Notes from real engagements, for the decision you are about to make.
For the people who decide what to build, what to move and what to stop. So far there are 10 of them, each written from work we delivered, including the parts that went wrong.
Before you build or buy
Owning the code, comparing quotes, deciding between a product and a build.
- Build or buy: the calculation almost nobody actually runsOff-the-shelf always looks cheaper on day one. The five criteria that genuinely decide it, the three-year arithmetic no vendor shows you, and the trap of the 80 percent fit.
- Who owns the code your contractor writes? Probably not you, and paying does not change itUnder US copyright law, software written by a contractor is not work made for hire by default. Without a signed assignment, the developer keeps it. The four clauses to check.
When nobody senior owns the technology
Fractional or interim leadership, what it costs, and the risks nobody registers.
- When one person is your only backup, and nobody put it on the risk registerEvery small IT setup has one person who alone can fix a particular thing. That is not a staffing problem but an availability risk, and it shrinks in weeks rather than by hiring.
- What a fractional CTO costs, and the three ways it gets pricedDay rate, monthly retainer, fixed scope. The three models make your vendor optimize for different things, and the cheapest headline number is usually the most expensive arrangement.
- Fractional CTO, interim CTO, or consultant: what you are actually buyingThree arrangements that look alike on a résumé and differ on one thing: who holds the decision. How to tell which one your situation needs, and the drift to watch for.
When the old system has to move
Migrations, renewals, backups and debt, priced before you decide.
- Cloud or on-premise: the five costs the comparison always leaves outThe comparison is usually hardware price against monthly subscription. Five costs are missing from it, in both directions, and three cases where staying on your own hardware holds up.
- Making the case for technical debt without using the words technical debt“We should rebuild this properly” never gets funded, and that is rational. Three ways to convert technical debt into delay, risk and money, so it competes with the requests that do get funded.
- Modernize or renegotiate: price the exit before you decideEveryone advising you earns from the answer being yes. The four inputs that settle it, and why a costed migration is worth having even when you decide to stay.
- Your backups run. Do they restore? That is not the same questionA backup that has never been restored is not a backup, it is an assumption. The six ways it fails silently, the ransomware angle, and the one-hour quarterly test.
- Leaving VMware: the real alternatives, and how to migrate without breaking productionSeven credible alternatives in three families, compared on the criteria that actually decide, plus what the migration really costs and the sequence that avoids an incident.
One of these describes your quarter? Tell us the rest.
Describe what you need built or decided, and where your data and customers are. A person reads it and answers within 48 hours.