Delaney Advisory
I work as a fractional CTO for companies making decisions where being wrong is expensive — what to build, what to buy, who to trust with delivery, and when a platform you're already paying for still makes sense.
Most engagements start with a specific, time-pressured question rather than an open-ended advisory relationship. I come in, get to an answer, and leave.
Background
Mark Delaney has spent roughly 17 years in engineering leadership roles, including VP Engineering and CTO positions across operations technology and B2B SaaS companies. For the last 5 years, he has run Delaney Advisory as an independent practice, advising leadership teams on technical strategy, vendor and delivery-partner selection, and technology investment decisions more broadly.
His current focus is on how agentic and AI-assisted development are changing engineering economics — specifically where they lower real build cost versus where they just move the cost from headcount to maintenance.
Mark is based in Round Rock, Texas, but since leaving corporate roles behind, he's rarely there for long — he enjoys traveling and works with clients remotely from wherever he happens to be.
Advisory Scope
Delaney Advisory is typically brought in for a specific, bounded question rather than ongoing oversight.
Assessing an engineering org, codebase, or delivery partner before a decision gets made, not after.
Evaluating outsourcing partners, dev shops, or platform vendors on capability and delivery risk, not just the sales pitch.
Most of the people telling you to build it yourself sell dev services. Most of the people telling you to keep paying for the platform sell the platform. I don't sell either — I work out which one is actually cheaper over three years, not year one.
Evaluating whether AI-assisted or agentic development approaches actually hold up past the prototype stage, and what that means for team structure, timelines, and pricing. Most vendors now claim some flavor of "AI-accelerated delivery." Few can show what that actually changes about cost, timeline, or risk once asked for specifics.
Contact
If one of these decisions is something you care about, email mark@delaneyadvisory.digital.