Straight answers for people buying software
What custom software, AI and ecommerce projects really cost, how long they take and what goes wrong, written for founders, CTOs and operations leads, with sources.
What to do when a development relationship is failing
The project is four months late and someone senior asks whether to find another supplier. That question is reasonable and it is being asked too early.…
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Why connecting two systems costs more than building one
In a build you control both ends. In an integration you control one, and the other side is a contract you did not write that changes…
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Accessibility requirements to specify before you build
Healthcare taking HHS funding had to comply by 11 May 2026, and that date was not extended. The deadlines, the litigation numbers, and the part that…
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AI agents for internal operations: practical, unglamorous use cases
The interesting demos book travel. The deployments that survive contract review match invoices to purchase orders. Six jobs boring enough to work, and how to build…
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From pilot to production: why most AI projects stall
The team builds something impressive in three weeks, demonstrates it to an approving room, then spends nine months not shipping it. The blockers are always downstream…
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Data readiness: what your data needs before any ML project
Every ML proposal says we have a lot of data. It is almost always true and almost never the relevant question. Five checks, and the reason…
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Security and compliance to specify before development starts
Security written after the build is a retrofit, and the authorisation model is the one that cannot be retrofitted cheaply. Six questions to answer before the…
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Flutter or native: choosing a mobile stack against your budget
The question is not which technology is better. It is how many codebases you can afford to keep alive for five years, because every feature after…
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Shopify Plus or headless commerce: choosing for your catalog and your team
Headless decouples the storefront. Checkout, admin and data stay on Shopify either way. The real cost is not the build, it is the front-end engineer you…
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Replatforming from Magento or WooCommerce: what breaks and what it costs
If you run Magento Open Source 2.4.5 or 2.4.6 you are already unsupported. Adobe own lifecycle dates, what breaks when you move platform, and the four…
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How to test software that gives a different answer every time
The same input produces a different answer, so the assertion fails, so someone deletes the assertion. Four scorers in order of cost, and how to fail…
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Handing over a software project without losing momentum
You received everything you were owed, correctly and on time, and the work still slowed to a crawl for four months. This is about the other…
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Legacy system modernization: migrate, rebuild, or wrap?
The question is rarely migrate, rebuild or wrap for a whole system. It is which capabilities get which treatment, and in what order. With GAO data…
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Building an AI feature on your own data without leaking it
Neither major US provider trains on API data by default. That is the settled question. The exceptions in the retention terms, and the leak in your…
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What it costs to run an LLM feature in production
The model call is rarely the whole invoice. A worked example at 1,000 requests a day, the two levers that actually move the number, and the…
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What you should own when a software build ends
Paying for software is not the same as owning it. The five things that must transfer, and the questions to ask before you sign rather than…
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Build or buy: when off-the-shelf software stops being cheaper
The usual comparison sets a subscription against a build quote and ignores most of both. How to cost them properly, and the hybrid most companies land…
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How to write a requirements brief that gets accurate quotes
The six things that decide quote accuracy, what to leave out, and an honest look at the famous claim that late defects cost 100 times more.
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Onshore, nearshore, offshore: what you trade for the rate
2026 regional rate benchmarks, where the saving quietly goes, and the questions that predict whether a sourcing decision will work.
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Fixed price or time and materials: which contract actually protects you
Fixed price does not remove risk, it prices it. What each contract model really costs you, and why the checkpoint interval matters more than the pricing…
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What software maintenance really costs after launch
Research puts maintenance at 60 to 80 percent of total lifecycle cost. What that means for the quote you are comparing, where the money goes, and…
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How long does it take to build a custom web application?
Schedule slips less than budget because teams protect the date by cutting quality. A realistic phase breakdown, and what actually moves the delivery date.
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MVP scope: deciding what to build first and what to cut
An MVP is not a cheap version of the product, it is the smallest thing that settles your riskiest assumption. A test for what to cut…
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RAG, fine-tuning or prompting: choosing an approach for your data
Knowledge problems are retrieval problems and behaviour problems are tuning problems. How to tell which one you have, and what each approach really costs to run.
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Where AI actually pays off in business software
MIT found 95% of enterprise AI pilots showed no P&L impact, and externally partnered builds succeeded at twice the rate of internal ones. What separates the…
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Why software projects run over budget: seven signals to catch early
What 5,400 IT projects say about how often budgets slip, the seven warning signs that show up weeks before anyone admits it, and what to do…
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What actually happens in a software discovery phase
What discovery investigates, the six things you should receive, what skipping it costs during the build, and how to tell a real discovery from an expensive…
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In-house team or outsourced partner? An honest comparison
What a US developer really costs an employer, why the usual day-rate comparison is wrong, how long hiring actually takes, and when each option wins.
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How to choose a custom software development partner
The five questions that actually separate suppliers, what a proposal reveals about how a team works, the warning signs, and how to test a supplier cheaply…
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What custom software actually costs, with the numbers
What a US developer really costs an employer once benefits and payroll taxes are counted, why the usual salary maths understates it by 57%, and what…
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