Blog

Thoughts on engineering leadership, behavioural metrics, and what your dashboards aren't telling you.

• 25 May 2026

  Monte Carlo Forecasting vs Story Points: Why a Range Beats a Number

  Story points promise precision and deliver false confidence. Here's why Monte Carlo forecasting — a range with real odds — is the honest alternative, and how to start using it.

• 22 May 2026

  The Restaurant Problem: Why Your Initiative Won't Land on Time

  Your initiative has ten dependencies. Here are the odds of it finishing without delay: 0.1%. Let me explain with a restaurant booking.

• 19 May 2026

  The Titanic Was Not an Engineering Failure

  The Titanic is the most famous green dashboard in history. The real cause of the disaster was a fractal of behaviours that started nowhere near the iceberg -- the same pattern that still sinks organisations today.

• 15 May 2026

  Delivery Budgets and Behaviour Budgets

  Every organisation has two budgets that determine whether they'll deliver on their commitments. One is based on data. The other is based on behaviours. Most organisations only know about the first.

• 8 May 2026

  The Behaviour Budget

  Layoffs reduce the OpEx budget. They also slash something else — something that never appears in the board report but determines whether your remaining team delivers or quietly shuts down.

• 1 May 2026

  The Equation That Explains Why Good Teams Fail

  Outcome = Capability x Behaviours. A simple equation from an Irish rugby coach that, once you extend it, explains why talented teams fail, why big organisations underperform, and why hiring the best people into a broken culture barely moves the needle.

• 24 April 2026

  The Most Dangerous Colour in Business

  The colour that should worry you most isn't red. It's the green on a status report that hasn't changed in six weeks.

• 17 April 2026

  What Is a Fractional CTO — And When Do You Need One?

  Not every company needs a full-time CTO. But every company building software needs senior technical leadership. Here's how fractional work fills that gap.

• 10 April 2026

  Why Your Green Dashboards Are Lying to You

  Every team I've led had moments where the metrics said everything was fine — until it wasn't. The problem isn't the data. It's what we've trained ourselves not to see.