Sherlock Studio

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the CEO of Abbyzoid Inc

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Abbyzoid Inc. is an independent consulting practice specializing in product ownership, project delivery, and AI-enabled workflow design for telecom and fintech clients.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Sherlock Studio to accomplish?

• Goal 1: Get an independent technical assessment of our product’s performance issues and codebase health
• Goal 2: Receive a prioritised roadmap with clear tradeoffs to present to our board for budget approval
• Goal 3: Identify a trusted partner to lead the first phase of implementation

SOLUTION

How did you find Sherlock Studio?

Online Search

Why did you select Sherlock Studio over others?

• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Sherlock Studio were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

We had a working product but were hitting walls — performance issues under load, a messy codebase from early-stage shortcuts, and no clear path to adding the enterprise features our sales team was promising. Our CTO had left six months prior and we needed outside eyes we could trust. We engaged Sherlock Studio for a consulting sprint — not to build, just to assess and advise. 
Within two weeks they had gone through our entire stack, interviewed our two remaining developers, and delivered a prioritised technical roadmap. No fluff, no sales pitch for a big follow-on engagement. Just a clear document: here's what's breaking, here's the order to fix it, here's what it'll cost roughly. What I didn't expect was how well they communicated tradeoffs. 
Every recommendation came with a "why now" and a "what happens if you don't." That made it easy to take to our board and get budget approved. We ended up hiring them for the first phase of implementation too, but only because we trusted the assessment. That trust was earned, not assumed.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Delivered a complete technical assessment and prioritised roadmap within two weeks; board approved budget on the first pass; engagement extended to implementation phase based on confidence in the assessment.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

The assessment was completed within the agreed two-week window with no scope creep. Communication was direct and structured — every recommendation came with clear reasoning and tradeoff framing, which made internal stakeholder alignment straightforward. They scoped the engagement honestly and didn’t push for work beyond what was needed.

What was your primary form of communication with Sherlock Studio?

Virtual Meeting

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Their refusal to oversell. They scoped the engagement to what we actually needed, delivered without padding, and didn’t use the assessment as a foot in the door for a larger contract. The tradeoff framing — every recommendation paired with a ‘why now’ and a ‘what if you don’t’ — was something I hadn’t seen done this clearly before. It’s a rare thing to trust an outside firm’s diagnosis enough to take it straight to your board

Are there any areas for improvement or something Sherlock Studio could have done differently?

Nothing material. The engagement delivered what was scoped, on time, without friction. If anything, an earlier checkpoint mid-sprint to share preliminary findings would have been a nice-to-have — but the final output made that a minor point.