Services

If you like what you see, there are a few ways that I can provide services to you in exchange for money that I can then use to pay my mortgage and buy toys.

Short-term consultancy

Three days, two weeks, maybe even a month or so. I’d be happy to work on your project for a while. Maybe you just need an external perspective to kickstart your project. Or perhaps you can use a brief injection of experience and deep knowledge.

Areas where I can add value include:

• Perl: There are still quite a lot of Perl codebases out there. And, in my experience, many of them haven’t really kept up to date with modern software engineering practices. Which version of Perl are you using? When did you last update your technical stack? How good is your test coverage? And, let’s be honest, is your lack of test coverage preventing you from updating your software? Let me design and implement a plan to get you back up to date.

• Source code control: You should be using GitHub (or something similar). I realise that you’re too busy improving your product to spend time moving your code to a new code repository. Let me manage that project for you. And, if necessary, I’ll also train your team in the new system.

• Cloud computing: I know, I know. You want to move everything to AWS - you just don’t have the time. Let me plan out the migration. And when it’s done, we’ll just pretend you’ve been in the cloud for the last five years.

• Continous integration/Continous deployment: I understand. That’s just one more improvement that you just haven’t had the time to get around to. How sure are you that each commit to your codebase hasn’t broken something? Is your release procedure a wiki page listing twenty-five manual steps? Do your team understand the difference between a deployment and a release? Let me help streamline and automate your processes.

• Technical SEO: Google is the most important visitor to your site. I can help make your site as attractive as possible to Google by fixing your canonical links, adding JSON-LD or other low-level technical fixes.

• E-Books: I’ve published several e-books over the last few years and would love to help you get yours published too.

• Mentoring: I’ve been doing this for a very long time (my first job as a developer was in 1988). I’d love to share my experience with you and your team.

Retainer

All of the above services, but on a retainer basis. Purchase a small number of days each month for ongoing support.

Training

All of the above, but let me train your team in these skills so you don’t need me anymore.

Other alternatives

Maybe we don’t need an ongoing commercial relationship. Maybe I can help in other ways.

• Maybe just buying one of my books would be enough.

• If you find my Open Source software or my work in the Perl community to be useful, then maybe you’d like to sponsor me to do more of that kind of work.

Contact

If there’s any way you think I could be useful to you (or if you just want to talk about how me might be able to work together) then why not just drop me an email - hello@davecross.co.uk.