Posts

Occasional writing when there's something worth saying. No schedule, no filler.

Reference

Risks your project probably has (and the three that will actually kill it)

A practitioner's risk taxonomy for project and IT delivery, cross-linked to the articles that explain each risk in detail.

2026

Narrative Capture: when reporting stops showing the delivery evidence

Sometimes the risk is not that no one reports. It is that reports, advice and reviews keep moving while senior decision-makers receive an account that does not match the delivery evidence.

When more services online is not the same as benefits realised

Service Victoria had more services online and high satisfaction among users who completed transactions. But the Victorian Auditor-General’s Office found in its 2026 follow-up that later activity measures could not show whether the platform was delivering the transaction savings set out in its original business case.

Public Digital Projects Pulse #1: What the first Pulse shows

Queensland and Victoria both publish public data on digital projects. The first Public Digital Projects Pulse brings those datasets into one dated, repeatable baseline.

A fundraising model produced its gains among past donors, not from rich data about them

A field experiment found that detailed donor profiles and socioeconomic data added almost nothing to a targeting model. Public geospatial data, applied to a list of the charity's past donors, was enough.

The decisions that come before a fundraising CRM is configured

An ACT audit found a government CRM that went largely unused despite likely spending above $1.46 million, and put its failure down to governance and unmade decisions rather than the technology. Nonprofit guidance points to the same decisions a fundraiser has to make before a CRM is configured.

When assurance finds the risk

The NSW Audit Office's IPOS report shows a low-confidence gateway warning before contract award, later supplier non-delivery and a programme reset. Assurance can identify unresolved delivery risk, but governance decides whether the next decision changes in response.

Programme debt

Governance obligations don't disappear when you defer them. They compound.

When the delivery model changes

ANAO found Land 400 Phase 3's schedule reporting overstates progress and obscures slippage. The finding traces to a procurement departure that was not clearly communicated to government. When the delivery model changes, three things need to reset.

AI tools are priced like enterprise software. They may be replacing it too.

Uber's AI coding spend hit enterprise software scale before anyone built procurement governance for it. Three questions PMs should check in their 2026 cost baselines.

AI won't make your COTS implementation faster

When AI compresses build time, the bottleneck doesn't disappear. It moves upstream to requirements. And in COTS delivery, requirements were already the hard part.

Why integration projects fail: the governance patterns behind multi-vendor coordination

Integration projects don't fail because of HL7 or FHIR. They fail because nobody designed the governance for a programme where three vendors share a boundary and none of them own it.

The first 48 hours of a programme recovery

What actually happens when you walk into a programme that's RED — and the three structural patterns you have to find before anything else.

The contract management gap: why most projects lack the role they need most

Contract management and business relationship ownership are different functions. Most organisations conflate them — and the vendor benefits.

The vendor management trap: when the PM wears too many hats

When one person enforces quality, manages the relationship, and holds the budget — the vendor wins every argument.

Your inbox is not the problem. Your triage model is.

A structured email system for delivery leaders who process 200 emails a day and still need time to think.

Confelicity: Choosing Joy in Other People's Wins

The word for what's missing in toxic workplaces — and how to get it back.