Projects rarely fail when the deadline arrives. They fail much earlier, when assumptions replace understanding.

In this episode of Off the Deck, Chris Ragan, Senior Consultant in Application Development at Hylaine, shares why the most important work often happens before the project officially begins. With more than five years at Hylaine leading delivery for one of the company’s first and longest-standing clients, Chris has seen firsthand how early discovery, stakeholder alignment, and ownership can determine whether an engagement succeeds or struggles.

Chris and Jayme explore why long-standing client relationships can make discovery even more important, not less. Trust and familiarity are valuable, but they can also create assumptions about who owns decisions, what success looks like, and which voices need to be part of the conversation. The biggest warning sign? A key stakeholder responsible for the outcome who is not in the room.

The conversation also dives into Hylaine Phase Zero, a discovery approach designed to uncover the facts, priorities, and challenges that shape successful delivery. Chris explains why investing time upfront is always less costly than uncovering missed details halfway through an engagement, and why doing the right work starts with understanding the right problem.

Plus, Chris shares how AI is changing how teams approach delivery, why faster access to information doesn't replace human judgment, and why strong partnerships still depend on asking better questions.

In this episode:

At Hylaine, we believe partnerships over transactions means taking the time to understand our clients, their goals, and the people who will ultimately define success.

Chris Ragan is a Senior Consultant in Hylaine’s Application Development practice with more than five years at Hylaine. He leads a large delivery team supporting one of Hylaine’s first and longest-standing clients, helping drive successful outcomes through strong technical delivery, stakeholder alignment, and partnership. With experience across insurance, banking, and other industries, Chris brings a practical understanding of the challenges organizations face when modernizing technology and delivering meaningful solutions. 

The work that makes great consulting possible often happens long before a client sees the final outcome. It happens behind the scenes, in the systems, relationships, and culture that support the people doing the work.

For India Monroe, that is exactly where the focus belongs. As Hylaine’s HR leader and culture expert, India spends her time building the foundation that helps teams succeed, from employee engagement and connection to creating an environment where people feel supported, equipped, and empowered to deliver for clients.

India joins Jayme MacQueen to talk about the role of people and culture in a technology consulting firm, why HR is about much more than policies and processes, and how a strong employee experience ultimately shapes the client experience. She also shares her unconventional career path from motorsports to consulting, what remote work taught her about building connection, and why understanding people is at the center of everything she does.

Also in this episode: why the best cultures are built intentionally, the importance of listening to employees, and how the work behind the scenes helps Hylaine live its values of partnership, transparency, and doing what’s right.

India Monroe is Hylaine’s HR Leader based in Raleigh, North Carolina, where she focuses on building a strong employee experience and supporting the people behind Hylaine’s client success. With a background spanning multiple industries, including motorsports, India brings a unique perspective on connection, engagement, and the importance of creating a culture where teams can thrive.

At Hylaine, India helps strengthen the systems and relationships that enable employees to do their best work, ensuring that the people behind the technology solutions are supported, connected, and equipped for success.

Agreement is everybody thinking the same thing. Alignment is going with the best plan available and owning the outcome, good or bad. Jonathan Meek builds most of what he does on that distinction, because ownership is the only thing that decides whether the work survives the day he leaves.

It shows up in an unusual place. About six months into a year-long engagement, he usually gets a job offer from the client. He has said no 10 out of 10 times, and he does not take it as a compliment. He takes it as information: if a client is trying to hire the consultant, nobody internal was ever named to take the work over, and the handoff is going to happen in the last 60 days instead of the first 60.

Jonathan is a Principal Architect at Hylaine with nearly 20 years in the field. Jayme MacQueen asks him what he does in the first three weeks of an engagement that makes a client start treating him like a leader, how he gets a client to own a solution instead of agreeing to one, and what has to be true on day one for that solution to outlast him.

Also in this episode: the mentor who told him he talks long enough to talk people out of his own ideas, and why he thinks AI is an amplifier rather than a replacement.

What do you do when a critical program has already burned through 60% of its budget, missed every major date, and everyone is watching to see what happens next? Starting over can feel like the cleanest answer. But a restart does not erase the problems that got the program there. It can reset the timeline, reopen old decisions, and cost something even harder to recover: stakeholder trust.

In this episode of Off the Deck, Jayme MacQueen sits down with Hylaine Director of Client Delivery Chris Langlois to unpack what it really takes to rescue a troubled program. Drawing on more than 20 years in technology consulting and nearly a decade bringing complex banking programs to the finish line, Chris shares why the first move is not to build a new roadmap. It is to understand what is salvageable, stabilize execution, and restore confidence. They explore how to make the hard call between saving and scrapping a program, why visible progress matters, and how trust, communication, and other human skills can ultimately determine whether a turnaround succeeds.

At Hylaine, doing what’s right over what’s easy means tackling hard problems without defaulting to the most convenient answer. If you lead complex technology programs, especially in high-stakes, regulated environments, this conversation offers a practical perspective on what to do when the plan has gone sideways but the outcome still matters. Listen to the full episode of Off the Deck to hear how experienced delivery leaders turn troubled programs into forward momentum.

Chris Langlois is Director of Client Delivery at Hylaine. He has spent more than 20 years in technology consulting and close to a decade bringing banking programs to the finish line, usually after being dropped into them mid-flight. He has a specific and unpopular opinion about what starting over actually costs.

AI rollouts don't fail because the technology doesn't work. They fail because nobody was actually accountable for making people use it. This week, Jayme sits down with Alex Grawe, Hylaine's transformation and organizational change lead, to argue out one question every leadership team is quietly avoiding: when AI adoption stalls, is that IT's problem to fix, or the business's?

Welcome to Off the Deck, the podcast where the conversations begin after the last slide. Hosted by Hylaine's Director of Marketing & Brand, Jayme McQueen, each episode brings together the consultants behind the work to unpack the real decisions, tradeoffs, and candid discussions that shape successful technology outcomes.

Each week, we'll go beyond industry buzzwords to explore what technology leaders are really facing, challenge common misconceptions, and share practical insights you can put to work immediately. Because the most valuable conversations don't happen on the deck, they happen off it.