What we think

Supplier dependency has been a norm in technology consulting for too long. We explore how organisations can set themselves free with Zero Dependency.

Tecknuovo has been shortlisted for the title of the UK’s best DevOps consulting firm in Computing’s annual DevOps Excellence Awards.

Tecknuovo, an award-winning challenger technology consultancy, has appointed Renee Hawkins as its Chief Operating Officer.

Digital security can be crucial for ensuring physical security at national levels. Our Engagement Lead Jamal draws on our work with HMRC to explain why.

Our associate and superstar Scrum Master Erin Gray shares her top five tips for women entering the world of tech with SheCanCode

Compliance at Tecknuovo means much more than keeping in line with legislation and contracts — it underpins everything we do as a business. Learn why from our Head of Compliance Claire!

Tecknuovo, an award-winning challenger technology consultancy, has appointed Andy Price as its Chief Commercial Officer.

Rob Kirkham, Tecknuovo IT Manager and cybersecurity aficionado, shares his top three tips for protecting your company in the first post of his cybersecurity series.

“Mind the gap” is ubiquitous in London’s underground and railway. Floor signage and voice announcements remind us daily to look after ourselves and those around us. Of course we all want to avoid falling into the gap between the edge of the platform and the carriage, but “mind the gap” means more than that. It’s an integral part of the London travel experience that we feel has to be there — largely because it always has been. So, would I dare to question the need for “mind the gap”? Gut instinct is no. Crazy idea. However, history has taught us that the “crazy” and “impossible” sometimes is possible. We landed on the moon with computing power that could perform around 40,000 instructions per second — far less than the 10 billion of a typical laptop. This makes me think that we can overcome the challenge of living without “mind the gap” too. What makes these things possible is the power of experimentation. In this article, I look at how experimentation can help us ask progressive questions, adapt to a fast-paced tech-driven world, and produce low-cost ideas before scaling the right ones.

Curious to know how our Scrum Master Erin Gray lives and breathes efficiency to take on challenges for our customers and teams? Find out in our Q&A!

Gus Sargent, CEO and Co-Founder of Tecknuovo has been named as one of The LDC Top 50 Most Ambitious Business Leaders for 2022.

Last week we launched our very first TeckTalks – a networking and knowledge sharing event for our associates and the technology community at large. Here are the key takeaways.

Curious to know how our Director of Data Practice is paving the way to a data-led future for our teams and customers? Find out in our Q&A!

Our Co-founder and CEO Gus Sargent was interviewed for The Times’ “How I Made It” segment - a series exploring how the UK’s most innovative business leaders made it to the top. Gus shares the ingredients to Tecknuovo’s success, how he inherited his business sense from his family, and why resilient learning and moving on from your mistakes is the most valuable trait in an entrepreneur. Read the article below for the full story.

In this blog series you'll meet our Tecknuovo associates — the talented community of technologists who work on-site with our customers to help them deliver lasting transformation. First up is Michael Cartwright, Business Analyst on a customer experience programme with Thames Water. Learn all about him here!

Our new Director of Growth, Casey Walker, reflects on the benefits of putting the nine to five aside to connect with your team in a new environment.

Two of our HQ team have risen to well-deserved directorship roles in Finance and People Growth respectively.

As a people-focused business, we are committed to diversity and inclusion and promoting equality of opportunity for all and are keen to actively join in and keep the conversations going around how we can best achieve this. As part of that, we ran a webinar in honour of Pride month. The topic was on what employers can do to show up for all employees every day, rather than just in June for the month of Pride. The panel was led by our Head of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Maya Sargent, who was joined by our guest panellists Nathan Nalla, Founder & Director of Be The Riot and Stefania Chaplin, EMEA Solution Architect at Secure Code Warrior. We’ve put together some of the highlights from the webinar below. What is rainbow washing? In its essence, rainbow washing is when a rainbow is added to the usual imagery of an individual, company, or corporation, in the hope that they are deemed allies to the LGBTQ+ community without working towards making a real change. In the business world, this is usually seen as companies using Pride month to colour their logos with the Pride flag whilst doing nothing with regards to making changes to their company culture and/or policies that would better the LGBTQ+ community within their current and future workforce. What is Pride Month? Pride is a month (June) dedicated to celebrating LGBTQ+ communities all around the world. It’s about the acceptance, equality, education in LGBTQ+ history, celebrating the work of LGBTQ+ people, and raising awareness of issues affecting the LGBTQ+ community. Whilst progress has been made, there are still many challenges today that the community face and companies need to take time to listen and learn before jumping on the bandwagon and putting up the pride flag. “I find with Pride, it’s an opportunity to be myself, which I wish I could do all year round.” Stefania Chaplin, EMEA Solution Architect at Secure Code Warrior

We talk to Billy D'Arcy, CEO of BAI Communications UK, to learn how he's leading his teams through the biggest project in Transport for London's history.

