Septiva Insights
Software economics changed. Technology strategy should notice.
A point of view organized around three executive questions rather than a publication date.
01
What changed?
The economics beneath enterprise software decisions moved.
The Execution Gap
The distance between something an organization knows should exist and its ability to actually build it.
Execution capacity · 5 min read
Your software backlog may be mispriced
Most enterprise backlogs were prioritized under an engineering cost model that no longer holds. The list did not change. The economics did.
Software economics · 6 min read
Software development changed. Procurement hasn't.
Public and enterprise procurement was designed to control the risk of large, slow, expensive builds. It still assumes them.
Procurement · 6 min read
02
What should we reconsider?
Assumptions worth re-reading before the next commitment.
A better estimate begins with better assumptions
Most implementation estimates are defensible arithmetic performed on inherited assumptions. The arithmetic is rarely the problem.
Delivery model · 5 min read
Build vs. Buy is no longer enough
Two answers were adequate when building was slow and expensive. The decision now has at least eight, and naming the right one is worth more than negotiating the wrong one.
Decisions · 6 min read
The dependency test
What can the client confidently do afterward that it could not confidently do before?
Capability transfer · 4 min read
When not to build custom software
Faster building makes it easier to build the wrong thing. The discipline that matters most is knowing which problems should not become an application.
Judgment · 5 min read
03
How should we act?
What a disciplined organization does with the difference.
Proof before scale
Make the first commitment smaller. Make the evidence stronger. Reduce the cost of being wrong.
Risk · 4 min read
Good evidence can tell you to stop
A delivery model that cannot produce a recommendation to stop is not producing evidence. It is producing momentum.
Risk · 4 min read
The first application should make the second easier to build
The test of a delivery engagement is not what shipped. It is what the organization can do next without repeating the same effort.
Capability transfer · 5 min read