Welcome. This site is the working journal of Alchemical Artisans, a small technology consulting practice. We write things down here as we go: notes from engagements, patterns we keep running into, and the occasional opinion that has earned its keep. If you want to know how we think before you talk to us, this is the place to look.

The alchemical framing is a bit of fun, but it points at something real. The old alchemists were after transformation, and they were disciplined about it. They kept records, they repeated experiments, and they paid attention to what actually happened rather than what they hoped would happen. That is a decent description of good consulting work too.

A quick word on what tech consulting actually is

Tech consulting gets talked about as if it were one thing. In practice it covers a wide range, from a few days of a second opinion to a multi month rebuild. What the useful versions have in common is fairly simple.

You bring in someone from outside because you want a clear view of a problem and a credible plan for fixing it. That person spends time understanding your system, your constraints, and the outcome you care about. They tell you what they found, including the parts you did not want to hear. Then they either hand you a plan you can run yourself, or they stay and help you run it.

Good consulting is not about arriving with a template and forcing your situation into it. It is about doing the unglamorous work of learning your context, then being honest about the trade offs. Sometimes the right answer is a large project. Often it is a handful of small changes that unblock the team and let them carry on without us.

How we work

We take on architecture reviews, modernisation of legacy systems, cloud and platform work, data engineering, and accessibility. Every engagement starts with the same question: what does success look like, and how will we know we got there.

If that sounds like the kind of help you are after, get in touch at contact@alchemicalartisans.com. The rest of the journal will fill in over time.