Curious to know how our Head of PMO, Kerry Gregory, and her team keep the Tecknuovo machine running smoothly day in and day out? Read our Q&A to find out.

We sat down with one of our associates, Paul Hammond, to talk about his experience working as a Quality Assurance Lead on-site with one of our customers. He shares how his work helped their teams tackle major financial challenges through data-powered monitoring. He also sheds a light on why working with Tecknuovo is a world apart from conventional consulting — thanks to community-based support, access to new and exciting projects, continuous learning on the job, and more. For a taste of Paul’s role, how he worked with his team and the wider community, and life as a Tecknuovo associate, read our Q&A!

Buying digital services through CCS frameworks can seem nebulous. Our step-by-step guide on buying from from us on the DSP programme makes it easy.

We developed the Zero Dependency framework through our work with four customers. They each had unique challenges but one wish in common: to independently manage and own the technology that powers their business success. This is the evolution of Zero Dependency.

If asked “how good is your product?”, what would you answer? Chances are you’d quote numbers, share customer feedback, or detail an amazing growth journey. But how often, when asked this question, did you mention the team who created the product? Personally, I’ve done this only once. After publishing my first video game I was full of joy, and calling out my team’s fantastic work was how I expressed my gratitude. Video games and movies are unusual in celebrating the work of their product teams with a credit section – something I’ve always appreciated. There are two types of teams. Delivery/feature/project teams are all about output. They work from a prioritised list of features in a roadmap that’s been prioritised by a stakeholder or executive. Product teams, by contrast, are focused on outcomes, and work with customers to co-create solutions and opportunities that deliver value for the customer and work for the business. In a product team, deep knowledge of the customer, data, the business and the market are essential.

Curiosity, openness, pace, courage, and connection are the values that fuel the Tecknuovo speedboat. This blog post explains why we chose them, what they mean, and how we act on them in everything we do.

A look at how Tecknuovo will continue to disrupt the technology consulting space with new Chief Strategy Officer, Mike Potter.

Mike Potter has been announced as Chief Strategy Officer at Tecknuovo. This press release details his appointment and future leadership at the company.

Recently I've been reflecting on some of the services I've built and run at the enterprise level. In particular, I've been thinking about how the performance to the end-user hasn't really changed in the last 20 years (yes, I'm old).

Tecknuovo has been named as a supplier on Crown Commercial Service’s (CCS) new Digital Specialists & Programmes (DSP) framework, which went live on 21 March 2022 and will run for two years. CCS supports the public sector to achieve maximum commercial value when procuring common goods and services. The appointment comes at a critical time — in a changing world impacted by Covid-19, Brexit, carbon net targets and more, demand for quality services and financial strain on the sector have never been more pressing. This mix of fortunes means it’s critical for these organisations to have access to a network of quality-assured suppliers that can help them close the digital skills gaps and modernise their services. The DSP framework sets out to provide just that.

Foundry’s CIO publication has named Thames Water a winner of its 2022 CIO 100 Awards. This annual programme recognises digital transformation projects at organisations across the globe that exemplify what it means to deliver business value through the innovative use of technology. Executives from the winning companies will be recognised at the CIO 100 Symposium & Awards on 15-17 August 2022. Thames Water was listed for its outstanding work on a wholesale digital transformation programme. It involves a move from legacy on-premises infrastructure to modern cloud platforms and a strategic shift to data-driven customer experience (CX). Disruptor technology consultancy Tecknuovo has played a key part in that transformation. Tecknuovo CEO Gus Sargent notes: It’s been fantastic working with Thames Water to help bring them to the forefront of customer experience in their industry, and equally great to see our work recognised on a global level at the CIO 100 Awards. Mike Potter, the Group CIO who presided over large parts of the project, believes that delivering transformation work in public life is about more than technology. He comments:

Derek developed an expertise with transformation during his lengthy career in one of the world’s most dynamic and innovative business sectors. “I’m an engineer at heart,” he says, “with 37 years of experience in telecoms – including 34 in mobile. Along the way, I’ve seen lots of evolution.”

In a fast-changing and uncertain world, we need to stop assuming that we have all the answers. Arguing about being right or creating detailed five-year plans isn’t very useful when we know that change is certain.

