A review on 2025 at Gathered & Found

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At Gathered & Found, 2025 was a year defined by delivery in environments where expectations were high, timelines were compressed and technology was expected to work harder than ever before. Across the organisations we supported, enterprise technology transformation was no longer framed as a future ambition, but as an immediate requirement driven by growth, investment scrutiny and operational reality.

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Over the course of the year, we delivered 17 new projects across nine different industries, supporting organisations whose platforms needed to evolve without disrupting the systems that already underpinned revenue, customer experience and regulatory compliance. In many cases, this meant working within legacy environments that had scaled beyond their original intent, while still enabling new capability that could support future growth.

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One of the clearest indicators of the scale and intensity of delivery in 2025 was the volume of engineering effort required to meet these challenges. 72,000 engineering hours, equivalent to more than 3,000 days, were invested in building, modernising and stabilising enterprise platforms where performance, resilience and accountability mattered as much as innovation. This work spanned product development, platform enhancement and complex integration programmes, often under the inspection of senior leadership and external stakeholders.

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Throughout the year, Gathered & Found also expanded its capability, onboarding new consultants and growing permanent headcount to support increasing demand for experienced delivery teams. This growth reflected a broader shift in the market, as organisations sought partners who could take ownership of complex technology initiatives and deliver visible progress rather than theoretical transformation.

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In response to evolving client needs, we introduced seven new services during 2025, designed to support organisations at different stages of their transformation journey, from AI roadmapping and technology strategy through to delivery-led programmes focused on legacy system modernisation, API development and product engineering. Rather than treating these capabilities in isolation, our focus remained on helping organisations sequence change in a way that reduced risk while maintaining momentum.

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Several delivery milestones during the year illustrated this approach in practice. We built and delivered our first greenfield mobile application for the hospitality sector, demonstrating how new digital products can be introduced alongside existing platforms without destabilising operations. In parallel, we began progress on a large-scale legacy transformation programme for a leading payments provider, creating the foundations for significant business and revenue growth while maintaining the integrity of core systems.

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Beyond delivery, 2025 also reinforced the importance of shared learning and leadership dialogue in enterprise technology. We hosted four in-depth roundtables with leading CTOs and Technology Leaders, covering topics including AI adoption, transformation strategy and programme delivery in complex environments. These discussions consistently highlighted the same pressures we see in delivery, particularly around technical due diligence, data readiness and the challenge of introducing AI capability responsibly within regulated or legacy-heavy organisations.

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This thinking is also reflected through Leaders & Founders, our technology leadership podcast, which continues to explore the realities of building and scaling technology organisations through candid conversations with experienced leaders. Across both delivery and dialogue, the message remains consistent, which is that successful enterprise technology transformation depends less on bold promises and more on clarity, ownership and performance under pressure.

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As organisations look ahead, the lessons from 2025 are clear. Legacy systems will continue to attract scrutiny, AI initiatives will demand stronger architectural foundations, and growth will increasingly depend on platforms that can withstand examination as well as scale. For organisations navigating these challenges, the question is no longer whether to transform, but how to do so in a way that protects operations while enabling progress.

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At Gathered & Found, our approach remains focused on accountable delivery, visible progress and technology that works with organisations rather than against them. It is this mindset that allows our partners to be bold, innovate fearlessly and move forward with confidence in an increasingly demanding landscape.

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