There was a time when my phone looked like a showcase for “productivity”.

Task managers. Note taking apps. Whiteboard apps. Mind mapping tools. Team dashboards. To-do lists. Habit trackers. Time trackers. Document apps. AI assistants. Collaboration tools. Communication platforms.

Twelve apps. Twelve different notifications. Twelve different places where “important” things lived.

And honestly? Most of them were just layers between me and actually getting things done.

Over the last few months I’ve been quietly simplifying how I work whilst away from my desk, and the result has been surprisingly dramatic. I’ve removed twelve productivity apps from my mobile device and replaced them with just three core tools:

• Outlook
• Teams
• ChatGPT

That’s it.

The Death of the Mobile Productivity Stack

The original promise of productivity apps was compelling:

“Capture everything.”
“Organise your life.”
“Never forget anything.”
“Manage work from anywhere.”

The problem is that most apps became destinations rather than assistants.

You didn’t just do work anymore — you had to maintain the system that managed the work.

Tasks needed tagging.
Notes needed organising.
Boards needed updating.
Projects needed grooming.
Templates needed maintaining.

At some point, I realised I was spending more time curating productivity than benefiting from it.

AI Changed the Equation

The big shift for me was the arrival of genuinely useful AI workflows.

Before AI, structure mattered because software was rigid. If information wasn’t in exactly the right place, the tool became ineffective.

Now? Context matters more than structure.

ChatGPT can summarise.
It can extract actions.
It can draft responses.
It can organise thoughts.
It can build plans from unstructured conversations.
It can act as the connective tissue between fragmented information sources.

That fundamentally changes how many apps you actually need.

My Current Mobile Workflow

Outlook Becomes the Command Centre

Outlook handles:

• Email
• Calendar
• Meeting prep
• Quick approvals
• Team visibility
• Prioritisation

Instead of exporting information into other systems, I now leave far more information where it naturally originates.

An email thread is often the project history.
A meeting invite is often the task list.
A flagged message is often enough of a reminder.

AI helps process information rather than forcing me to relocate it.

Teams Handles Operational Awareness

Teams has effectively replaced several standalone collaboration tools for me.

I use it for:

• Team communication
• Status updates
• Quick decision making
• File access
• Incident coordination

But more importantly, Teams gives me context.

That matters far more than maintaining a perfect task hierarchy on a mobile screen.

ChatGPT Is the Workflow Multiplier

This is the real difference maker.

ChatGPT has become:

• My mobile thinking partner
• My summarisation engine
• My drafting assistant
• My prioritisation tool
• My “turn chaos into clarity” system

Instead of opening five apps to:

• capture notes,
• organise tasks,
• draft emails,
• create summaries,
• and prepare updates…

…I can now simply describe what I need.

For example:

“Summarise today’s customer escalation thread and produce actions for tomorrow.”

Or:

“Turn these rough notes into a structured update for leadership.”

Or:

“What are the key risks emerging from these conversations?”

That workflow reduction is enormous.

Fewer Apps = Less Friction

What surprised me most wasn’t just convenience.

It was cognitive reduction.

Fewer icons.
Fewer notifications.
Fewer disconnected systems.
Fewer decisions about where information belongs.

My phone now feels like a communication and decision-making tool again rather than a miniature admin console.

There’s also something slightly ironic happening in the productivity software industry:
AI is making many productivity apps less necessary.

A lot of tools existed primarily because humans had to manually structure information for software to understand it.

Now software understands messy human input much better.

That changes everything.

Mobile Work Should Be Lightweight

I still believe deep work belongs on a proper workstation.

But mobile work?
That should be:

• responsive,
• lightweight,
• contextual,
• and fast.

The goal isn’t to recreate your desktop workflow on a six-inch screen.

The goal is to stay informed, unblock people, make decisions, and keep momentum moving.

Right now, Outlook + Teams + ChatGPT does that better for me than twelve fragmented productivity apps ever did.

And honestly, I don’t miss any of them.

Simplifying Work: Ditch the App Overload

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been deliberately exploring how AI can support real-world software delivery—not as a novelty, but as a practical tool embedded into day-to-day engineering work.