Over the past 20 years, a wave of alternative business models has shaken up a range of sectors that were all too set in their traditional ways. Online shopping disrupted retail. Software gurus disrupted music. Smartphone apps disrupted cabs. The list goes on. As this wave of disruption continues, no industry can afford to cling on to stagnant practices of the past – and consulting is no exception. Why have we set our sights on this industry as ripe for reshaping? Read on… Natural networker Tecknuovo is hardwired with the uncompromising, values-driven ethos of our CEO and co-founder Gus Sargent. A prodigious networker, Gus spent his early career channelling that flair at a leading London recruitment company, achieving results that far exceeded expectations. “After I started in 2010,” he says, “I quickly became their fastest-growth graduate. I got up to around 20 runners and, within a couple of years, was generating over £1,000,000 in annual gross profits for the business. That’s recruitment nirvana – it doesn’t happen very often.” He recalls: “When I left, I had 70 contractors out with my clients, providing significant revenue. I’d built up a network of superb, ethical, values-driven people and, because of my results, the company let me work in my own bubble. So, it may have looked like a strange decision to quit. But there was a huge gulf between the values of the people in my own network and the general character of the recruitment industry itself.” Gus then launched a tech consultancy and served as head of its e-commerce and payments practice – but soon spotted an opportunity to do recruitment his own way, with the help of a familiar face. “Our co-founder Kieran Blackstone was my good friend at university,” he says. “As well as being a recruiter, he’s also quite technical. I called him up and he was interested in working with me. We began trading on 1 July 2015, and that was the start of Tecknuovo.” Integrating values In its earliest incarnation, Tecknuovo targeted the nascent DevOps market. This was the company’s first foray into being Deliberately Different. “There was only one other company in London that was focusing on DevOps,” Gus says, “and we came up with a simple strategy: blend in. We were never the jackets and ties-type, but we moved even further away from that. We became very embedded in the tech Meetup scene, running events and making contact with brilliant engineers who we ended up placing with our clients. We were the nice guys – part of the crowd. No three-piece suits.” In its first four years, Tecknuovo’s annual turnover followed an impressive, upward curve:

To speed us along our journey we have welcomed many new faces to the team in 2022, and among those new hires are the amazingly talented individuals who have joined our leadership team.

Creating a future-proofed next generation call centre We worked with Thames Water to revolutionise the user experience and capacity of their contact centre.

Despite increased awareness regarding the lack of gender diversity within the tech industry, it continues to remain a critical issue. It is encouraging to see companies beginning to take the lead with initiatives and programmes aimed at closing the gender gap, but more must be done to drive lasting change. Having taken part in a recent Tecknuovo panel, Women in Tech: Challenging Bias in the Workplace, I was prompted to think about the advancement of women within my field. In my early career, tech was almost exclusively male. Now, in my leadership role at Tecknuovo – surrounded by equally senior female colleagues – I realise that while strides have been made, my personal experience might not mirror society and that women's leadership in this industry remains a rarity. My thoughts recently have been drawn back to that panel conversation I shared with female industry peers and the question “Why is greater female representation necessary for tech?”

Visit our Just Giving Page War Child & Afghanistan: Earlier this year, we announced War Child as our first official charity partner. War Child works to protect, educate and stand up for the rights of children living in war zones. They have been working in Afghanistan since 2002, but following the recent regime change has launched a specific Afghanistan appeal. Despite the instability in the country, War Child has remained on the ground, working against the clock to provide safety. More than 400,000 people are presently displaced with food insecurity reaching emergency levels. An estimated 3.5 million people in Afghanistan requite urgent humanitarian assistance, in which more than half are children.

Thames Water Raft Race 2021 Several Tecknuovo members took part in the exciting Thames Water Raft Race last Thursday, September 23rd, to benefit WaterAid. The thrilling event challenges teams of six to build a raft and race down the River Thames. The annual event, which has been running for over twenty-two years, was sadly cancelled last year due to Covid but returned this year with a splash. Participants dressed in fancy dress competed in a fun obstacles course ahead of setting off on their rafts. This year’s race theme “Superheroes” honoured all the UK’s key-workers who’ve worked tirelessly through the pandemic. Tecknuovo is proud to have supported the digital raft, led by Graham Lunt, and our very own delivery analyst Sebastian Crookall-Nixon joined the team rowing the raft in the race. The team dressed as Captain Sir Tom Moore who raised £33m for the NHS by walking laps of his garden. Each raft was tasked with fundraising for WaterAid, with a prize awarded for most money raised. As a company we donated £750 towards our raft’s fundraising target. We are honoured to have participated in such a fun event and support a charity with a great message. “Being a part of such a fantastic event that supports a great cause is always a treat. We spend so much time remotely communicating with Stakeholders and our Associates and to have the opportunity to come together in person, strengthening those relationships, along with enjoying a fun day of activities to raise money for charity is so rewarding.” Sebastian Crookall_-Nixon_, Delivery Analyst

