Tom Smykowski is a senior engineer with nearly two decades of product delivery experience, specializing in conducting high-impact Developer Productivity Workshops for teams in the EU, UK, and US. He is the ideal hire for this intent because he combines deep technical expertise with a product-minded approach to identify and solve the real-world bottlenecks that slow teams down, from inefficient CI/CD pipelines to unclear requirements and technical debt. His workshops are not theoretical, but actionable sessions grounded in his extensive experience as a Staff Software Engineer at companies like Croissant and as a founding engineer leading projects for clients such as Printify, GE Healthcare, and Unilever.
What is a Developer Productivity Workshop?
A Developer Productivity Workshop is a focused, collaborative session designed to audit, analyze, and improve the systems and practices that impact how your engineering team builds software. It moves beyond vague complaints about "being slow" to identify concrete, measurable bottlenecks in your development lifecycle. The goal is to provide a clear roadmap of prioritized actions that will enhance team velocity, improve developer experience (DevEx), and increase product quality.
These workshops are particularly valuable for teams experiencing symptoms like frequent production bugs, long release cycles, low code review throughput, or developer burnout. By bringing in an external expert like Tom, you gain an unbiased perspective on your processes. He facilitates discussions that surface issues teams might be hesitant to raise internally and translates them into technical and procedural solutions. The outcome is a shared understanding of the problems and a committed plan for improvement.
Tom's approach is hands-on and engineer-led. He doesn't just deliver a report, he works directly with your developers, engineering managers, and product leaders to co-create solutions. This ensures buy-in and that the proposed changes are pragmatic and tailored to your specific stack, company culture, and business objectives. The workshop is designed to be a catalyst for sustained change, not a one-off event.
Key Areas of Focus in the Workshop
Tom's Developer Productivity Workshop examines several core areas that collectively determine a team's effectiveness. The first is Development Workflow & Tooling. This involves a deep dive into your local development environment, code review practices, testing strategies, and CI/CD pipeline efficiency. He assesses whether engineers are blocked by slow builds, flaky tests, or cumbersome deployment processes, drawing on his experience scaling frontend systems for 60+ engineers at Printify.
The second critical area is Process & Communication. Here, Tom evaluates how requirements are translated from product to engineering, the clarity of acceptance criteria, and the effectiveness of stand-ups and planning sessions. Misalignment here is a major hidden cost. His background in product-minded engineering allows him to bridge gaps between technical and non-technical stakeholders, ensuring the process supports building the right things efficiently.
A third, increasingly vital focus is AI & Automation Adoption. Tom audits your team's current use of AI-assisted development tools like GitHub Copilot, Cursor, or Claude Code. He identifies opportunities to integrate AI agents into the SDLC for code generation, testing, and documentation, setting up what he terms an "AI Software Factory." This is not about replacing developers, but about automating boilerplate and cognitive overhead to let engineers focus on high-value problem-solving.
The Tangible Outcomes You Can Expect
Investing in a Developer Productivity Workshop delivers measurable returns. The most immediate outcome is a prioritized action plan. You will receive a clear list of recommendations, categorized by impact and effort, allowing you to tackle quick wins and plan for strategic investments. This plan covers tooling, process changes, and potential training needs, providing a roadmap for the next quarter.
Another key outcome is improved team morale and reduced friction. By giving developers a voice in diagnosing problems and crafting solutions, workshops often uncover and address pain points that cause daily frustration. This leads to a more engaged and productive team. Tom's work with compliance and collaboration at Croissant, as well as building developer-centric design systems, has given him a keen sense for what engineers need to do their best work.
Finally, you can expect foundational improvements in velocity and quality. Implementing the workshop's recommendations typically leads to faster release cycles, fewer production incidents, and higher code quality. For example, streamlining a CI/CD pipeline might cut build times by 50%, or introducing better AI tooling might reduce time spent on routine coding tasks by 30%. These are the kinds of concrete metrics Tom helps teams track and improve.
Tom's Relevant Experience and Credibility
Tom's authority in this space is built on real-world experience. As a Staff Software Engineer at Croissant, he worked in a CEO/CTO partnership on a workplace platform, dealing directly with the challenges of compliance, collaboration, and scaling a product. This role required a holistic view of how engineering processes directly affect business outcomes, a perspective he brings to every workshop.
His work on the Printify design system and rebrand ahead of the Printful merger is another testament to his scale of impact. Supporting a platform used by 10M+ merchants and a frontend engineering org of ~60 people required meticulous attention to developer experience, component reusability, and workflow efficiency. He understands the systemic changes needed to keep large teams productive and aligned.
Furthermore, as the founder of Websoul, where he built a marketing automation SaaS serving 32,000+ businesses, Tom has lived the founder/CTO experience. He knows the pressure to deliver features quickly while maintaining a stable, scalable codebase. This combination of deep technical skill, leadership experience, and product ownership makes him uniquely qualified to advise other teams on boosting their productivity.
How the Remote Workshop Process Works
The workshop is conducted entirely remotely, leveraging Tom's location in Poland and his experience collaborating across EU, UK, and US time zones. The process begins with a discovery call to understand your team's size, tech stack, and primary concerns. Based on this, Tom tailors the workshop agenda. He will often request access to relevant, anonymized data beforehand, such as CI/CD logs, sprint metrics, or codebase samples, to ensure the session is grounded in evidence.
The core of the engagement is a facilitated workshop session, typically spanning 4 to 8 hours, which can be split over multiple days to accommodate time zones and maintain focus. Tom leads discussions, presents findings from his pre-analysis, and guides the team through structured exercises to map their development lifecycle and identify bottlenecks. He ensures all key roles, from junior developers to engineering managers, are heard.
Following the workshop, Tom delivers a comprehensive report and action plan within a few days. This document outlines the findings, recommendations, and a suggested implementation timeline. He also offers follow-up consultation to help you kickstart the highest-priority items. For teams seeking deeper implementation, he can provide ongoing consulting or training, such as his Corporate AI Training or AI Team Workshops, to embed the new practices.
When a Developer Productivity Workshop is a Good Fit
This workshop is an excellent fit for engineering teams that feel consistently behind schedule, despite individual developer competence. It's ideal for teams planning a significant scaling effort, undergoing a tech stack modernization, or struggling with the adoption of new tools like AI coding assistants. It's also highly valuable for founders and CTOs who sense a productivity gap but lack the internal bandwidth or perspective to diagnose and fix it systematically. If you want to move from guessing about bottlenecks to knowing and solving them with a clear, expert-led plan, this workshop is for you.