This hasn’t been about generating code for the sake of it. Instead, it’s been about applying AI across different types of ownership, complexity, and lifecycle stages of software. What’s emerged is a clearer picture: AI is most valuable not when it replaces development, but when it accelerates understanding, improves quality, and reduces friction.

Here’s how that has played out in practice.

1. Improving Code I Already Own

The easiest place to start was with code I had written myself—tools that are already in use and solving real problems.

Because I understood the intent and behaviour of these applications, AI became a powerful second pair of eyes. I used it to:

• Generate unit tests for areas that had little or no coverage
• Identify gaps in build and deployment pipelines
• Highlight potential security concerns
• Suggest refactoring opportunities for readability and maintainability

The result wasn’t dramatic rewrites. Instead, it was steady, compounding improvement:

• Higher confidence in changes due to better test coverage
• More reliable builds and deployments
• Reduced time spent on manual code reviews
• Cleaner, more maintainable codebases

This is where AI felt most immediately productive—augmenting existing knowledge rather than trying to replace it.

2. Making Sense of Legacy Systems

A more interesting challenge came from systems I hadn’t written—particularly those with limited documentation and where historical knowledge had faded over time.

Here, AI acted less like a coding assistant and more like a translation layer.

I used it to:

• Analyse unfamiliar code and explain intent
• Generate technical documentation from existing implementations
• Identify outdated dependencies and suggest upgrade paths
• Propose test strategies for systems that had none

What would typically take days of manual exploration could be accelerated significantly. More importantly, it reduced the risk of “guesswork engineering”—making changes without fully understanding the system.

Key outcomes included:

• Faster onboarding into legacy systems
• Improved stability through better understanding
• Reduced reliance on tribal knowledge
• A foundation for future modernisation

This was one of the most valuable use cases: turning unknown systems into known ones.

3. Tailoring the Tools I Use Every Day

Another unexpected benefit came from applying AI to open-source tools I use regularly.

Instead of working around limitations or minor frustrations, I was able to:

• Explore the codebase quickly
• Identify the root cause of issues
• Implement targeted fixes or enhancements

AI reduced the barrier to entry for modifying third-party code. Tasks that might previously have felt too time-consuming or complex became achievable in a short space of time.

The impact here was subtle but meaningful:

• Smoother day-to-day workflows
• Faster resolution of small but persistent issues
• Greater control over the tools I rely on

It shifted the mindset from “adapting to tools” to “adapting tools to fit the way I work.”

4. Reviving Older, Customer-Facing Solutions

Some of the most challenging scenarios involved older solutions that are still in use but no longer actively developed.

These tend to surface through support cases or escalations, often requiring rapid understanding and targeted fixes.

AI proved particularly useful in:

• Interpreting older coding patterns and structures
• Diagnosing issues from limited context
• Suggesting safe, minimal changes to resolve problems
• Documenting behaviour that had never been formally captured

This led to:

• Faster resolution times for complex issues
• Fewer repeat incidents
• Increased confidence when working in fragile codebases

Rather than treating these systems as untouchable, AI made them accessible again.

5. Enhancing Actively Maintained Solutions

Finally, I applied the same approaches to modern, actively maintained solutions—where expectations around quality, security, and consistency are much higher.

In this space, AI supported:

• Continuous improvement of test coverage
• Ongoing security reviews
• Documentation generation and updates
• Ensuring alignment with current platform standards

The key difference here is that AI becomes part of the development lifecycle, not just a one-off tool.

Benefits included:

• More consistent quality across releases
• Faster delivery of enhancements
• Improved confidence in production changes
• Better alignment with evolving standards

This is where AI starts to feel like a long-term capability rather than a short-term productivity boost.

What I’ve Learned

Across all of these scenarios, a few consistent themes have emerged.

1. AI Accelerates Understanding More Than It Replaces Thinking

The biggest gains came from reducing the time it takes to understand code—not from blindly generating it.

2. Context Still Matters

AI is most effective when you can validate its output. The better your understanding of the system, the more value you get.

3. Small Improvements Compound Quickly

Adding tests, improving pipelines, and tightening security might seem incremental, but together they significantly improve delivery confidence.

4. Legacy Work Is Where AI Shines

The less documented and more complex a system is, the more impact AI can have in making it accessible again.

