Services

Agile Transformation

Agile transformation delivered across teams in financial services, retail and automotive — coaching Engineering Managers, Product Owners, Scrum Masters and BAs to embed robust, sustainable practices at scale. The focus is always on lasting change: we work alongside teams in the flow of real delivery rather than running isolated training sessions.

Teams ranging from 5 to 40+ engineers across single squads or multi-team programmes
Sprint commitment reliability improvement — from 70% to 90% achieved for a recent client
Agile maturity uplift across distributed UK and international teams
Framework adoption and tailoring: Scrum, Kanban, SAFe-influenced delivery models
Flow measurement and visualisation to support data-driven delivery decisions
Process design for squads, feature teams and scaled programmes

Engineering Leadership Coaching

Trusted by senior leadership to develop Engineering Managers, tech leads and Scrum Masters into confident, effective leaders. Coaching style is practical and outcome-focused — the aim is to build capability within your people so the improvements outlast the engagement, with no ongoing dependency on external support.

1:1 coaching for Engineering Managers, senior engineers and tech leads
Performance management frameworks, objective-setting and structured feedback cycles
Building durable engineering cultures and leadership capability that outlast the engagement
Soft skills development: communication, facilitation, conflict resolution and stakeholder management
Cross-timezone collaboration improvement for distributed and offshore teams

AI Tooling & Shift-Left QA

Embedding AI-assisted tooling across the engineering lifecycle — from requirements analysis and acceptance criteria through automated test case generation to code review and pair programming — to expose defects earlier, reduce rework and accelerate throughput. Proven at scale in heavily regulated financial services environments.

AI-assisted requirements analysis, test case generation and code review tooling
Shift-left QA strategy: moving quality checks upstream to reduce costly late-stage defects
50% post-release defect reduction achieved at a major UK bank
Test automation strategy design and hands-on implementation support
Quality gate design and enforcement across CI/CD pipelines

DevOps & Delivery Improvement

Using DORA metrics, Flow analysis and targeted process changes to measurably improve how teams build, test and deploy. Deployment frequency doubled, CI/CD pipelines introduced from scratch, and sustainable velocity improvements delivered across multiple large organisations. The goal is always faster, safer delivery — not just more activity.

DORA and Flow metrics baseline, tracking and continuous improvement
CI/CD pipeline design, adoption and ongoing optimisation
Deployment frequency improvement and change failure rate reduction
Bottleneck identification and removal across build, test and release pipelines
Observability tooling introduction and incident response improvement

Programme Recovery

Brought in by senior leadership to stabilise programmes that are at risk of failing — rebuilding stakeholder trust, diagnosing root causes and creating a credible, realistic path back to delivery. Specialised experience in complex, multi-vendor and distributed environments where fragmented tooling and unclear ownership have compounded delivery problems.

At-risk programme assessment: rapid diagnosis of root causes and delivery blockers
Stakeholder management, communication planning and confidence rebuilding
Requirements triage, scope reduction and ruthless prioritisation
Delivery replanning and milestone recovery with realistic forecasts
End-to-end traceability across complex tooling landscapes (JIRA, Azure DevOps, KPM, ServiceNow)

Team Building & Scaling

From hiring strategy through to onboarding and capability uplift — built and scaled engineering teams from the ground up and taken over existing teams in need of structure and direction. Experienced in both UK greenfield hires and international distributed team models, including India-based offshore delivery teams.

Hiring strategy design, screening criteria and structured interview process
Onboarding programme design to reduce time-to-productivity and improve early retention
Contractor identification, rate benchmarking and integration into existing team structures
Distributed team operating models: communication cadences, tooling and cross-timezone working patterns
Skill gap analysis, capability planning and targeted training recommendations

Why Lothringer?

Lothringer is a sole-practitioner consultancy — you work directly with Fred Blesser, a senior engineering leader with over 25 years of hands-on experience. There are no junior consultants assigned to your account, no upselling of training courses, and no dependency created on ongoing support.

Direct engagement with a senior practitioner throughout — no hand-offs to junior staff
Outcomes measured from day one: baselines set, targets agreed, progress tracked transparently
Capability built within your teams so improvements continue independently after the engagement
Flexible engagement models: day-rate contract, interim management, advisory or short diagnostic

Need something built from scratch?

Lothringer also offers a Rapid Build service — taking your idea from a brief conversation to a live, deployed product in weeks. Mobile apps, SaaS platforms, web tools and internal systems, built fast without compromising on quality.

Learn about Rapid Build