Ship faster, with confidence
Automated build, test, and deploy replaces manual steps and tribal knowledge. Releases become a routine event, not a weekend project with a rollback plan nobody has tested.
Platform engineering & delivery consulting
Get your software organization enterprise-ready.
You've built a product people pay for. Now the deals are bigger, the stakes are higher, and a manual release process isn't a strategy anymore. I help software organizations figure out what to fix, in what order — and then fix it.
Every engagement is measured against a baseline, not impressions:
- Deployment frequency
- Lead time for a change
- Change failure rate
- Time to restore service
Outcomes
What "enterprise-ready" actually buys you
If you don't yet know exactly what your organization needs, that's normal — it's the point of starting with an assessment. These are the outcomes the work is built around.
Fewer surprises in production
Monitoring and alerting that catches problems before your customers do, and runbooks that let whoever is on call actually respond — not just escalate to the one engineer who knows.
Recover in minutes, not days
Backups that are restored on a schedule to prove they work, defined recovery objectives, and an incident process your team has practiced before it matters.
Security that closes deals
Single sign-on, role-based access, secrets handling, and dependency scanning — the table stakes your enterprise customers' security questionnaires ask about on page one.
A team that scales past its founders
Code review, quality gates, and documentation that shrink the time from "new engineer starts" to "first change in production" from months to days.
Certainty about what to fix first
A measured baseline and a prioritized roadmap: what to fix, in what order, and what to deliberately leave alone. No more guessing which fire is real.
Process
How an engagement works
I deliberately don't pre-scope technical work. A plan written before seeing your codebase, pipeline, and constraints is a guess sold as a commitment — the assessment exists to replace guessing with numbers.
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Assess
A short, fixed-scope review of your current state across the delivery pipeline, hosting, environments, security, operations, and team practices — including a measured baseline of how you deliver today, so later work is judged against numbers rather than impressions.
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Roadmap
A prioritized plan: what to fix, in what order, and what to deliberately leave alone — with a firm quote for the recommended follow-on phases. The roadmap is yours to keep and act on, with or without me.
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Execute
Fixed-scope phases with acceptance criteria written against the baseline. You always know what a phase costs, what "done" means, and how it will be verified — before it begins.
Scope
What the assessment covers
Candidates, not commitments. Some of this will already be in reasonable shape at your organization — and it's likely that something not on this list matters more than anything on it.
Delivery pipeline
Automated build, test, and deploy; environment promotion; a repeatable release process in place of manual steps.
Hosting & infrastructure
Whether your current hosting model still fits or a different one serves better; infrastructure defined as code rather than configured by hand.
Security & access
Single sign-on and role-based access, managed identities in place of stored credentials, secrets handling, dependency scanning.
AI delivery guardrails
Evaluation harnesses for AI features, prompt and model version control, cost controls, human review gates before user-facing output.
Operations & resilience
Monitoring and alerting, on-call runbooks, backup and tested restore, defined recovery objectives.
Team practices
Branching and code review, automated quality gates, documentation, and the time it takes a new engineer to reach their first production change.
Engagements
Ways to work together
Three structures toward the same goal: faster, more reliable delivery, and a software organization ready to operate at enterprise standards.
Most common starting point
Assessment first
Start with the short assessment and roadmap. Each follow-on phase is quoted at a firm fixed price before it begins, with acceptance criteria written against the baseline — outcomes you can hold me to, even where the work can't be fully specified up front.
Ongoing capacity
Fractional platform lead
Senior platform capacity a few days per week, without the requisition process or the benefits load. Suits teams that would rather buy capacity than re-scope repeatedly — and the period after the initial build-out, when the work is steady rather than project-shaped.
Trying before hiring
Contract-to-hire
A hands-on engagement with conversion terms agreed in writing at the outset. At the end of the term, either party may convert to a full-time role on pre-agreed terms — settling the hiring question by demonstrated results rather than negotiation in advance.
Contracted through Dackota Consulting LLC · certificate of insurance available on request · full assignment of work product to you.
Who you'll work with
No bench. No handoff.
Dackota Consulting LLC is the independent practice of Dackota Johnson. You work directly with the person who does the assessment, writes the roadmap, and stands behind the fixed quotes — not a partner who sells the work and a rotating cast who delivers it.
Tell me where delivery hurts.
Send a couple of paragraphs about your product, your team, and what's slowing you down. I'll tell you honestly whether I can help — and if the answer is a short email instead of an engagement, you'll get the email.