Microsoft Access front ends and back ends
Separating Access application objects from shared data without mistaking a storage change for a rewrite.
4 min read
Singular State / Perspectives
Perspectives
Practical thinking on what to build, how to make it work, and what it takes to own it.
Migrating workflows that already have work in progress
Mapping active workflow state, approval semantics, and pending external actions during a platform transition.
3 min read
Migration sequencing across technical and business dependencies
Turning portfolio priorities into feasible waves with explicit intermediate states and recovery boundaries.
3 min read
Model risk management after SR 11-7, and where generative AI sits
SR 26-2 replaced SR 11-7 in April 2026 and its footnote 3 puts generative and agentic AI outside scope. Being out of scope routes the work elsewhere; it does not remove it.
4 min read
Moving Access tables to SQL Server while keeping the forms
Tracing retained Access behavior through SQL Server data access, conflict detection, and controlled write ownership.
4 min read
MVP against a working baseline
A restricted replacement justified as an MVP while failing the operational needs of the users required to adopt it. The diagnosis is the removed work, not the feature count.
4 min read
NIST AI RMF and ISO/IEC 42001: a framework and a management system
One is a voluntary risk framework applied to a system, the other a certifiable management system applied to an organisation. Cited as alternatives, they answer different questions and neither certifies an application.
4 min read
No capacity, no skills, no budget, no interest
Four handover failures with four diagnostics and four remedies. A stalled transfer is an outcome, and it does not identify its own cause.
5 min read
Nobody plans the end of the chain
Transferred systems get retired by a team that did not build them, using documentation written for a handover years earlier. It is the least-instrumented stage and the one where the original evidence is worth most.
5 min read
ODBC: the application, driver manager, driver, and data source
How ODBC connection layers, process architecture, and execution identity affect compatibility.
3 min read
Outsourcing can relocate key-person risk instead of resolving it
How a supplier can absorb support work while critical knowledge remains concentrated in a single person.
3 min read
Parallel prototyping changes selection, not construction
When three attempts cost what one used to, the gain is in comparison. The scarce resource becomes the ability to choose between working options, which is an evaluation problem.
5 min read
Parallel replacement and comparable results
Parallel replacement compares implementations over matched inputs and state before changing operational authority. Shadow execution must control external effects.
4 min read
Paying for converted code can reward complexity that could be removed
How conversion-based progress measures can discourage elimination unless acceptance rewards the required outcome.
3 min read
Comparability, not documentation: how pharmaceutical technology transfer proves a handover
A regulated transfer completes when the receiving site independently reproduces the specified result against criteria agreed in advance. Assisted and unassisted execution answer different questions.
4 min read
Phoenix pay, HealthCare.gov, and NPfIT read through a transfer lens
Three heavily documented programmes, re-examined for one question: what was handed over, to whom, and against what evidence. Plus the limits of reasoning from cases at all.
5 min read
Your pilot cannot detect the effect you are looking for
Cohorts are sized for access, not for power. Where the minimum detectable effect exceeds the claimed benefit, the pilot cannot produce the evidence its business case assumes.
5 min read
Portfolio prioritization: risk, value, and treatment choice
Using portfolio evidence to choose investigation and treatment priorities without letting a score choose the architecture.
3 min read
PowerBuilder replacement and the transaction hidden in the client
Preserving PowerBuilder save semantics across DataWindows, database transactions, client buffers, and replacement APIs.
3 min read
Process elimination as a modernization outcome
Process elimination ends work whose outcome is no longer required. Application shutdown and transferring work elsewhere are different outcomes.
4 min read