Lliam Scholtz

As CTO at PlusNarrative, I work at the crossroads of business strategy and technology. My focus is on uniting tech with problem-solving to drive real results.

After years leading engineering teams, I kept seeing the same patterns: talented developers working hard but struggling to ship value. The problem was never skill or effort. It was the invisible waste draining their productivity.

I obsessed over process, automation, Lean manufacturing principles and the classic "wastes" but found they did not quite fit modern software teams. Knowledge work has its own challenges: the cost of context switching, the difficulty of measuring progress and the constant pressure to do more with less.

The DRAINS Framework emerged from this gap. It is a practical lens for engineering leaders to identify and eliminate the specific wastes affecting software teams. Each drain represents a pattern I have seen countless times and learnt to fix.

Passions

• Operational Excellence: Relentlessly challenging day-to-day operations. Using technology to automate repetitive tasks, enhance team productivity and improve quality of life for everyone involved.
• Business Growth: Connecting technology decisions to business outcomes. Whether navigating CAPEX vs OPEX trade-offs or designing scalable cloud architectures, the goal is always sustainable growth.
• AI Adoption & Policy: Guiding organisations through the AI landscape, from strategy to implementation. Helping teams adopt AI tools effectively while establishing governance frameworks that keep you safe, secure and compliant.
• Solutions Architecting: Translating business problems into technical solutions. Designing system architectures that balance innovation with pragmatism, from initial concept through to production.
• Engineering: Staying hands-on across the full stack. Building, deploying and maintaining systems in the cloud while keeping close to the craft of writing good code.

Experience

I have been fortunate to exercise these passions with global organisations like Nike, McDonald's, MTN Group, SPAR Group, Intel, Ster-Kinekor, Aspen, Mr Price, KPMG, Samsung and Bidvest.

Let's Work Together

If any of these resonate with the challenges you are facing, I would love to hear from you. Whether you need help streamlining operations, navigating AI adoption or architecting your next system, let's talk.