> Fractional & Interim CTO · EMEA
Agents are writing your code.
Who's redesigning your engineering?
I help EMEA scale-ups and enterprises reorganise engineering for the agent era — the org design, the platform decisions, and the governance your board needs to back the shift with confidence.
I named this shift. I created the ISEE framework and the Agentile (opens in new tab) operating model, and wrote Ghost Decisions — the book on leading engineering when the engineers aren't all human. 30+ years across research, telecom, financial services, government, and security — now inside the AI-agent toolchain at Microsoft and GitHub.
Fractional and interim CTO for scale-ups and enterprises, advisory for earlier-stage startups, and open to advisory-board and board-observer roles.
Suzanne Daniels
> What I do
One offering.
Three focus areas.
Fractional or interim CTO engagements for EMEA scale-ups and enterprises, typically 3 to 12 months, embedded with your leadership team.
I sit at the intersection of engineering depth and executive clarity. That means I can hold a board conversation about runway risk and a code review about platform architecture in the same afternoon — and translate between them.
Every engagement runs on the same spine: the ISEE framework I created — Intent, Structure, Execution, Evidence — inside the Agentile operating model.
Not consulting deliverables. Decisions made, systems shipped, teams unblocked.
01
Org design for the agent era
Restructure engineering for a world where agents write code, review PRs, and run deployments. Team topology, role evolution, and governance that scales without theatre.
02
Platform & DevProd strategy
Internal developer platforms, golden-path roadmaps, DevEx investment cases. Built and assessed against backstage.io, GitHub, Azure DevOps.
03
AI adoption that ships
Where to put GitHub Copilot, agents, and LLMs in your SDLC — and where not to. Governance, guardrails, and a measurable rollout plan your CFO will sign off on.
> The mission
Your success is my success. That's not a slogan. It's a billing model.
I bill for outcomes you can put in a board deck. If we don't agree on what those look like before I start, I'm not the right fit. The share of new code written by AI keeps climbing — Google's CEO now puts it at three-quarters. I make sure your org, your platform, and your governance are ready for what that means.
> The method
One framework
underneath it all. ISEE.
Agile assumed every contributor is human. When that stopped being true, I built the framework that replaces the assumption: Intent, Structure, Execution, Evidence. Humans own the slow layers. Machines run the fast ones. Speed runs inside structure instead of around it.
The spine of the Agentile operating model — and the core of Ghost Decisions.
Human-owned
Intent
Why we’re building and what “good” means. The decision you can’t hand to a machine.
Human-owned
Structure
The platform, guardrails, and team shape that make the intent safe to execute at speed.
Machine-run
Execution
Writing, reviewing, shipping. Increasingly run by agents — fast, and inside the structure.
Machine-run
Evidence
Telemetry, tests, and proof it worked. Continuous, automated, and legible to the board.
> Proof
Where I've been useful.
Selected affiliations
Named work
Chief Developer Advisor
Microsoft & GitHub
Current. Dual-badge role driving developer-productivity strategy across GitHub, Azure, and M365.
Head of Developer Experience
Global logistics & e-commerce company
Led the DevEx team. Platform strategy, developer productivity, and tooling for the e-commerce division.
Founding DevRel
Backstage at Spotify
Platform engineering rollouts at enterprise scale across financial services and telecom.
> The book
I wrote the book
on it.
When engineering leaders needed a playbook for leading teams where the engineers aren't all human, there wasn't one. So I wrote it. Ghost Decisions — thirty years of platforms and shipping software, compressed.
The ISEE framework, the Agentile condition, and the structural patterns that let human judgement scale at machine speed — for the leader being asked to do all of it at once, without breaking what already works.
> About
The short version.
I'm Suzanne Daniels. I've spent three decades in production environments — research, government, telecom, financial services, ISVs, security, networking, MSPs. I've seen the same problems cycle through new branding, and I can usually tell you which parts are genuinely new and which parts are just repackaged.
Today I run Great Success — interim and fractional CTO work across EMEA — alongside my day role as Chief Developer Advisor at Microsoft & GitHub. I created the Agentile (opens in new tab) operating model because Agile assumed all work is done by humans, and that assumption broke.
The longer version →> Let's talk
Ready to lead your next transformation?
Tell me what's in front of you. The first call is free, runs 30 minutes, and ends with either a clear next step or a clear referral to someone better suited.