I have been passionate about and working with agile methodologies for 10 years, and it’s this enthusiasm that I bring to my role as Head of Delivery at Tecknuovo. I’ve worked with clients in the private and public sectors to adopt agile ways of working and support a culture change. What I’ve learnt? One size does not fit all. When embarking on a digital transformation journey, it’s been acknowledged that it’s not only the technology, but also the people and process that need to change to digitally transform organisations and the products they deliver. Agile has a lot to offer but organisations need much more to succeed. So, how can we, as agile practitioners and people responsible for change, go about choosing the right method that suits our context, our team and product that we’re building?

Hi- I'm Alex Manning, Technology Director at Tecknuovo and I've spent the last 20+ years getting lots of scars by helping people fix pretty thorny technology issues. I'm one of those idiots people who run towards problems and have had to deal with bigger and more interesting (scarier?) challenges as my career has progressed. Some of the highlights include dealing with scalability issues on payments platforms processing over £70bn worth of transactions on peak days for a high street bank, migrating one of the UK's largest mobile banking platforms to alleviate outages that would appear on Sky News, as well as building, managing, migrating, and rescuing services of all shapes and sizes! These (and hopefully more in the future) are reflections on cloud-based platforms I have seen over the past 5ish years, and common themes I see emerging based on personal experience. I've been fortunate enough to have been able to get quite a lot of first-hand experience with cloud-based platforms over the past few years – using both private and public services – from bare metal startups to blue chip enterprise level implementations.

On Thursday 18th March 2021, we hosted a panel on challenging bias in the workplace with our very own Maya Sargent, Head of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Maya was joined by our guest panellists Ashley Ferry, Head of Product at AllBright; Erin Gray, Scrum Master at Tecknuovo; Kelly Richards, Senior Product and Delivery Manager at Soho House; and Sonia Krishnan, Bid Manager at Tecknuovo. It was a fantastic event where the panel discussed everything from their own careers, challenging bias in the tech industry, imposter syndrome, juggling childcare whilst working, to how companies can adapt, address and ally themselves to the key challenges women face in the workplace. For anyone that missed the event, we’ve put together the highlights below.

Peace Band Campaign At the start of the year, we announced our special partnership with War Child as our first official charity partner. We were delighted to kick start our partnership by taking part in their Peace Band campaign, aiming to walk the distance of the world (24,901 miles!) to raise money to go towards the work War Child do to support children growing up in conflict zones. “Over the last year I have tried to get out at least once a day to go for a walk, even if it's just up and down the road. So when I was told that Tecknuovo were sponsoring our weekly walks to raise money for War Child, it was the motivation I needed to walk that extra 1km daily.” Louisa Gemmill, PMO Analyst

Surviving technical interviews Following an invitation to take part in the University of Reading’s Science and Health week we've pulled together a piece with the aim of helping students embarking on their tech journey. With upskilling at the core of our values as a consultancy, we've drawn on our internal expertise and personal experience from associates, to provide top tips in what we look for in candidates. I hope the below helps you in landing your dream role and surviving technical interviews.

Tecknuovo announces a special partnership with the child protection organisation War Child UK – kicking off with the step-challenge, Peace Band. Tecknuovo and War Child UK today announce their partnership, with War Child appointed as the first official charity partner of the digital transformation company. War Child’s mission is to protect, educate, and stand up for the rights of children caught up in war and conflict. War Child work across some of the most fragile contexts across Africa and the Middle East in; Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Central African Republic. With over 27 years’ experience, War Child aims to reach children as early as possible in the cycle of conflict and stay on to support them. With years of on-going support, Tecknuovo have committed their long-term support for the charity through an official charity partnership. The partnership begins in January 2021 – with War Child’s ‘Peace Band’ campaign kicking off the many activities and strategic projects the Tecknuovo team have planned to support. Peace Band is War Child’s first step-challenge campaign, aiming to inspire the UK public to cover the distance of the world in aid of War Child. The Tecknuovo team are one of the first corporate teams to pledge their support – where they can walk, wheel, run, climb, skip, or play football to get their steps in for the campaign. Tecknuovo first began working with War Child through their  ‘Donate your Day’ and ‘World Kindness Day’ initiatives. Tecknuovo have a growing history of supporting children worst affected by conflict. Throughout 2020, the War Child team have had Tecknuovo’s help and support, donating to their Coronavirus Crisis Appeal. This support was crucial in allowing the War Child teams in-country to adapt and continue their important work for children in war zones, where COVID-19 became an unprecedented added burden to many. Tecknuovo’s generous donations throughout 2020 went towards enabling War Child to deliver emergency cash assistance for 166 families whose income had disappeared overnight as a result of COVID-19 lockdown measures. With this cash assistance, families could buy essential lifesaving supplies such as food, water, and medicine. It also allowed War Child to distribute hygiene kits to families living in cramped conditions and camps to help manage the spread of COVID-19, and offer home education packs, toys and over the phone counselling to children unable to access school or support during lockdowns.

