Notes ยท Blizzard / consulting https://blizzard.consulting/notes/ Notes on technical leadership, delivery and applied AI, from twenty years of building software where it had to actually work. en-GB Mon, 10 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT The model was never the hard part https://blizzard.consulting/notes/2026-08-10-the-model-was-never-the-hard-part/ https://blizzard.consulting/notes/2026-08-10-the-model-was-never-the-hard-part/ Creating AI feature that writes to a few thousand people. No quality difference between models at five times the price, prompt rules obeyed about half the time... if you're lucky. From an engagement Mon, 10 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT The AI Act deadline that moved isn't the one that matters https://blizzard.consulting/notes/2026-08-04-the-ai-act-deadline-that-moved/ https://blizzard.consulting/notes/2026-08-04-the-ai-act-deadline-that-moved/ The expensive obligation slipped sixteen months. A cheap one arrived exactly on time, applies to software you already shipped, and falls due in December with nobody assigned to it. Opinion Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Can your AI vendor prove what their agent can reach? https://blizzard.consulting/notes/2026-08-01-what-can-your-agent-reach/ https://blizzard.consulting/notes/2026-08-01-what-can-your-agent-reach/ Three organisations had frontier models try to get out of an evaluation environment this July. Two of them lost. The difference was not the model, and I think that is the useful lesson. Commentary Sat, 01 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT You still can't outsource responsibility https://blizzard.consulting/notes/2026-06-23-you-still-cant-outsource-responsibility/ https://blizzard.consulting/notes/2026-06-23-you-still-cant-outsource-responsibility/ Hertz sued Accenture for $32m after letting go of the people who could have told it the work was wrong. Teams are now doing the same thing to themselves, and there's nobody left to sue. Opinion Tue, 23 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT Five years on, some people still live in goddamn vans https://blizzard.consulting/notes/2026-04-21-some-people-still-live-in-vans/ https://blizzard.consulting/notes/2026-04-21-some-people-still-live-in-vans/ I argued in 2021 that public sector software costs what it does because government can't choose its users. That's still true. What's changed is that the private sector's exemption is running out. Opinion Tue, 21 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT