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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
Calling another part of the company "the business" can reveal a separation between strategy and delivery that prevents new evidence from changing commitments.
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Wrap a head around Bell's inequality
Published 2026-05-28
Wrap a head around Bell's inequality I find Bell’s inequality difficult because small differences in the assumptions change what the conclusion means. The game version helps me keep track of what is being tested. A local hidden-variable account explains measurement outcomes through information carried by the particles, without a measurement choice at one location affecting the outcome at the other. Bell inequalities place limits on the correlations such an account can produce, assuming the measurement choices are independent of the hidden variables. In the CHSH game, Bob and Claire each receive an independently chosen random bit, 0 or 1, and each return a bit. They cannot communicate after receiving their inputs. They win if their answers match, except when both inputs are 1, when their answers must differ.
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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: Extract signal from noise. Understand who finds that signal ambiguous, and why. Clarify it for the people whose decisions depend on it.
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Semantic modernisation & new jargon
Published 2026-03-30
Semantic modernisation & new jargon An organisation can adopt new management vocabulary while keeping the same assumptions about how knowledge is created, validated, and justified. Calling delivery "agile" changes little if evidence from the work cannot alter the plan. Activities happen in sequence, but understanding develops through feedback. Important knowledge about users, feasibility, and business value often emerges only after a partial solution exists. The operating model has to let that knowledge change decisions.
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What works and what doesn't work
Published 2026-03-23
A field note on the pressure for clear answers in primary industries, and what that means for software development.
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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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