Articles
What I find myself explaining twice.
Notes by Martha Mireia-Benet, written after the fact and usually on the train home. Real engagements with the names taken out, and a fair number of things I got wrong first.
2026
AUG 11
Training that outlasts the consultant
The third month after I leave is the only review that counts.
MAY 12
Where AI pays for itself in a forty-person company
I keep a list of the pilots that worked. All of them are boring.
FEB 24
Answering the enterprise security questionnaire
Two hundred questions, a founder who had not slept, and one spreadsheet.
2025
DEC 2
Write it down before you automate it
The exceptions live in one person's head, and she is usually right.
OCT 7
The report nobody reads
I asked which of them had changed a decision. The room went quiet.
AUG 19
Access, when someone leaves
A contractor who left in 2021 was still the only administrator of the payroll system.
JUN 17
Who owns the integration?
Two vendors, both blameless, and a night job that belonged to nobody.
APR 8
The vendor demo is not the product
I used to give these demos. It is a rehearsal, and I was good at it.
FEB 25
Migrations fail at the edges
I have never once been wrong about the volume. I am regularly wrong about the variety.
JAN 14
What a system costs after you buy it
Somebody always becomes the owner, and it is never in the business case.
2024
NOV 26
Buy, build, or leave it alone
There is a third option, and I am the only person in the room being paid not to mention it.
NOV 12
The spreadsheet is the system
First note. It was called pricing_v4_final and two people knew not to sort column D.