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Guides

Guides

Practical reference guides for teams that build, buy, and run software. Updated regularly, built to last.

Browse by category

Each category covers a specific area of software delivery. Dive into the topic that matters most to your team right now.

18 guides

AI and Code

AI tools, IP ownership, attribution, and compliance for enterprise teams.

6 guides

API and Integration

REST, GraphQL, gRPC, Azure API Management, and integration patterns.

18 guides

Build, Buy, or Replace

Decision frameworks for build vs buy, SaaS replacement, and migration planning.

18 guides

Development Practice

DevOps, CI/CD, testing, estimation, and delivery patterns.

10 guides

Legacy Modernisation

Recognising hidden costs, choosing a modernisation strategy, and planning migration from legacy systems.

10 guides

Legal and Contracts

Software development contracts, IP licensing, liability, and the legal terms that shape bespoke build engagements.

9 guides

Teams and Support

Choosing partners, managing handovers, and outsourcing application support.

Recently updated

The latest guides from across all categories.

Legal and Contracts 16 min read

The UK's New Subscription Contracts Regime: A Compliance Guide for Software Teams

The UK's subscription contracts regime is due to take effect from January 2027. What it requires for pre-contract information, renewal reminders, cooling-off periods, and cancellation flows, and how to build for it.

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AI and Code 14 min read

Is Your Organisation Ready for AI? A Practical Readiness Checklist

Most AI projects stall before they deliver value. This guide provides a structured readiness assessment across five dimensions: data, people, process, infrastructure, and governance.

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API and Integration 18 min read

Backend for Frontend (BFF): API Patterns for Mobile and Web Clients

When to use the BFF pattern, how it compares to a single API or API gateway, and how to implement it on Azure. Practical architecture for teams serving mobile, web, and internal clients.

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Development Practice 13 min read

Handling Bacs Reports Properly: ARUDD, ADDACS, and AWACS

What ARUDD, ADDACS, and AWACS reports tell you, the reason codes that matter, and the correct automated system response to each. A technical guide for billing systems.

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Legacy Modernisation 16 min read

.NET MAUI vs React Native: Choosing a Xamarin Migration Target

An honest comparison of .NET MAUI and React Native for teams leaving Xamarin: support lifecycles, team cost, and when each one is the wrong answer.

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API and Integration 13 min read

Mobile API Best Practices: Building Backends That Scale

How to design, secure, and operate APIs for mobile apps. Protocol choice, authentication flows, offline sync, push notifications, versioning, and Azure architecture patterns.

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AI and Code

View all 18 guides

AI tools, IP ownership, attribution, and compliance for enterprise teams.

AI and Code

Is Your Organisation Ready for AI? A Practical Readiness Checklist

Most AI projects stall before they deliver value. This guide provides a structured readiness assessment across five dimensions: data, people, process, infrastructure, and governance.

14 min read
AI and Code

AI Tutoring for Children: Safety by Design

AI tutoring for children is viable only with layered controls: constrained generation, teacher-in-the-loop review, content filtering, and full logging.

12 min read
AI and Code

Is Claude GDPR Compliant? Anthropic Assurance for UK Businesses

How UK businesses get GDPR and ISO 27001 assurance over Anthropic's Claude: commercial terms, the DPA, certifications, EU data residency options, retention settings, and a supplier due diligence checklist.

12 min read
AI and Code

The Risks of AI-Augmented Development

AI-augmented delivery introduces specific risks across IP, attribution, regulation, security, quality drift, and skills. Eight risks and the controls that contain them.

16 min read

API and Integration

View all 6 guides

REST, GraphQL, gRPC, Azure API Management, and integration patterns.

API and Integration

Backend for Frontend (BFF): API Patterns for Mobile and Web Clients

When to use the BFF pattern, how it compares to a single API or API gateway, and how to implement it on Azure. Practical architecture for teams serving mobile, web, and internal clients.

18 min read
API and Integration

Mobile API Best Practices: Building Backends That Scale

How to design, secure, and operate APIs for mobile apps. Protocol choice, authentication flows, offline sync, push notifications, versioning, and Azure architecture patterns.

13 min read
API and Integration

REST vs GraphQL vs gRPC: Choosing the Right API Style for Enterprise Systems

A practical comparison of REST, GraphQL, gRPC, and tRPC for enterprise teams: when each style fits, the trade-offs, and a decision matrix.

17 min read
API and Integration

Extending a Ferry Reservation System: An API Layer Architecture

How to build custom apps, disruption tools, and analytics on top of a ferry reservation platform using an operator-owned API layer, without touching the core.

14 min read

Build, Buy, or Replace

View all 18 guides

Decision frameworks for build vs buy, SaaS replacement, and migration planning.

Build, Buy, or Replace

SaaS to Custom Software Migration: A 90-Day Playbook

How to migrate from SaaS to custom software: getting your data out, running both in parallel, cutting over safely, and exiting the contract.

10 min read
Build, Buy, or Replace

How franchise payments and payouts should work

How a franchise network collects payments and pays its franchisees: connected accounts with Stripe Connect, Direct Debit, and who holds the funds and the risk.

