Vanessa Formicola Menu

Services

How I can help

I work with engineering organisations facing hard problems at the intersection of architecture, organisation design, and culture. I'm available for consulting engagements, advisory, and speaking.

Sociotechnical Architecture Review

A structured review of your architecture, team structure, and decision-making practices as a system. I identify where technical friction is actually an organisational problem, and vice versa — and give you a clear picture of what to address and in what order.

Typical engagement: 2–4 weeks · Remote or on-site

Legacy Modernisation Advisory

Modernisation fails when it's treated as a purely technical programme. I help organisations navigate legacy transformation by addressing the sociotechnical system: domain boundaries, team autonomy, governance, and the cultural change that makes it stick. Drawing on 11 client engagements at ThoughtWorks and leadership at scale at Flo and Prima.

Typical engagement: Ongoing advisory or project-based · Remote

AI Adoption for Engineering Organisations

Moving from AI experiments to AI at scale is an organisational problem, not just a tooling one. I help engineering leaders build the strategy, structures, and practices needed to adopt AI in a way that actually improves how their teams work — rather than adding complexity and dependency.

Typical engagement: Workshop series or ongoing advisory · Remote

Engineering Leadership Coaching

For Staff+ engineers and engineering managers navigating the ambiguous middle — where technical decisions have organisational consequences and vice versa. I help leaders develop the mental models and practices to operate effectively at that intersection.

Typical engagement: 1:1 coaching, monthly · Remote

Speaking & Workshops

I speak on sociotechnical architecture, engineering leadership, AI adoption, and the human side of technical decision-making. I've spoken at QCon London, DevoxxUK, DevoxxBE, JOnTheBeach, FastFlowConf, Software Architecture Gathering Berlin, OOP Munich, and Agile Meets Architecture.

Available for conferences, internal events, and executive workshops

Who I work with

CTOs, VPs of Engineering, and senior engineering leaders at scale-ups and enterprises navigating complex architectural or organisational challenges. I'm particularly effective in situations where the technical and organisational problems are entangled — which is most of them.

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