Taylor Made Tech

AI · Claude · Trello · DevOps · Developer-Tools · Automation · TypeScript · Productivity

AI-Driven Development: Claude Code + Trello for End-to-End Dev Workflow

See how I combined Anthropic’s Claude Code with Trello to create an AI-powered workflow that plans, tracks and even accelerates real development work—without the manual overhead.

ai

DevOps in the Age of AI: Front-Row to the Transformation

Arguing With a Probabilistic Parrot It’s 2 a.m., the CI pipeline is green, my coffee is cold, and I’m arguing with an AI that swears a library called flibber-jibber exists. Ten years ago I’d still be hand-scaffolding a repo; tonight the boilerplate is done—by a

tech-journey

Spotlight: Pipeline Blueprints

At ParentPay Group, I quickly noticed that almost every team was tackling CI/CD in isolation. YAML pipelines were scattered across repositories, often duplicated, with each project tweaking its own version of the same core logic. It worked, but it was messy — wasting effort, slowing delivery, and introducing inconsistency across

Spotlight: Scaling pipelines with VMSS

One of the first bottlenecks I spotted at ParentPay Group was in our delivery pipeline. Builds were constantly queuing, slowing down releases and frustrating developers across the business. It was a problem hiding in plain sight, and I couldn’t ignore it. Digging deeper, I discovered most teams were using

ADHD: Fuel and Tax

I’ve never been formally diagnosed with ADHD, but living inside my own head, I know it’s there. It shapes the way I work, the way I think, and the way I move through life. And over time, I’ve come to think of ADHD as having two sides:

Tech-023: Flying with Infonetica (Present Day)

With my probation period complete, I was no longer required to attend the office twice a week. Instead, Infonetica had a new policy: one mandatory office day per month for all remote staff. On paper, it made sense. But for me, it felt like ripping the band-aid off — going from

Tech-022: The First Six Months

Probation periods are always uncertain, but my first six months at Infonetica turned out to be some of the most rewarding — full of collaboration, new challenges, and even a few unexpected bumps along the way. Being in the office two days a week made a massive difference. The commutes were

Tech-021: From Engineer to Lead: The Infonetica Era

A few days after my in-person interview, the recruiter called. The words I’d been waiting for came through: “Infonetica would like to make you an offer for the role of Lead DevOps Engineer.” I was shocked. I was ecstatic. This was the next big leap — and it was mine.

Tech-020: The Interviews That Changed Everything

After my time at ParentPay, the next step in my journey came through a recruiter’s email. The role was with Infonetica, a research management software company based in Esher, Surrey. I didn’t know it yet, but this would turn out to be the opportunity I’d been looking

Tech-019: Fate Knocks, An Unexpected Turn

I had no plans to leave ParentPay. I was comfortable, learning, and building under Stuart’s mentorship. Then one day, an email landed in my inbox from a recruiter: a Lead DevOps Engineer role ... It felt almost like fate. I’d just made it to the second stage of the

Tech-018: The Path to Lead DevOps

The end of my time at ParentPay came sooner than I expected. I wasn’t looking to leave — despite the usual daily challenges, I was mostly happy there. The people were good, the work was rewarding, and I felt like I still had more to learn and give. Then, out

Tech-017: Stepping into enterprise

When I first joined ESS (Education Software Solutions), they were already in the process of being acquired by ParentPay. At first, life felt much like any other mid-sized software house. But about six months in, the acquisition really started to bite — and that’s when the corporate machine began to

Tech-016: A Journey Cut Short

Not every chapter ends the way you expect. After three intense months at Zupa, I was just getting into my stride when circumstances outside of my control changed everything ... The company was facing difficult times and had to make some tough decisions. Their new product was put on hold, and

Tech-015: Introduction to data-ops, automating the beast

When I first arrived at Zupa, my first assignment wasn’t a small bug fix or a safe starter project. I was thrown straight into the deep end: refactoring the very manual process of deploying a critical microservice called Data. It wasn’t just clunky — it was burning hours of

Spotlight: From Pipeline Chaos to Pipeline Zen

Every engineer has that moment where they stare at a system and think, “Why are we doing it this way?” For me at Zupa, that moment came when I opened their deployment pipelines. At first glance, they worked fine — but the deeper I looked, the more I saw a maze

Tech-013: The Start of My DevOps Journey

After six years at Navigator, I stepped into my first official role as a DevOps engineer. This was the start of a whole new chapter — and where things really started to get interesting. This was a fully remote role; I worked under the head of infrastructure and IT; Joe along

Tech-012: Closing the Chapter: From Developer to DevOps

After six incredible years at DMS Navigator, I knew it was time to take the next step. I’d grown from a junior developer tinkering with VB.NET, to leading teams, driving cloud adoption, and building automation that shaped the way we worked. But deep down, I felt the pull

Tech-011: The Covid Chapter, From Office Life to Hybrid Working

When Covid-19 hit, everything changed. Overnight, the routine I’d had for four years — commuting into the office every weekday, seeing colleagues face to face, solving problems together — was replaced by working alone at home. During my career at DMS navigator the Covid 19 pandemic hit, we were then all

Tech-010: Moving from On-Premises to Cloud: My First Big DevOps Transformation

When I first started at DMS Navigator, everything lived on-premise in a local data centre. I was data centre trained, had the keys, and would often spend time patching and maintaining physical servers. But as the industry shifted, I knew we needed to explore the cloud — and that decision set

Tech-009: From Junior to Lead Developer in Two Years

Sometimes careers accelerate in unexpected ways. After just over a year at DMS, our development manager moved on to a new opportunity. That left a huge gap — and somehow, I found myself stepping into his boots I hadn’t expected it, but when opportunity knocks, you either step up or

Tech-008: From Empty Desk to Automation: How I Built My First CI/CD Pipeline

Let’s start with the 6-year journey in the Sheffield role as a junior developer at a company known at the time as Dealer Management Services LTD Under the wing of; Development Manager Gary, Managing Director Simon and his daughter Leanne. I started my real journey into software... Attending their

Tech-007: Coming Home and Rebuilding My Life

This is the heart of my journey so far, my Redemption Arc. Taking everything from the darkness I was once in and turning it into hope, family, resilience, and rebirth When I finally hit rock bottom, I knew there was only one place left to go: home. With nothing but

Tech-006: Losing Myself and Finding the Strength to Come Back

Not every chapter in my journey is about building, innovating, or succeeding. Some are about falling apart — and pulling myself back together. This is the hardest part of my story to tell, but it’s also the most important. Here’s where things take a bit of a downward spiral

Tech-005: Leaving University and Finding My First Software Role

After a year at Nottingham Trent University, I realised something important about myself: I’m a kinesthetic learner. I learn best by doing. While university helped me sharpen my programming skills, it wasn’t hands-on enough. So, after my first year, I made a tough decision — I quit I completed

Tech-004: From Mechanical Engineering Back to IT

After my time in software development at West Notts College, I took some time to reflect. I wondered if tech was really the right path for me — so I decided to try something completely different: mechanical engineering. This was hands on mechanical engineering working with machines and CAD Cam software