About me

An economist with a technical underpinning: I do the sums before anything gets built.

Who is advising you

My name is Tycho Schottdorf and I live and work in Cologne. I studied economics (B.Sc.) and hold the Projektmanager (IHK) qualification of the Cologne Chamber of Industry and Commerce, taken in cooperation with the ProfessionalCenter of the University of Cologne.

I am employed full-time elsewhere. TycLab is the consulting practice alongside that – deliberately small, with a fixed time budget and no pretence of doing everything for everyone.

Why that combination

Most of the current conversation about AI is technical. The questions projects actually founder on are commercial ones: what does it cost to run once the project is over? How much time does the new workflow really save, and for whom? When does it pay for itself? What happens when the vendor changes its pricing?

Economics supplies the tools to answer that properly: compare the alternatives, put the assumptions on the table, look at cost over time rather than on a single date. Project management supplies the other half – setting a project up so that afterwards you can actually tell whether it worked.

How I work

Independent: I sell no software, no licences, and no implementation work. If the honest answer is that a project does not pay off, or that a simpler solution will do, then that is what the result says.

Traceable: every figure I hand over comes with the assumptions behind it. You should be able to check the calculation yourself and, if warranted, refute it – otherwise it is worthless as a basis for a decision.

Bounded: analysis, assessment, and decision groundwork. Implementation and day-to-day operation stay with your team or a provider of your choice.

Languages

I consult in German and English.