The Blog
Thoughts on architecture, leadership, technology decisions, and the lessons that only come from doing the work. Also published on LinkedIn.
The Ferrari Analogy Is Costing You More Than You Think
How a seemingly sensible boardroom shortcut quietly undermines engineering quality, accumulates risk, and misreads the very philosophy it claims to follow.
The Requirements Graveyard: Why So Many Projects Die Before a Line of Code Is Written
Most projects do not die in production; they die quietly in the requirements phase. By the time engineers open an IDE, the real damage is already done.
Which Architect Am I, Exactly? The Job-Title Maze We've Built
When someone asks me what kind of architect I am, I still hesitate. My CV says Solution Architect, but my work cuts across integration, data, cloud and enterprise architecture. If I'm confused about which architect I really am, what chance does a recruiter or junior engineer have?
The Architect's Tug-of-War: Generic API vs Specific API
When designing an API, do you build for what you know — or for what you can't yet predict? Here's how I think about one of architecture's most common dilemmas.
When hiring harder doesn't mean hiring better
I reviewed 100 CVs and ran 20 interviews to hire fewer than 5 people. Then we paused, changed the process, and hired 3 people from just 5 interviews. Here's what changed.
Imposter Syndrome vs. Delivery: A story from Spring 2014
My son was 40 days old when I boarded a plane to London. The stakeholders looked at me and asked: 'Are you sure? He's just a kid.' Here's what happened next.
Why some IT projects save £100k and others become money pits
After years in enterprise IT architecture, I've realised the technical failure is rarely the problem. It's the decision logic at the start that fails. Here's what I've learned.