Field Notes
Notes from real engagements — pricing calls, platform evaluations, and the red flags vendors hope you won't notice. Anonymized, specific, and occasionally uncomfortable.
Pricing & scoping
A helpdesk build landed on my desk with a number that didn't survive twenty minutes of questions. Walking through the diligence that repriced it — and why the client signed anyway.
Platform evaluation
Three options, three very different price tags, and a sales process designed to make the expensive one feel inevitable. The evaluation framework that ended with the cheapest recommendation.
SLAs & reporting
Pause-the-clock tricks, reassignment resets, and other ways ticketing systems flatter your response times. What honest SLA reporting looks like and why clients reward it.
Due diligence
How staged due diligence caught scope problems a fixed bid would have buried — and what a red-flag memo should actually say.
Buying advice
Sometimes the audit ends with 'keep the spreadsheet.' The conditions under which buying software makes things worse, not better.