“Why starting with a monolith is probably better” I see a number of businesses on an interim and fractional basis. From a software perspective the teams fall into the following patterns: They started with micro-services and are continuing to develop; They started with a monolith and are continuing to develop; …

We’re all familiar with the concept of delivering value as part of product development, especially in the field of software. However, the value can often be focused squarely on the customer ignoring other initiatives within the business that can significantly impact customer value or the ability to deliver it. Let’s…

Embarking on the micro-services journey can be a little daunting. Lots of people walk into this without a complete understanding of what they’re getting themselves into. This checklist aims to provide you with a list of considerations before you embark on that journey. Stick these in your backpack on your…

Why planning the near-future is important — Software architecture is a concept that often misunderstood. Let’s come up with the following Software architecture is the understanding of a system and the constituent parts defined by a set of qualities. Why is thinking about software architecture important? Well, take the case of the arrangement of a city and…

Review is an important part of software development, whether that’s asking someone to rubber-duck with you: A proposed product feature — the happy path, non-happy paths and overall way it integrates with the rest of the system Your technical design of a given service/API, integration etc… (how you intend to…

Choosing a technology stack (and as part of that the programming language(s) for your product involves consideration of a number of technical and non-technical factors. Some of the non-technical factors are arguably more important than the technical aspects. Let’s start with outlining some definitions of the technical jargon. Definitions Technology Stack…

Open Banking can be defined as a set of changes in the way banks handle your financial data. It means that you can securely share your financial data with others, as a consumer. That means I can then use my data to do things such as plan my finances better…

I’m sure there are multiple ways to do this, but this is what I used to get Metabase up and running y’all with Google BigQuery as my reporting database. GCloud Setup Make sure you have gcloud setup (developer tools): Installing Google Cloud SDK | Cloud SDK Documentation This page contains instructions for choosing and maintaining a Cloud SDK installation. Cloud SDK runs on Linux, macOS…cloud.google.com

The Chief Technology Officer (CTO) role is an important one in a business. But, not everybody needs a CTO and not everyone needs a full-time CTO! It’s confusing — I get it! Many people confuse a CTO role with a Senior Developer or perhaps a Technical Lead who is more…