Directors

Allen Coombs

Allen is an engineer and software developer. His work covers software engineering, connecting separate systems together, and systems that combine software with hardware. At Common Interest Computing he leads on the overall design of systems (their architecture) and works on delivery, mainly on projects for public bodies and civic groups that need software, hardware and system-connection skills.

He ran the technical department at Confetti Media Group and then became Head of Special Projects, where he managed project teams and coordinated staff and resources across several departments.

As a founding director of the National Videogame Museum, he managed significant funding and an institutional transition, and oversaw the museum's mechanical and technical build. This included coordinating the design and build of exhibitions that combined old and new technology to explain the technology and culture of videogames to the public.

His work has included management systems built for production workflows and public-facing tools that help organisations understand their users. Most of these projects involved identifying a specific task that a small piece of software or hardware could improve. He has thirty years of experience. He designs systems so that the staff who rely on them can use and maintain them.

Allen's responsibilities

• Lead on system design for engineering projects, including projects involving several organisations.
• Leading project teams, including teams with several disciplines.
• Work that spans software, hardware and connecting separate systems.
• Defining the problem with public bodies and charities: finding where a workflow fails and designing specific technical changes to fix it.
• Civic engagement and public mapping projects, in which reports from members of the public are collected and turned into data that the institutions concerned can use.
• Mentoring associate engineers and reviewing the quality of their work.

Jae Forrester

Jae is co-founder and compliance and training director of Custodia Continuity. Jae's work covers training, the structure of the development process, explaining technical matters in plain language, and finding out how a team works before a system is built for it. Jae's main focus on each project is the people who will use the system.

On each project Jae leads the work with the client's staff. This includes involving the team from the start, documenting the current workflow, identifying internal issues that could affect whether the system is adopted, and writing documentation and training for the people who will use it day to day.

Jae's responsibilities

• Training and handover: preparing the client team to run what we deliver and to take on more of its day-to-day support over time, from the named person at handover to wider rollout across the organisation.
• Stakeholders: understanding the team, the stakeholders and the internal politics that affect whether a system is adopted.
• Plain-language communication: explaining engineering decisions to the non-technical people they affect, and passing their concerns back to the engineers.
• Development process: a consistent structure and schedule across projects.
• Compliance and governance: the documentation, records and policies the client needs when the system is audited.

Chris Tebb

Chris founded Sugar Cube, a bespoke development and managed hosting business that has provided software, hosting and ongoing technical support to its clients for over twenty-five years. Chris is also co-founder and technical and security director of Custodia Continuity, which works on security, backups designed to withstand ransomware attacks, and incident response plans that are tested in practice.

Chris has more than twenty years of software development experience and has run live systems and servers for clients over the same period. At Common Interest Computing, Chris is responsible for how we secure and run the systems we build and host.

In client meetings Chris often explains technical matters to non-technical staff, and works with engineering teams, operational managers and HR directors. This includes advising when software is the wrong tool for a problem, for example when a paper form would work as well, and saying so before money is spent.

Chris's responsibilities

• Technical leadership on engineering, servers and hosting.
• Security on each project: assessing risks, securing systems, monitoring them and responding to incidents.
• Client communication and problem definition: agreeing what work should be done, and saying when software is not the right tool.
• Liaison between engineering teams and operational, HR and executive staff.
• Running our hosting and managing our hosting partners.
• Architectural review of significant engineering decisions.