5. It Changes What Feels “Worth Doing”

Tasks that previously felt too time-consuming—like fixing minor issues in third-party tools or documenting old systems—suddenly become viable.

Where This Goes Next

This is still early in the journey, but the direction is clear.

AI is not just a coding assistant—it’s becoming a core part of how we:

• Understand systems
• Maintain quality
• Reduce risk
• Deliver improvements faster

The next step is to move from individual use to repeatable patterns—embedding these approaches into team workflows, standards, and expectations.

Because the real value isn’t just in what AI can do—it’s in how consistently we can apply it.

From Curiosity to Capability: What My AI Learning Journey Has Actually Delivered

The 2026 Resolution: The “Tech-Powered” Human
While my new neck discs are a feat of medical engineering, they’ve inspired me to look at how I can use technology in other areas of my life. My resolution for 2026 isn’t about “doing more”—it’s about leveraging technology to be more present.
After a year of pushing through pain, I want to use the tools available to me to boost my efficiency while protecting my health. Here is how I’m planning to fuel my comeback:
Boosting Family Life: I’m leaning into smart-home automation and shared digital planning to remove the “mental load” of household management. By letting tech handle the grocery lists and schedules, I can focus 100% on being present with my family as I recover.

Healing with Intent
This year is going to look a little different. There will be physical therapy, plenty of rest, and a steady climb back to full strength. But with 12 months of pain finally behind me and two new discs to support me, I’ve never felt more optimistic.
Recovery isn’t just about getting back to “normal”; it’s about building a life that is more balanced and intentional than before. Here’s to a 2026 that is tech-enabled, family-focused, and—most importantly—moving forward.

“The goal isn’t just to heal, but to thrive.”

From Titanium to Transformation: My 2026 Journey Starts Now

If I had to give 2025 a headline, it would be change with purpose. This year stretched me in the best ways—stepping into new leadership responsibilities, growing a team, tightening the way we ship, and learning to listen harder than I speak. Here’s the personal version of that story—no brand names, no customer specifics—just what changed in me and how I showed up.

Stepping Up: The Promotion That Changed My Calendar (and Mindset)

Early in the year I moved into a bigger role. The real shift wasn’t the title; it was the lens. I stopped optimising only for “what I can build” and started optimising for “what the team can deliver repeatedly.”
That meant trading some deep maker time for clearer goals, sharper priorities, and better guardrails. I learned that great leadership isn’t louder—it’s more consistent.

Building the Team: Capability Before Headcount

I focused on capability first: the skills we need, the outcomes we own, and the habits that make our work sustainable. Then I hired for those.
Recruiting became less about “finding a unicorn” and more about complementary strengths: pairing systems thinkers with strong communicators, matching builders with patient debuggers, and balancing speed with steadiness. The win wasn’t filling seats—it was creating a team that could cover for each other and still raise the bar.

Shipping More (and Smarter): Extensions That Reduce Friction

This was a shipping year. We delivered and refreshed a number of small-but-mighty extensions that simplify everyday workflows—things that make sending, tracking, auditing, and revising feel lighter.
My guiding principle was simple: remove one step, add one check. Fewer clicks, clearer states, better logs. The result was a set of releases that felt invisible in the best way: they just worked.

How we kept momentum:

• Micro‑sprints: fifteen‑minute weekly checkpoints to unblock decisions fast.
• One‑page runbooks: enough guidance to get anyone productive, without a wall of text.
• “Prove it’s live” checks: lightweight verification steps built into our deployment flow.

Owning the Plumbing: Pipelines, Permissions, and Environment Boundaries

Shipping more forced me to become a student of the plumbing—credentials, pipelines, environments, and deployment rights. When automation faltered, I documented a clear manual path to production with artefact verification and rollback notes.
I also nudged us toward true test vs. production separation, tightened access, and wrote down the things future‑me would otherwise forget. Unsexy work, essential outcomes.

Raising the Floor: Security, Compliance, and Clarity

Trust isn’t a feature you bolt on—it’s a minimum standard you live by.
This year I helped translate policy into practice: tightening recording rules for sessions, clarifying what AI tools are appropriate in meetings, and setting sensible defaults that make safe behaviour the path of least resistance.
I learned to treat security as an experience challenge: make the right thing obvious, quick, and documented.

