Guides
The working notes behind the manifesto: how we structure a project, think through a problem, write, and set up the tools.
The Push method
The shape of a Push project, the thinking tools for when it stalls, and the writing style that keeps it honest.
Project Architecture
A prescriptive outline for organising a Push project: the stages, the documents each stage produces, and how they fit together.
4 min read
Writing Style and Prompts
The house writing style, the words we avoid, and copy-and-paste prompt blocks that make an assistant write the same way.
3 min read
Oblique Strategies
The thinking toolkit, in seven parts: start at the hub and pick the lens that matches the kind of stuck you are.
Oblique Strategies
A thinking toolkit for getting unstuck: lenses, frameworks and questions for looking at a problem sideways before committing to an answer.
4 min read
Reading the Data
Lenses for making sense of data before drawing conclusions: who, what, where and when; the six Vs; data to knowledge; analytics techniques; and the friction in the system.
13 min read
People and Communication
Lenses for the human side of a problem: where your influence ends, how people prefer to communicate, the stakeholder types, the biases in the room, and the skills that get you heard.
8 min read
Business and Strategy
Lenses for the commercial side: shared value, what makes an offer valuable, the shape of a digital business, the classic strategy canvases, who is responsible for what, and the forces shaping the next decade.
14 min read
Approach to Problem-Solving
A systematic way in: three questions to ask first, the six steps, the goal, reality and options loop, and the questions to ask a new stakeholder before proposing anything.
3 min read
Presenting and Storytelling
How to be heard once you have an answer: the shapes that make a message land, the story circle, the song-arrangement shape of a pitch, and five rules for sentences.
4 min read
Disagreements and Behaviour
Frameworks for the hard conversations: RISA for working through a disagreement, five steps for confronting behaviour, and three ways of helping someone who is stuck.
6 min read
Technology Primers
Short primers kept for reference: how blockchain works and what its five properties mean, what large language models do and how to prompt them, and the software design principles worth knowing by name.
11 min read
Working practices
Conventions for the everyday: how we name and branch repositories, and how we keep documentation in Markdown without losing Word and PDF.
Git Standards
How we name repositories, branch, and write commit messages so that a codebase stays legible to the next person.
3 min read
Working with Markdown
Moving documents between Word, PDF and Markdown with Pandoc, plus tables, citations and bibliographies.
3 min read
Markdown Cheat Sheet
A quick reference for Markdown syntax: headers, emphasis, lists, links, images, code, tables, blockquotes and inline HTML.
5 min read
Engineering toolbox
Opinionated setup for the stack we use most: .NET solution layout, libraries, CLI tools, the editor and a few small web tools.
.NET Project Design
An opinionated solution layout for .NET: folder structure, project dependency order, naming convention, and the reasoning behind each choice.
11 min read
.NET Frameworks and Packages
A curated list of .NET libraries and frameworks by category, from algorithms and APIs to testing, serialisation and UI.
13 min read
.NET Tools
Global tools worth installing through the dotnet CLI, with a one-line install script.
2 min read
Visual Studio Code
The VS Code extensions we install by default, grouped by job, with a script to set up a new machine in one go.
3 min read
Toolbox
Small web tools and services we reach for when working: text manipulation, test data, JSON, GUIDs, and a few for marketing.
2 min read
Two pages from the original wiki grew into essays on wisejnrs.net: Data-Oriented Architecture · Songwriting: A Step-by-Step Outline