Advisory Services — Serge Roberge

What I offer

AI Adoption & Governance Advisory

High demand

Most companies are being asked to have an AI strategy before they have any basis for one. The result is either paralysis, or rushed adoption that creates compliance exposure and organizational noise without meaningful return.

I help leadership teams cut through the hype and build a structured, honest answer to three questions: where does AI actually create leverage in your specific business, what governance do you need before you start, and in what order do you move?

This work draws on direct experience integrating AI-assisted engineering practices into a live production organization, formal doctoral research in generative AI, and regulatory compliance work across GDPR, PIPEDA, CCPA, and PCI-DSS environments.

Who this is for: CEOs, boards, and leadership teams at companies between $5M–$200M revenue who need a credible, vendor-neutral AI roadmap — not a product pitch.

What you get: A written assessment of where AI creates real value in your organization, a governance framework appropriate to your risk and regulatory context, and a sequenced adoption roadmap.

Engagement structure: Fixed-fee assessment: 3–4 weeks. Ongoing advisory retainer available for companies in active adoption.

I will tell you when AI is not the right answer for a given problem. If you're looking for someone to validate a decision already made, I'm not the right fit.

Fractional CTO

Ongoing

Companies between 20 and 150 people often have a real engineering organization but no one in the executive seat who can translate between technical reality and business decisions. A technical founder gets pulled into delivery. A VP of Engineering manages up rather than leading strategy. The board has no one to ask hard questions of.

I serve as the senior technical voice in your leadership team on a defined, part-time basis — attending key meetings, owning architecture and tooling direction, making vendor and hiring decisions alongside you, and giving your CEO a thinking partner for consequential technical calls.

Who this is for: Founders and CEOs who need CTO-level judgment without a full-time hire. Also appropriate post-CTO departure as a stable bridge during a search.

What I don't do: Write production code or manage individual contributors day-to-day. I set direction, hold the function, and make the decisions that require executive judgment.

Engagement structure: Typically two days per week. Minimum three-month engagement. I take a maximum of two fractional clients at a time.

Technical Health Assessment

Fixed fee

Something is wrong with the engineering organization but you can't diagnose it clearly. Deadlines keep slipping. A CTO left under difficult circumstances. An offshore engagement didn't deliver. The board is asking questions you can't confidently answer.

I come in, spend two to three weeks talking to the team and examining systems and practices, and give you a clear written picture of what's actually happening — not a polished consulting deck, but a direct assessment you can act on.

What I examine: Architecture and technical debt posture, delivery practices and team structure, tooling and operational health, and the gap between what engineering says it can do and what the business actually needs.

What you get: A written assessment: what is actually broken, what is at risk, and a prioritized sequence for addressing it. Something you can share with your board or use to make hiring decisions with clarity.

Engagement structure: Two to three weeks. Fixed scope, fixed fee. Clean start and end.

Legacy Platform Modernization Advisory

The platform is old. Everyone knows it needs to change. But a full rewrite would take years and carries unacceptable business risk, and the people advocating for it have never had to keep revenue running while rebuilding what it runs on.

I have done this. Not as a consultant observing from the outside, but as the person accountable for the outcome — sequencing the decomposition of a 20-year production platform while delivery continued and revenue was protected throughout.

The core skill is sequencing. Most modernization efforts fail not because the strategy is wrong, but because the order is. I help you design a migration path that addresses the highest-risk dependencies first and keeps the business operational at every stage.

Who this is for: CTOs, VPs of Engineering, and CEOs at companies with meaningful legacy platform debt who need a credible path forward that doesn't require stopping the business to fix the foundation.

Engagement structure: Initial sequencing assessment (3–4 weeks), optionally followed by an ongoing advisory retainer during the execution phase.

Technology context: Direct experience with monolith decomposition, modular monolith architecture, microservices, Kubernetes/Rancher, headless CMS migration, and cloud-native hybrid transitions.

How I work

A few things worth knowing before we talk

I am direct. I will tell you what I observe, including things that are uncomfortable to hear. If the problem is in leadership rather than the engineering team, I will say so. This is not a character flaw in either of us — it is what you are paying for.

I do not hand you a methodology and leave. I produce a specific assessment of your specific situation. I produce assessments, decisions, and sequenced plans based on the specific situation in front of me. Two companies with the same problem description rarely have the same problem.

I work with a small number of clients at a time. This is intentional. The work requires enough familiarity with your organization to have an informed opinion, and that takes time and attention I cannot provide if I am spread too thin.

I am based in Toronto and work with organizations across Canada and the United States. Most engagements are conducted primarily remotely with defined on-site requirements where relevant.

Start with a conversation

If you are trying to figure out whether any of this is relevant to your situation, the most efficient path is a direct conversation. Thirty minutes is usually enough to know whether there is a fit worth exploring.