Listening More: Field Signals, Release Notes, and Community Threads

A big part of my growth was learning to listen for signal—especially from upgrade notes and practitioner conversations. Those discussions surfaced tiny changes in behaviour that could become big friction later.
By folding that feedback into our defaults and help text, we prevented issues from turning into tickets. Quiet wins are still wins.

What Changed in Me

• From fixes to systems: I stopped “hero‑patching” and started designing repeatable ways to prevent the same issues.
• From shipping to safeguarding: I now see deployments as both delivery and defence—verify, limit blast radius, document.
• From speaking to listening: Feedback isn’t noise; it’s an early warning system if you’re humble enough to hear it.

The Quiet Wins I’m Proud Of

• A deployment playbook that works even when automation doesn’t—with verification built in.
• Extensions that reduce friction and feel intuitive—less clicking, clearer states, better audit trails.
• Policies translated into practical steps—not just rules, but workflows anyone can follow.

Looking Ahead to 2026

Next year is about consistency at scale: fully automated pipelines, cleaner environment boundaries, and guardrails that make secure, compliant delivery the default. My personal goal is to spend more time coaching and documenting, so the team can move faster with fewer surprises.

Thanks for reading—and for being part of the change. If this year taught me anything, it’s that growth isn’t about doing more; it’s about doing the right things, repeatedly, together.

2025 a professional summary

2021-2022 – What happened?

Everyone knows the negatives of 2020, I won’t list them, there are many. However, we, as a human race, tend to focus on the negatives too much, so I will list some positives to think about as we head towards 2021. Pandora’s box has opened, now it’s time to find the glimmer of hope.

2020 saw achievements by many, some of these were driven by need and necessity, others were years in the making. And, whilst the year as a whole may have taken the shine off them, we should celebrate them.

• We sent people into space, on a reusable rocket and capsule. – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_FIaPBOJgc
• Scientists worked at incredible rates to work on a vaccine for Covid-19, resulting (at this point in time) in at least 3 or 4 viable vaccines that could be available to the public before the year ends. – https://www.wired.co.uk/article/coronavirus-vaccines
• Innovation and the ability to adapt has meant that whilst some companies folded, and many individuals have sadly lost their jobs or been furloughed, some companies were smart enough to rise to the challenge. Digital Transformation strategies and utilisation of technology have helped lots of companies overcome the challenge, in some cases increase their output, or in other cases adapt their products and services to meet new demands. In the UK, for example, we had many manufacturing companies come together to use their dormant machinery to make ventilators, PPE, girders for temporary hospitals, etc.
• We are still here. The planet hasn’t been totally destroyed, and whilst our mental health teeters on the edge, many of us have found a new appreciation for those around us whilst learning new techniques and behaviours for getting through the day, week, month, and year. It is these new found skills and attitudes to life that will see us in good stead for the years ahead, whether the next event is closer to home, or on a global scale.

Ok, so not going to lie, I struggled to find enough positive stories from this year, but those above are the ones I believe in, the ones that have peaked my interests and allowed me to have some positive vibes to get through.

On a personal/career level, 2020 was supposed to be a year of self-discovery and development. Starting a new role in October 2019 with a brand new remit and direction was incredibly scary, but a challenge I relished. Fortunately, that role survived the turmoil around Covid-19 and I’m still here to tell many tales. I have been able to upskill, adding to my “jack of all trades” mantra that sees me now capable of some very interesting and potentially dangerous things, as well as embedding myself into a well established and very experienced team, relatively seamlessly. 2021 will see me continue in this role, with the same people and adding various activities along the way. I am glad for this consistency in my work life as the world around us continues to be so unpredictable.

2021 here we come

https://www.epicor.com/en-uk/press-room/news-releases/clayton-dubilier-rice-to-acquire-epicor-software-corporation-from-kkr/

On a personal note this will be the 4th acquisition/takeover/purchase of a company I work for in 5 years, see previous posts for notes on those!

