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Two conveyor belts: above, a sweating man pushes a giant mouse as his clicks vanish into puffs of smoke labelled CLICKS - NOTHING LEFT BEHIND; below, a small robot feeds a SCRIPT into a machine stamping out glowing gears labelled ARTEFACT.
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The End of ClickOps
A rubber duck wearing a headset types the meeting into a long scroll labelled THE SPEC, which flows past a wastepaper bin labelled INBOX into a glowing machine labelled HARNESS with ticks for context, grounding and outputs.

The Smart Rubber Duck

Rubber duck debugging taught us to say the problem out loud. Now something is listening: talk with care and the transcript becomes the spec, captured in passing.

AI transcripts markdown
· 5 min read
TWO UNIVERSES: on the left a planner points at a Gantt chart labelled 3 PEOPLE x 5 WEEKS; on the right the same man relaxes in an armchair with tea beside a calendar reading ONE AFTERNOON with an amber tick.

Post-Factual Estimates

The estimate said three people and five weeks; the work took an afternoon. Lines of code, story points and tokens have come apart from the thing they were meant to track.

AI estimation metrics
· 5 min read
A cartoon figure leaps from a crumbling slope toward the glowing top rung of a ladder labelled HARNESS, above rungs labelled FREE CHATBOT, PAID MODEL and COPY-PASTE, an amber AHA lightbulb overhead.

The Aha Moment

The AI aha moment is not one moment everyone shares. It is a change of mode: you stop asking AI questions and start giving it a grounded place to do the work.

AI adoption
· 5 min read
Featured
Hand-drawn cartoon on kraft paper. Two desks: an angry robot labelled COMPILER stamps a page DOES NOT PARSE beside a pile of rejected pages, while a smiling AI robot stamps LOOKS FINISHED on a page of obvious nonsense and hands it to a delighted bald man whose mug reads SHIP IT.

Communication As Programming

Building software has become an act of communication. The most valuable technical skill is no longer a language or a framework - it is the ability to say precisely what you mean.

AI communication
· 6 min read
From the archive · 2021
An architect at a drafting table with a question mark on his blueprint, studying a huge pinned pricing grid titled LICENCE MODEL (Basic, Standard, Pro, Enterprise) with buildings sized to each tier - while a crumpled plan labelled CUSTOM BUILD lies on the floor.

Licence Driven Design Revisited - 10 Tips

Licensing is boring right up until it redesigns your architecture for you. Ten tips for designing with the licence model, not against it.

archive Power Platform
· 9 min read
From the archive · 2021
A modest brick house wrapped in serious scaffolding under a banner reading DISCIPLINE, a hard-hatted character holding a checklist of requirements, testing, governance and maintenance - beside a collapsed house of cards signed JUST AN APP, THEY SAID.

Making Power Apps and Low Code succeed

Low code does not mean low discipline. Five ways to keep a Power Apps project from becoming an expensive prototype.

archive Power Platform
· 8 min read
From the archive · 2020
Kraft-paper cartoon: a developer types happily at a desk under a sign reading CODE. EAT. SLEEP. REPEAT., while behind him three abandoned shopping trolleys are labelled OVER-ENGINEERED, CUSTOM MAGIC and REWRITE IT.

Return the Shopping Cart

If a citizen developer builds an app and walks away, who puts the trolley back? On ethics, tidiness and being a good Power Platform citizen.

archive Power Platform
· 9 min read
From the archive · 2019
LICENCE-DRIVEN DESIGN: an architect happily sketches a modest house at a drafting table beside a vending machine labelled LICENCES with different building sizes as options - while a crumpled drawing of the Eiffel Tower lies discarded on the floor.

Licence Driven Design

Why the licence model belongs in your architecture decisions from day one, not discovered at the invoice.

archive Power Platform
· 10 min read
From the archive · 2019
Kraft-paper cartoon: a rough cardboard prototype labelled FIRST DRAFT glows on a table, covered in sticky notes, while a delighted stakeholder points at it and asks questions - a path of stepping stones behind them reads QUESTIONS, ROADMAP, BETTER BUILD.

Sh*tty First Drafts

The Sh*tty First Draft: build a rough working version fast and let people react to it - because real requirements come from pointing at something, not imagining it.

archive Power Platform
· 7 min read
From the archive · 2018
Two ways to run a team: under WIDGET FACTORY, a crossed-out conveyor belt of identical boxes with a glum manager; under FILM CREW, four characters with different tools gathered around a glowing table labelled BETTER PRACTICES.

Building a Power Platform Dream Team

What roles a Power Platform team actually needs, and why the mix matters more than the headcount.

archive Power Platform
· 7 min read