I am Dan. I started as an aircraft engineer in the RAF and spent the years after that running transformation and technology delivery inside large organisations. Scale Rule is what happens when you take the method those places use and resize it for a business of six people, using AI to do the work that used to need a delivery team.
That is the whole idea. The name comes from the drafting tool that lets an engineer shrink a vast design onto a sheet of paper without losing accuracy.
Twelve years, in order
RAF, aircraft engineering
Where I learned that a documented procedure is not bureaucracy. It is the reason the thing does not fall out of the sky. Most of how I work traces back to this.
AerData, a Boeing company
Aircraft records and lease management software. Complex data, regulated, unforgiving about accuracy.
Virgin Atlantic
Transformation delivery in an airline where operational decisions cost money by the minute.
Elekta
Medical technology, where the regulatory bar is higher than anything else on this list.
British Airways, part of IAG
Large-scale programme delivery. The environment that taught me the most about why programmes go wrong, because at that size every failure mode is visible.
Impact Food Group
Transformation in a business growing fast enough that process could not keep up with it, which is the closest thing on this list to the problems my clients actually have.
Different industries, one pattern. Programmes rarely fail because someone could not build the thing. They fail because nobody agreed what problem was being solved, or because the process underneath was broken and the software made it faster.
What I actually do now
Two kinds of engagement. Either I look at a business and work out what is costing it time, or I build the thing that fixes it. Often the first leads to the second, and often it does not, because the answer turns out to be a process change that costs nothing but a decision.
I use AI to do work that used to take a delivery team. That is not a selling point, it is an explanation: it is the only reason one person can run a full delivery method at a price a small business can pay.
I work to a written standard rather than to whatever I remember to check. Gates between phases, ten checks that can stop a launch outright, and evidence written down rather than asserted. You are welcome to ask to see it.
What one person cannot do
There is no team behind this. That has real advantages: you talk to the person doing the work, there is no account manager in the middle, and nothing gets lost in a handover. It also has real limits, and you should know them before you start.
I take on a limited number of engagements at a time. If you need something delivered next week by four people in parallel, that is not me, and I will tell you on the first call rather than three weeks in.
I only provide ongoing support for systems I built myself. Supporting somebody else's application properly means understanding decisions I was not there for, and I would rather decline than do it badly.
And if what you need is a developer who will build exactly what you specify without asking whether it is the right thing, I am the wrong choice. Asking is most of what I do.
Qualifications
Held, current, and listed because a solo consultant claiming enterprise method should be able to show where it came from.
- SAFe SPC5, Scaled Agile Program Consultant
- APM PMQ, Association for Project Management
- MoR, Management of Risk
- MoP, Management of Portfolios
- PRINCE2 Practitioner
Where I am
Based in West Sussex. I work UK-wide and mostly remotely, and I will come to you when being in the room is the thing that makes the difference, which for a first diagnosis it usually is.