The Future is Bright…

I wanted to share my findings, rather than my code at this stage, and here are my Top 5 SendGrid tips:

1. Do review Microsoft’s guide on how to get started with SendGrid via Azure, this simple article gives you a great base on how to set up the back-end and start writing C# around it: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/sendgrid-dotnet-how-to-send-email
2. Use Unsubscribe groups – these allow you to stay within GDPR in Europe, appending an Unsubscribe and Manage Preferences link to the bottom of the emails that are sent. i.e.

3. Write both plain text and HTML content for your email, I ended up creating an HTML builder so I could convert Email addresses to <a href="mailto:EmailAddress"> and any HTTP(s):// links to <a href:"http://link"> this was a great experiment with regular expressions. Note, I found that not all Email clients auto-convert, e.g. Outlook will convert an Email address but not a URL. I was creating my body text in a Rich Text Box, so it was just one big string!
4. Look into Personalisations (https://sendgrid.com/docs/for-developers/sending-email/personalizations/) these are crucial if you want to customise your output (the emails themselves). I created variables to use in subject and body lines so I could pass in {customer} and {product}. SendGrid has a substitution capability which comes as part of personalisation. I’ll share a snippet of code here, as I found a solution on StackOverflow (https://stackoverflow.com/a/53292550) but it needed a slight tweak, changing the Tos.Add to a msg.AddTo as the To: Email address needs to be a part of the personalisation, I wasn’t sure if this was to do with API changes or not! Another tip, if you want the subject to be the same, without substitutions you can use the SetGlobalSubject method

var personalizationIndex = 0;
                foreach (var subscriber in subscriberEntities)
                {
                    msg.AddTo(new EmailAddress(subscriber.RowKey, subscriber.Name), personalizationIndex);
                    msg.AddSubstitution("{product}", product.Description, personalizationIndex);
                    msg.AddSubstitution("{customer}", subscriber.Name, personalizationIndex);
                    personalizationIndex++;
                    
                }

5. Create a test email method, that uses the same logic as your core one, but only sends to one email address. You don’t want to be sending bulk emails out without checking them first!

I hope this new style of thread has been an interesting read, I hope to do more very soon!

5 Useful SendGrid Tips

It was mentioned in part one that the infrastructure project effectively became a DevOps implementation project, and I’ll try to delve into the bits I can discuss in this post. Firstly there’s the inheritance; over 300 environments, many with specific mods for specific customers, and the remaining with what we call “Extended Solutions” – productized mods effectively. Then there was all the code itself, fortunately, the existing dev team has a fantastic grasp of the deep dark secrets of Git and I have enough of a basic understanding to pick up where others left off, but then, something new to myself came out, and that was the builds of the code. Debug or Release, MSBuild versions, semantic versioning, Git Flow… you get the idea. All very complicated to me at the time, but now it’s in my veins!

Previously the team used an old, unsupported, broken version of Jenkins to build their code, with definitions for each Git Branch, some with bat files, some hardcoded in the Jenkins config screen, basically a mess, and different rules for different people. Well, I like to standardize, so we scrapped the old, and brought in the new. Cue the amazing concept that is Continuous Integration. Having some basic experience with this in Azure DevOps (remember this post?) the concept was not new, however, implementing with Jenkins was a new experience. I managed to inherit a new blank Jenkins server, but first thing I did was reverse proxy via IIS and get it secured with an internal SSL certificate, as well as connect up to the Corporate Active Directory and restrict to our team only, then we got a service account from Corp IT and locked the server down, only myself and Domain Admins can get into the back end, and now we have a secured build server. Why so secure when it’s all internal? Well, that’s because the CTO office allowed us to have the corporate digital cert for code signing so long as it only existed in one, locked-down place. We can call it via the Jenkins application side but not extract, manipulate or otherwise interact with it. With this new updated (and updateable) Jenkins server, plus a couple of useful plugins (Blue Ocean is a must) we have a fantastic platform to manage and analyze our build process. The main feature we are utilizing is the Multibranch Pipelines via Jenkinsfile. This Jenkinsfile is written in groovy and is basically a set of instructions that define a build, for example, we can say build this solution, sign using that certificate and publish the artifacts so we can download afterward. The huge advantage for us is because we build a solution for multiple ERP versions, we can have up to 8 exes output at the end, and we now have one screen to grab them from, regardless of what Git branch we built for. On the subject of Git branches, due to the multibranch pipeline functionality, once our Jenkinsfile is pulled into Master, it will then filter down to all subsequent branches, and with this feature enabled, Jenkins will detect any new branches that were pushed back to the origin with that Jenkinsfile includes. I’ve previously written about VS Code and all the wondrous things it does, but we also discovered a Jenkinsfile checker in the form of https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=janjoerke.jenkins-pipeline-linter-connector. This tool allows us to check syntax, against our own Jenkins server and therefore ensures an accurate rule definition every time we adjust a build. It’s time-savers like these that have boosted the team’s productivity significantly, I recently tweeted about this improvement, as I took hold of an existing codebase and fully integrated it into our new philosophy within an hour or so!

