Writing on
How technology actually changes organisations and lives — including AI, automation and the gap between what a tool promises and what it delivers.
4 min read
By the middle of December most large organisations have stopped changing anything. It is a sensible precaution, and it is also the point in the year when the changes that do go through are the least well tested of any.
4 min read
Most technology roadmaps are approved in the autumn and overtaken by the spring, and everyone involved knows it. The problem is not the planning horizon. It is that a plan listing everything has decided nothing, and left the decision to March.
4 min read
Windows 10 reaches end of support today, and a great many organisations have not finished. The operating system was never the hard part. The date an organisation can actually meet is set by whichever of its software suppliers is slowest.
4 min read
A car maker's plants have now been stopped for a fortnight with its systems deliberately switched off. Continuity planning answers how quickly systems come back. The harder question is what an organisation can still do while they are gone.
4 min read
Everyone agrees the old system has to go, and every few years the case is written again and quietly shelved. That is not indecision. The business case for replacement is genuinely weak — and the cost of keeping it never appears where anyone is looking.
4 min read
Every organisation has a layer of spreadsheets, shared mailboxes and personal databases holding the real work together. It is usually treated as a risk to stamp out. It is far more useful read as a list of everything the official systems do not do.
4 min read
The build-or-buy decision is usually settled on cost and time to value. Neither is the variable that matters. The useful question is which parts of the organisation you expect to keep changing — and who you are willing to ask first.
4 min read
Every organisation claims to be “data-driven.” But few treat data with the same discipline and intent as financial or physical assets. In utilities, telecoms, and the public sector alike, data remains one of the most underutilised strategic resources.
4 min read
When the English non-household (NHH) water market opened in 2017, the ambition was clear: drive competition, improve customer service, and create a market where innovation thrives.
