The people behind Tenhaw

James started at EY in financial remediation, completing a Diploma in Regulated Financial Planning in six months. It was a crash course in how large institutions think about risk, compliance, and accountability — a mindset that would shape everything that followed.

He moved into technology delivery at Salmon, supporting five agile teams on the £1 billion YOOX NET-A-PORTER e-commerce re-platforming to IBM Commerce. This was where the fascination with delivery at scale began — seeing first-hand what happens when multiple teams need to ship to fixed client deadlines with real commercial consequences.

At Globelynx, James used a data-driven approach to reduce delivery time by 50% and negotiate £100,000 in supplier savings. It was early proof that measuring what matters — not just tracking what's moving — changes outcomes.

He briefly founded Bold Six Solutions, a mobile application startup, leading the delivery function. The startup experience gave him a founder's perspective on building from zero with limited resources — understanding the pressure of every sprint needing to count.

At Colart(Winsor & Newton, Liquitex), he designed and introduced agile processes and Jira workflows from scratch after the merger of the Global Marketing, Development, and Business Intelligence teams. It was his first experience of landing change across a cross-functional organisation — getting people who had never worked together to deliver together.

At Ostmodern, James was responsible for delivering multiple concurrent software projects for clients including F1TV, Sky, SoulCycle, and The Emmys— building custom video content management systems. Working with F1 was transformative. F1 teams don't guess — they simulate thousands of scenarios and act on probabilities. That mindset became the foundation for Tenhaw's Monte Carlo forecasting engine.

At Discovery, he managed the delivery and launch of the Discovery+ EMEA rebrand across all platforms, creating new delivery processes that put data at the heart of decision making. Multiple squads delivered on time — not because of heroics, but because the right metrics were visible to the right people.

At Anglo American, he orchestrated the setup of the digital delivery function for an internal Hydrogen Energy Startup— defining governance and execution strategy from zero. Accountable for end-to-end delivery across Simulation, Digital Data, and Infrastructure teams, ensuring technical milestones aligned with the broader sustainability roadmap. Building a delivery function from nothing, inside a mining conglomerate, for a green energy venture — that's about as far from textbook agile as it gets.

At Greggs, he led the Mobile App and Data Integration squads as Scrum Master and Agile Coach, overhauling legacy workflows and implementing data-driven sprint metrics. The result: measurable increases in squad velocity and release reliability, enabling consistent on-time release of customer-facing features.

At Yondr, he embedded agile frameworks across Development, Security, and Support workstreams to break down silos. Within six months, he stabilised delivery cadence — transitioning teams from erratic output to predictable delivery cycles, directly enabling the business to scale global data centre operations.

At Tecknuovo, he built a centralised PMO function from the ground up, implementing delivery best practices across 18 client accounts with a £35M budget. He mentored seven junior delivery professionals whilst staying hands-on for “at-risk” client projects — the delivery firefighter role at its purest.

At HSBC, the scale changed entirely. James advised the CIO on Target Operating Models impacting 150+ teams and a $102M budget. He led the development of an AI Voice Insights Platform projected to save 1.5 million admin hours, and acted as Delivery Lead for Global Payment Solutions, defining delivery frameworks used by over 500 squads. The challenge wasn't just shipping software — it was proving that engineering investment translated into measurable business outcomes in an organisation where every pound of spend was scrutinised.

Most recently at Microsoft, he orchestrated priority programs for the EMEA senior leadership team in Data Centre Operations, creating visibility on high-level workloads to optimise executive decision-making.

Across every engagement, the pattern was the same: brilliant people, broken visibility. Teams shipped features but nobody could tell you what those features were worth. Velocity charts went up, but business metrics didn't move. Team health was invisible until someone quit. Forecasts were finger-in-the-air guesses dressed up as confidence.

James codified everything that worked into The Tenhaw Way — a delivery methodology built around outcomes, not outputs — and then built the platform to deliver it. Tenhaw isn't a tool with a methodology bolted on. It's a methodology with a tool wrapped around it, built by someone who has sat in the room, made the change happen, and learned what actually sticks.