A large part of the battle has been documenting the configuration and the overall process as well as educating colleagues (primarily developers) about how we are using these concepts and tools. I’ve found the majority of developers know the concepts and will have their own experiences with Git and CI/CD but until you document what the process should be in the exact circumstances, they don’t necessarily see the advantages or understand just how powerful these changes are, and more importantly how it improves consistency and productivity across the team. The improvements are already showing for us, and I fully expect that to continue!

Some reference material for a few of the things discussed in the post above:

• Jenkins Multibranch pipelines
• Jenkins behind IIS Reverse Proxy
• Jenkins CI for .Net
• Basic Jenkins for .Net CI
• Git Intro
• Git Flow
• Bitbucket Server (incumbent Git server)
• Sourcetree (preferred Git UI tool)
• Fork (alternate Git UI tool)

Q1 FY20 Part 2

My first task, set on Day 1 was to own the migration of systems from one domain to the other. Those who have followed any of my previous posts in the last 4 years will be aware I went from small local company to global ERP vendor overnight (June 1st 2016) by way of an acquisition. Well imagine moving that small dev team’s environments into a very well protected and governed American corporate ecosystem, it was effectively sat on for 3 years, and corporate policies dictated we migrated and shutdown the old!

Deciding where to start was easy… Spend a week or so working on testing out a couple of theories, having done domain migrations previously, and work with internal IT teams to put in the relevant requests and procedures to ensure those theories are robust, scalable and secure. Three weeks in and hours had been wasted scripting out a copy and paste scenario, basically a load of PowerShell scripts to do Find/Replace style blitz across 1000s of files, 10 different ERP versions, 200+ development environments (with Databases). Only the one slight snag, even after reworking permissions and roping IT into a 3TB file copy across 2 unconnected domains…. Internally developed environmnent management tooling, which with all its bells and whistles, was not supportive of the new domain, and had hardcoded ties to the older domain’s file server, oops.

Rethink time… Plan B – the best of the lot. Copying databases is one of those things I literally wrote the manual on for Epicor ERP, so that’s easy; building Windows servers has been the last 10 years of my life, so again, sorted; that leaves my understanding of the tooling that sits in the middle, well, fortunately, my new desk backs on to the lovely chap who wrote that tool, even though he now runs our R&D division, so with a few conversations and about 8 lines of code he rebuilt it for me to work on the new environments, allowing me to fully document it as it got deployed and hey presto, a working blank set of servers ready for migrated data was born within a week; including the ability to build any version of ERP 10, using blank, demo or customer data – depending on whether it’s development or QA work, and the ability to use all the latest features and more importantly the latest development tools, by way of Chocolatey!

The next few weeks consisted of identifying what needed to be moved, and what we could spin up later on demand, the resulting list was around 120 required environments, mostly because of productised “Extended Solutions” which need to be built for each version of ERP 10 we support. But also ongoing customer projects, version uplifts, test environments for developers to test their own theories and boost their skills etc. This was a very slow and involved process, per Environment/DB it was not too bad, but in Part 2 (when I write it) I’ll go through how my domain migration project became an environment and process improvement project, featuring Git, Jenkins, CI/CD and

The good news is my Domain Migration which we scheduled to be fully complete, i.e old domain shut down for 24th December 2019, was in fact completed on 6th December 2019, so despite the slightly wasted 3 weeks of testing, scripting, and familiarisation, with all parties on board we (sadly) shutdown the Dot Net IT domain at 17:30 that evening!

Q1 FY20 Part 1