Plumbing is a primitive.
Every organisation should spend its effort on the things that make it different. We build the things every one of them needs identically — the record, the permissions, the audit trail — and build them once, properly.
In practiceA broker and a hospital both need a record nobody can quietly edit. Neither should have to invent one.
Boring infrastructure is good infrastructure.
Surprise is a vice in software a business runs on. We optimise for sameness across runs, days and years — the same result from the same input, whether the input is a trade, a claim or a dispatch note.
In practiceThe night job should behave the same on the last working day of March as on any Tuesday.
Documentation is a product.
If it isn't documented, it doesn't ship. The reference, the runbook and the hand-over notes are written before the feature merges, so the system can outlive anyone's memory of building it.
In practiceA new clerk, a new developer and an auditor should each be able to find their answer without having to ask us.
Compliance is structural, not bolted on.
The audit trail is the system, not a logging side-channel. Whoever has to inspect the record — a regulator, an auditor, a government department — should be able to read it straight off the software.
In practiceEvery change should carry who, when and why — from the first commit, not the week before an audit.
The industry sets the terms.
We learn how the work is actually done — on the dealing desk, the ward, the shop floor — before we draw a screen, and fit the software to the operation rather than asking the operation to change to suit it.
In practiceIf the supervisor's register is the real source of truth, the software starts by respecting the register.