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Put invariants in tests
Published 2026-06-03
Agent instructions are strongest when their observable consequences become automated checks. Keep judgment in prose, but put durable project invariants in tests.
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The Distant Business
Published 2026-06-03
When IT calls another part of the company "the business," the phrase reveals a deeper operating-model fracture: strategy and delivery have been split apart, and the feedback loop that should connect them has died.
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Wrap a head around Bell's inequality
Published 2026-05-28
Wrap a head around Bell's inequality On Bell’s inequality Bell’s inequality is a notoriously difficult subject, not because the basic conclusion is impossible to state, but because the conclusion rests on distinctions that are easy to blur. A simplified explanation therefore has to sacrifice some precision. Still, the broad shape of the argument is this: Classical physics tends to assume a few things about the world. First, locality: things can only be affected by other things close enough to influence them, meaning inside their light cone. Second, realism: measurable properties have definite values whether or not anyone has measured them yet. Third, ordinary causality: later events do not reach backward and cause earlier ones. These assumptions feel so natural that they can seem almost invisible.
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PM-ing and Complexity
Published 2026-04-10
For linear dynamic environments (problems, solutions, organisations, and their interactions): Your job is to (0) extract signal from noise, (1) understand for whom which signal is ambiguous, (2) make ambiguity less ambiguous for who it matters. For dynamic non-linear environments: Your challenge is to (0) read signals from noise in a system where your interventions remakes the system you're trying to read, (1) understand for whom which signal is ambiguous, (2) make ambiguity less ambiguous for who it matters.(3) expect emergence where the patterns produced cannot be read back from the parts and interactions, leading to a reconfigure of (0)
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Semantic modernization & new jargon
Published 2026-03-30
Semantic modernization & new jargon Semantic modernization & re-jargonization without epistemic change -how the organization believes knowledge is created, validated, and justified- probably wastes trillions in traditionally managed high software-content enterprising. While activities must happen in time sequence, understanding does not progress linearly (in “knowledge work”). The most important knowledge about users/customers/clients, feasibility and business value alignment -often emerges only after partial solutions exist.
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What works and what doesn't work
Published 2026-03-23
A first field note on how traditionally managed organisations view epistemological access to outcome causes and effects.
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Flyvbjerg & cost overruns
Published 2026-03-04
Long tail statistics IT projects, or rather, high-software-content development and projects are plagued by missed (effort) estimates. And that's OK as the potential uptake due to scalability and transformative efficiency gains can be enormous. Now, just how much are typical overruns? There is highly credible peer reviewed academic research on the "overrun" of software (development) projects (see Flyvbjerg et al.). Unsurprisingly, this research shows the overrun of software projects is significant; it is the most significant of all project types, it beats the Summer Olympics, nuclear power plant construction, tunnels, etc., by a margin. In fact the distribution telling you (roughly) the probability of finding a software project with overrun x follows a power law distribution (a long tail distribution). Now, this power law (its scaling exponent) is such that if you would calculate the average overrun of projects you would find that the average is infinite.
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