The North Star Workshop

Our mission is simple: we want to help you improve your business.

To do this we need to understand and be aligned with your vision. The North Star Workshop is designed to achieve this, creating a shared understanding of your long term goals. We call this your North Star.

If you need a light to follow, let our workshop be your guide

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Hey, I'm Chris

Testing… 1 2 3. Is this thing on? 🎤

I’m Chris, CEO of The Tech Dept. We’re on a mission to be more than just another software development agency. I understand that what our clients want is the improvement that technology can bring - time, revenue, peace of mind. The technology is secondary to this - and it’s our job to work out what is most effective and appropriate to help you.

We’re a team with a lot of curiosity - we want to understand you, your business, and your vision. By really understanding WHY you want to do something we can help you find the best way for your business rather than the most budget for us! A win for you is a win for us, whether this means improving efficiency, unlocking faster revenue growth or aligning your leadership team behind a single vision.

Are You Struggling With...

  • Knowing if your vision is technically possible
  • Prioritisation of features and functionality
  • Communication barriers within your team(s)
  • Deciding what the next big focus should be
  • Aligning all key people behind a single vision
  • Getting “unstuck” after initial success slows
  • Knowing if your tech team are performing

If you answered yes to any of these...

You're going to get a lot out of our North Star Workshop and should click the orange button below.

Apply Now

In The Workshop, We'll Deep Dive Into

  1. Defining Your Goals

    Knowing what you want and why means we can collaborate with you to understand how to get there. Which might be something different to current thinking.

  2. Achieving Alignment

    We’ll make sure everyone is aligned, across your team and our team so we’re all heading in the right direction. Misalignment is the cause of most project problems.

  3. Identifying Priorities

    There will be dozens of things you could do - but what is the right thing to do right now - not in aggregate - but for your specific circumstances?

  4. Developing a Plan

    We’ll start creating a plan to move you towards your North Star.

Ready to Find Your North Star?

Apply For Free

How People Feel About The Workshop

5/5
I didn’t expect to have a conversation like that with a tech company. The North Star Workshop is like business therapy.
Nick Munro

Flutterlab

5/5
Alison and I really enjoyed the session. We feel confident together we can build something amazing together and really make a difference for millions of families.
Gemma East

LOHA

5/5
I’d chosen an agency to build my product before I met The Tech Dept. But after the North Star Workshop, I immediately changed my mind. The Tech Dept support what I need, over what they want to sell me, this is unique.
Nohelia Rambul

GoodFind

5/5
Holy shit. I just had a 90-minute meeting which may be the best time I have ever spent. Like actually transformational. I'm so excited.
Jamie Klingler

INCITE Global / Manifest

The North Star Framework

The Workshop is broken into four parts. we'll take you through these in more detail during the session but they are:

  1. 1. Vision - The Next 18 Months

    We learn about your vision, and what you want to improve for your customers, company, and team. We start with understanding why you’re doing what you’re doing.

  2. 2. North Star Statement

    We’ll summarise your vision into a simple, plain English sentence that we can all use to guide us through the project - this is something you can take away with you.

  3. 3. Risks & Opportunities

    We identify the key risks we need to overcome, and the opportunities to take advantage of to move towards your North Star.

  4. 4. Priority Audit

    We dig deep into the details to identify all the things you wish you’d done to move forwards. Then we prioritise them!

The Benefits of Completeing a North Star Workshop

We designed the North Star Workshop to create alignment between you and us - most tech projects start going wrong at the very start with unsaid assumptions and misaligned expectations that grow and grow over time. By getting real clarity on what you want and why we can get it right from day one.

Our clients have said the workshop has helped them look at things in new ways, identify risks and opportunities they hadn’t thought of, and bring their own team together with a shared vision.

  • Digging Beneath the Surface

    In every workshop we’ve ever run, we’ve helped CEOs, tech leads, product managers and more to identify hidden challenges, risks and issues - things that suddenly became the new highest priority - that weren’t previously on anybody’s radar until they attended our North Star Workshop. We’ll help you find and deal with whatever’s lurking beneath your radar.

  • Open New Doors of Possibility

    You know what you want and you know what you need, but that’s based on what you do and don’t know about technology, the solutions that exist and how they work together. But you don’t know what you don’t know, and within that expertise gap lies unexplored ways to grow faster, reduce costs and de-risk your project that you won’t have thought of.

  • Take Advantage of Our Expertise
    The easiest thing for any development company to do is agree with everything you say, gloss over the risks and fast forward to the part where you sign a contract and hand over the money. We can’t do that because our goal is long term partnership as your outsourced tech department. In this workshop, you can use our expertise as if it were your own.

  • Develop Concrete Confidence

    You’ve read this, learned that, heard about something else and someone once mentioned you could do X, Y, Z. Pulling it all together, in theory, should work. Right? Well, now’s the time to find out from the experts. Make sure that incorrect assumptions aren’t fuelling unrealistic expectations and setting you up for failure, disappointment and regret.

  • Untangling Disjointed Perspectives

    You’ve got thoughts, ideas, opinions, blah and blah, but so does everyone else. Sometimes you know you’re right, sometimes you know other people are and sometimes it’s just not clear to anyone. Let us guide your team through a unique process to unpick all of the uncertainties and get you all back on track, aligned under one vision you can all agree on.

You've made it this far, what are you waiting for?

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Frequently Asked Questions