. The Firefinch consumer app launched in South Africa with over 9,000 downloads and a 14% conversion rate, and its crash rate has stayed between 0 and 1% over three years.
- ProLink Arabia, Engineering and DevOps Leadership Consultant (October 2020 to June 2022). I led the engineering and DevOps part of a digital transformation, as part of a team of 15 consultants. I trained more than 200 employees in DevOps fundamentals, coached 12 teams in engineering, architecture and DevOps practice, and trained team leads and managers in leadership.
- Astute, Head of Engineering and DevOps (September 2018 to October 2020). Astute is an electronic information exchange for the South African financial services industry. I managed 25 direct reports: developers, testers, business analysts and DevOps engineers. Onboarding for junior developers dropped from 3 to 5 months to under one month, and for seniors from 2 to 3 months to under three weeks. I started an architecture forum, wrote career maps for developers and DevOps engineers that link growth to promotion, and brought developer turnover down until none of the developers I had recruited had resigned.
Before those roles, I co-founded Tribus Digita and served as its CEO and CTO (2017 to 2018), and I was Head of Engineering at Pfortner (2014 to 2016). At BCX I worked as a mobile solutions architect and a mobile developer (2012 to 2014), and at LARA Brand Engineering I managed software development (2010 to 2012). I started in 2006 as a consulting software engineer at Autus Technologies, where I built a point of sale system for a national restaurant chain that increased transaction speed by 30%.
Education and training
- Master of Arts in Organizational Leadership, Regent University (2010 to 2012)
- Life and executive coaching, Balance Life Coaching (2016)
- Change management and transition management, Xpand (2014)
- Presenting with impact, Strategic Leadership Institute (2014)
I speak English and Afrikaans.