Gareth Cronin

Technology leadership for growing teams

Bringing product and technology leadership that empowers businesses to change

Gareth Cronin portrait

Your business will hit inflection points as you grow and change

I have proven success navigating your questions, challenges and opportunities

Greiner's curve
"Greiner's Curve" from Evolution and Revolution as Organizations Grow by Larry E. Greiner
  • AI, LLMs, agents: How do we apply generative and agentic AI to our own technology?
  • Development velocity: Why has it slowed? How do we speed up?
  • Resource planning: What roles should we hire and when?
  • Technical debt: Do we have too much? How can we improve?
  • Succession or exit plans: Is our tech in shape? How do we prepare?
  • Stability, security and quality: Why do we have bugs and grumpy customers?
  • Knowledge and skill sharing: How can we create continuity and predictability?
  • Commercial vs product health: How do we set, prioritise and balance goals?
  • Mentorship and decisions: Our tech leader needs someone to bounce ideas off.

You are not alone - I’ve seen this all before, and I can help.

Services

Let's get those roadblocks out of the way! I can work with you to find the best approach, but here are a few ways that work well.

Deep dive

10-20 hours charged by the hour

  • Code and architecture walkthroughs
  • Practice and process walkthroughs
  • Identifying and prioritising the problems that most need solving
  • In depth report for tech and non-tech audiences

Outcome: a plan for the next 3-12 months to address the most pressing issues

Monthly support

Fixed monthly fee for one or more engagements each month

  • Providing coaching and support for a product or technical leader
  • Team meetings, retrospectives, workshop facilitation, and peer review of plans and designs
  • Time to bounce ideas with product and tech leaders

Outcome: a partnership for your teams giving the support they need to deliver

Fractional CTO/CPO

A regular number of hours per week

  • Planning for hiring and retention
  • Rallying the team to produce technology vision, strategy, and roadmaps
  • Establishing planning rituals and artefacts
  • Workshopping priorities
  • Demystifying for the board and senior leadership

Outcome: the assurance of a senior leader to keep technology on track

Part time tech co-founder

A few hours per week

  • Business and product strategy development
  • Rapid-build working software MVPs for customer experiments using AI coding
  • Estimating funding needs and designing the future team
  • Risk management and planning for the future for when the funding comes in

Outcome: the assurance of an experienced tech founder without the all-in commitment

Why Gareth?

What I do differently...

Global experience

  • Xero, Orion Health, Air New Zealand, Vista Entertainment, Ambit, Wynyard Group, Kiwiplan
  • Leading a team of three... and a team of 300
  • The first lines of code in a startup and running a 30 year-old codebase
  • Health, manufacturing, financial services, intelligence and policing, customer management, call centre, registries, AI...

Pragmatism

  • Balancing technical ideals with business priorities, and commercial reality
  • Delivering value to customers and nurturing existing tech even when resources are tight
  • Balancing innovation with the value of proven technology

Getting stuck in

  • From board and strategy to architecture and design
  • The "what" and the "how"
  • Evidence and measurement driven

Let's talk

Contact