Writing on Technology Leadership & AI Strategy

Essays on technology leadership, AI adoption, and software strategy.

The Sum of All Tokens

14 April 2026 · 22 min read

AI lets you replace paid software with custom tools that fit the shape of your problem. But software still costs. It's the sum of token spend plus human insight, and the insight is the scarce half.

The Clean Interface

13 April 2026 · 12 min read

A weekend of AI-assisted home energy optimisation taught me the inversion nobody warned me about. The sophisticated parts of modern software are robust now. The simple parts are fragile.

The Long Obedience

7 April 2026 · 10 min read

Why staying in one place for fifteen years turned out to be a competitive advantage - and what happens when AI meets patience.

Fifteen Years of sheepCRM

31 March 2026 · 6 min read

How a favour for a friend became a membership CRM serving over a hundred organisations. The sheepCRM story — from Access replacement to focused product.

The End of Simplicity

10 February 2026 · 9 min read

When AI collapses the cost of building features and agents replace human users, what happens to our instinct for simplicity? A fractional CTO's perspective on abundance, discipline, and software bloat.

The Spreadsheet Moment

15 January 2026 · 6 min read

AI code generation is doing for software what VisiCalc did for financial modelling — putting creation into the hands of people who understand problems.

The Three Mountains

6 January 2026 · 11 min read

A simple model for operational maturity — where you actually are, not where you think you are. From a primary school framework to a decade of consulting.

The Accidental Operating System

18 November 2025 · 4 min read

Holacracy was criticised as too rigid for humans. It might have been building the organisational architecture AI agents need.