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I help teams see what's in the way, and clear it.

Former CTO and founding engineer. 25 years building software, and the teams behind it.

Yves Tkaczyk

How I work

I start by understanding how a team or company actually works, before I recommend anything. When a team is firing on all cylinders, we look for what to improve next. When a team is struggling, it usually comes back to alignment: getting people to pull in the same direction. Either way, it's about empowering and trusting people at every level.

Frameworks like Scrum and OKRs help, but they don't solve your problems; they expose them. Acting on what they show is the real work, and it's where the transformation happens.

I lead as part of the team, and I see my job as clearing the way so people can do their best work. I love to learn, and to share what I learn so the people around me can grow.

What's usually in the way

Teams pulling in different directions.
I've led agile transformations at two companies, from Scrum to company-wide OKRs. At one, a Now/Next/Later roadmap cut development waste from 70% to 10%.
Technology decisions that have outgrown the people making them.
I've led engineering as a CTO and VP, and as a founding engineer I built a company's platform from scratch.
Manual work that grows as fast as the business.
I automated it, and revenue grew from $5M to $20M with constant headcount.
Slow releases, and bugs that reach customers.
We cut build-and-deploy time from two hours to ten minutes, and reduced escaped bugs by 75%.
AI that's all promise and no everyday use.
For the past year, AI has been my main focus. I'm building a startup on my own, with AI across the entire software lifecycle: it writes all of the code, and I own the architecture and the quality bar. I also build AI tools and automations that are in daily use.

If one of these sounds familiar, or you're a founder without a technical lead, I'm happy to think it through with you.

Credentials

Leading people and organizations

  • Executive MBA, Quantic (with honors)
  • Certified Agile Leader 1 & 2
  • Agility in Leadership
  • OKR Certified Professional (KPI Institute)
  • Agile OKRs (Scrum Alliance)

Running projects, products and AI

  • Certified Scrum Professional – Scrum Master (CSP-SM)
  • Certified Scrum Professional – Product Owner (CSP-PO)
  • PMI-CPMAI+E, AI project management including AI ethics and governance
  • Generative AI Leader (Google)
Certified Agile Leader 1 (Scrum Alliance): verify credentialCertified Agile Leader 2 (Scrum Alliance): verify credentialCertified Scrum Professional - ScrumMaster (Scrum Alliance): verify credentialCertified Scrum Professional - Product Owner (Scrum Alliance): verify credentialPMI Certified Professional in Managing AI (PMI-CPMAI): verify on CredlyGoogle Cloud Generative AI Leader: verify on Credly

Contact

ClearSquare is my consultancy, which I've run since 2009 alongside my other roles. These days most of my time goes into building a startup, but I still enjoy helping other founders work through problems like the ones on this page.

If we've met, or you'd like to compare notes or work together, write to me. I read every note myself.

Or find me on LinkedIn.