10 min read
Build, Buy, or Replace

Replacing Your Tuition Centre Management System

When a tuition network outgrows generic class-management software: the build-vs-buy framework, the size threshold, migration reality, and licence economics.

12 min read
Build, Buy, or Replace

Switching from Card Billing to Direct Debit: An FD's Guide

For UK recurring revenue, Direct Debit usually beats card on fees and involuntary churn. The honest trade-offs, who should not switch, and how the billing system decides it.

10 min read

Development Practice

View all 18 guides

DevOps, CI/CD, testing, estimation, and delivery patterns.

Development Practice

Handling Bacs Reports Properly: ARUDD, ADDACS, and AWACS

What ARUDD, ADDACS, and AWACS reports tell you, the reason codes that matter, and the correct automated system response to each. A technical guide for billing systems.

13 min read
Development Practice

The GDS Service Standard for Private-Sector Delivery Teams

A practical guide to what the UK Government's GDS Service Standard offers private-sector delivery teams, which practices transfer directly, which need adapting, and which are genuinely public-sector specific.

14 min read
Development Practice

Data Classification: How to Implement It Technically

Most data classification schemes live in a spreadsheet nobody reads. This guide shows how to implement classification in code and infrastructure so it is machine-readable, drives real controls, and cannot drift out of date.

17 min read
Development Practice

Data Protection by Design: The Standard Features Every Compliant System Needs

Data protection by design is an engineering discipline, not a policy document. This guide sets out the standard software features every GDPR-compliant system needs, and how to build them in from the first line of code.

16 min read

Legacy Modernisation

View all 10 guides

Recognising hidden costs, choosing a modernisation strategy, and planning migration from legacy systems.

Legacy Modernisation

.NET MAUI vs React Native: Choosing a Xamarin Migration Target

An honest comparison of .NET MAUI and React Native for teams leaving Xamarin: support lifecycles, team cost, and when each one is the wrong answer.

16 min read
Legacy Modernisation

Xamarin & PhoneGap Are Dead: The Enterprise Mobile Migration Playbook (2026)

Both Xamarin and PhoneGap have reached end of life. This playbook covers migration paths, framework choices, and practical timelines for enterprise mobile teams.

18 min read
Legacy Modernisation

Xamarin to .NET MAUI Migration: A Practical Guide with AI-Assisted Code Translation

Step-by-step guide for migrating Xamarin.Forms applications to .NET MAUI. Custom Renderers to Handlers, DI migration, and where AI tooling helps most.

11 min read
Legacy Modernisation

ASP.NET Web Forms Migration: Comparing Your Target Options

Web Forms has no in-place upgrade path, so the user interface is a rewrite whichever target you pick. Compare ASP.NET Core MVC, Blazor, and React with a .NET API, and choose on talent, UX ambition, and support horizon.

16 min read

Legal and Contracts

View all 10 guides

Software development contracts, IP licensing, liability, and the legal terms that shape bespoke build engagements.

Legal and Contracts

The UK's New Subscription Contracts Regime: A Compliance Guide for Software Teams

The UK's subscription contracts regime is due to take effect from January 2027. What it requires for pre-contract information, renewal reminders, cooling-off periods, and cancellation flows, and how to build for it.

16 min read
Legal and Contracts

Software Escrow: What It Is, When It Works, and When It Does Not

A straight guide to software escrow in the UK: what it protects, why unverified deposits usually fail, SaaS continuity escrow, and when owning the code is better.

18 min read
Legal and Contracts

Beyond the UK: Extending GDPR-Grade Data Protection Across Countries

A platform built for UK GDPR can serve many jurisdictions if residency is treated as topology and jurisdiction as data. This guide covers what changes across borders, and how to extend one codebase across privacy regimes.

16 min read
Legal and Contracts

Acceptance Testing and UAT Clauses in Software Contracts

How User Acceptance Testing (UAT) clauses work in UK bespoke software contracts: who tests, what counts as acceptance, reasonable endeavours versus absolute remediation, third-party exclusions, and escalation before termination.

11 min read

Teams and Support

View all 9 guides

Choosing partners, managing handovers, and outsourcing application support.

Teams and Support

Tendering for a Long-Term Technology Partner: A Buyer's Guide

How to run a selection process when you need a partner to take over and develop a business-critical application estate, not just supply developers. Shortlisting, evaluation criteria, and the questions that separate suppliers.

14 min read
Teams and Support

AI-Augmented Application Support: Custom AI for Better Outcomes

How custom, system-specific AI augments managed application support: automated DBA, tailored telemetry, infrastructure analysis, and log analysis for faster, cheaper resolution.

14 min read
Teams and Support

Running .NET on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS): A Production Support Guide

How to run and support .NET and SQL Server workloads on Azure Kubernetes Service: cluster upgrades, scaling, observability, security, cost, and AI-augmented operations.

15 min read
Teams and Support

Automated DBA for SQL Server: AI-Augmented Database Administration

How AI-augmented automated database administration keeps SQL Server fast and reliable: continuous telemetry, query and index tuning, capacity forecasting, and reviewed changes.

15 min read

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