Following on from last months event, we were joined by Luca Mezzalira, VP of Architecture at DAZN, for our November Ask Me Anything event. The event took place over on our Teck Camp community Slack channel. At DAZN—a cloud-based sports video platform that offers content to a sizeable user base – Luca administers various OTT-centric issues involving governance, scalability and resilience. During his time at DAZN, he has gained accolades for revolutionising the scalability of frontend architectures with micro-frontends, increasing the efficiency of workflows, and delivering quality in products. His colleagues know him as an excellent communicator who believes in using an interactive approach for understanding and solving problems of varied scopes. We were excited to have Luca join us for the evening and picked his brain on topics ranging from advice on how to prevent microservices and APIs from sprawling, the future of AI and Machine Learning, career and industry highlights, top tips on public speaking, and much more. We’ve put together this article to give an overview of the evening. Remember that you can view the entire transcript of the evening over on the Teck Camp Slack in the #ask-me-anything channel.

We had the first Ask Me Anything as Teck Camp on Thursday 22nd October, and what an event! Senior Developer Evangelist at GitLab and Cloud Native Computing Foundation Board Member, Brendan O’Leary joined us for an insightful evening. Brendan spends a lot of his time connecting with developers, contributing to open source projects, and sharing his work about cutting-edge technologies on conference panels, community events, in contributed articles, and in blogs. He has a passion for software development and iterating on processes just as quickly as we iterate on code. Working with customers to deliver value is what drives Brendan's passion for DevOps and smooth CI/CD implementation. Brendan has worked with a wide range of customers - from the nation's top healthcare institutions, to environmental services companies, to the Department of Defense. Outside of work, you'll find Brendan with one to four children hanging off of him at any given time. Or occasionally finding a moment alone to build something in his workshop. Over the course of the evening Brendan let us pick his brain on topics such as how GitLab manages the sheer number of open source contributions, and best practices of learning how to learn. Remember that you can view the entire transcript of the evening over on the Teck Camp Slack in the #ask-me-anything channel.

“Inclusion is not bringing people into what already exists; it is making a new space, a better space for everyone” – George Dei, Canadian Educator and Equity Advocate

During this month we’ve published different articles to celebrate and educate for Black History Month. I’ve been interested in tech my whole life, be it coding mini-games or watching Worldwide Developers Conference with my Grandfather. Even my career has been focused around the tech community. But something I feel that we aren’t educated on enough – and I’m including myself in this – is Black tech innovators. Without the work of these incredible people, large areas of STEM wouldn’t be as we know them. And yet so few people have heard of them. I’ve really enjoyed taking the opportunity to put together the following list of Black tech innovators that have made an amazing impact on the tech that's important to us.

As part of our Black History Month lunch and learn series we were very happy to host the founder of Black Valley, Leke Sholuade, earlier this week. Leke started Black Valley to improve social mobility and the accessibility of working in the tech industry for the black community. Hearing from him about how as a company and as individuals we can work towards creating a more diverse, equal and inclusive industry was very insightful.

It’s October already and after the year we’ve had so far, it’s important – now more than ever – that we acknowledge and celebrate Black History Month. I am proud that as a company, Tecknuovo sees the importance of celebrating Black history and raising awareness not only in this month but all year round. In Tecknuovo’s style of upskilling, throughout the month we have a series of lunch and learns for the office scheduled, and lots of resources being circulated for team members to take time to educate themselves on such a prevalent subject. This article is the first in a series that we are publishing throughout October. Starting with the history of this important movement we will also be showcasing some of tech’s great Black innovators, shining a spotlight on Black Valley – a community dedicated to increasing equity in tech – and finally learning more about how to be actively anti-racist in the workplace.