Essays at the intersection of process, software, and people.
Long-form analysis on enterprise UX research, the 2027 ECC migration cycle, healthcare workflow systems, and the human factors of complex organizational change. New essays roughly twice a month, alternating between research practice and adoption practice.
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May 2026
Adoption
The Adoption Gap: Why Technically Successful S/4HANA Migrations Still Fail
The 2027 deadline has compressed the largest enterprise software migration cycle in a generation into eighteen months of active execution. The technical literature is thorough. The adoption literature is almost nonexistent. Here's what 30 years of human factors research tells us about which migrations land standing.
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Late May 2026
Adoption
The May 31 Cliff: A Practical Guide to the SAP S/4HANA Compatibility Pack Expiration
On May 31, 2026, usage rights for a long list of compatibility-mode functions expire. Most ECC customers still on those functions don't have a remediation plan. Here's how to triage what you actually use, what the SAP-native equivalents are, and how to make the case for the work to your CFO when the deadline is already past.
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June 2026
Forthcoming
Workflow Telemetry: The Missing Layer Between Product Analytics and UX Research
Product analytics tells you what users did. Qualitative research tells you why. Workflow telemetry — instrumented behavioral data on actual task execution, not just feature engagement — is the layer in between, and it's where mixed-methods research becomes legitimately predictive instead of merely descriptive. Defining the term, claiming the territory, and showing the framework for putting it to work.
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July 2026
Forthcoming
Fit-to-Standard, From the Outside: An Industrial Engineer's First Read of SAP Activate
A working-through of SAP's official implementation methodology from the perspective of someone trained in industrial engineering process design. Where the methodology is rigorous, where it has interesting silences, and what it gets right that other ERP methodologies miss.
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August 2026
Forthcoming
The ResearchOps Maturity Model: From Ad-Hoc to Operational Excellence
Most research functions never become operational. They stay in ad-hoc mode for years — projects scoped one at a time, panel maintained in someone's spreadsheet, findings buried in slide decks no one reads. A five-stage maturity model with the diagnostic questions for each stage, and the specific moves that get you to the next one.
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September 2026
Forthcoming
Greenfield, Brownfield, Bluefield: A Decision Framework for the Migration Path That Won't Embarrass You
The greenfield/brownfield/selective decision is usually framed as a technical question. It is not. It is a change-management question with technical consequences. A practical framework for matching migration path to organizational readiness — including the brutal honesty most consulting firms won't deliver.
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October 2026
Forthcoming
Synthetic Users: When They Help, When They Harm, When They Mislead
Synthetic users went from novelty to default in two years. The hot takes are everywhere; the cold takes are not. A technical, calibrated assessment of where synthetic users genuinely speed exploratory research, where they confidently produce wrong answers, and which study designs survive AI synthesis without becoming statistical theater.
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November 2026
Forthcoming
Clean Core, Dirty Reality: What "Keep the Core Clean" Actually Means for Process Owners
SAP's clean core narrative is technically coherent and organizationally naive. Here's what the principle costs you in process design, where the legitimate exceptions are, and how to write a clean-core governance policy your business will actually follow.
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December 2026
Forthcoming
UX Research in Fintech: Methods, Constraints, and What Actually Changes When the Stakes Are Real
Three and a half years of enterprise UX research inside AWS Fintech R&D. The methodological adjustments that matter — recruiting expert users under NDA, working through legal review of recording software, designing studies that survive PCI-DSS — and the ones that turn out to be performative rather than substantive. With concrete examples.
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January 2027
Forthcoming
365 Days to ECC End-of-Life: A Mid-Cycle Assessment of Where Migrations Stand
A year before the December 2027 deadline, the population of S/4HANA migrations sorts itself into three groups: ahead of schedule, on schedule, and committed-but-not-going-to-make-it. A field-level assessment of each, what each is doing right, and what the laggards still have time to do.
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February 2027
Forthcoming
UX Research in Healthcare: HIPAA, FDA Human Factors, and the Discipline That Makes the Rules Make Sense
Healthcare UX research is governed by a regulatory map most researchers never see — HIPAA for PHI, IRB review for human subjects, IEC 62366 for medical device usability, FDA HFE/UE submissions for class II and III devices. A practitioner's tour of the map, with the specific protocol changes each layer of regulation actually requires.
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March 2027
Forthcoming
Why the 2027 Migration Wave Will Repeat the 2009 ECC Mistakes (And How to Be the Exception)
The patterns that defined ECC adoption fifteen years ago — over-customization, under-investment in change, late hypercare planning — are recurring at scale right now in S/4HANA programs. Documented, with diagnostic questions to ask of your own program.
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April 2027
Forthcoming
Mixed Methods at Enterprise Scale: A Practitioner's Guide to Triangulation That Actually Holds Up
Most "mixed methods" UX research is qualitative work with a survey bolted on. That isn't triangulation; it's window dressing. A practitioner's reference for the four canonical mixed-methods designs (convergent, sequential explanatory, sequential exploratory, embedded) applied to enterprise product research — with worked examples and the statistical literacy that makes the integration legitimate.
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May 2027
Forthcoming
Healthcare Workflow Systems and the Lessons They Hold for ERP Adoption
Two decades of healthcare human factors research has produced a body of evidence on workflow disruption that the ERP world has barely consulted. The transferable findings — and the ones that don't transfer.
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June 2027
Forthcoming
Reading IEC 62366-1 in Practice: Use-Error Analysis That Survives FDA Submission Review
The standard is widely cited and widely misapplied. A working walkthrough of IEC 62366-1 use-error analysis for class II medical devices — what FDA reviewers actually look for in the use-error matrix, how the standard interacts with ISO 14971 risk management, and where the typical submission falls down on critical task identification, summative usability evaluation design, and the user interface evaluation file.
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July 2027
Forthcoming
Why Epic Implementations Fail: Adoption Lessons from Twenty-Two EHR Rollouts
EHR adoption failure isn't usually a software problem; it's an adoption problem with the same shape as failed ERP rollouts. CPOE workarounds, alert fatigue, smart-set abandonment, and the clinician burnout that follows. Cross-walks between Epic / Oracle Health / Athenahealth deployments and the human factors literature, with specific intervention patterns CMIOs and VPs of Clinical Informatics can run.
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August 2027
Forthcoming
Evaluating Agentic AI Products: A Mixed-Methods Framework for Frontier UX Research
LLM evaluation has tilted heavily toward benchmarks and away from human-experience research. The product UX questions — trust calibration, hallucination handling, multi-turn coherence, agent transparency, RAG citation legibility — need a research methodology that benchmarks alone cannot answer. A practitioner's framework for the qualitative-quantitative integration that frontier AI product teams need.
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September 2027
Forthcoming
RICEFW From an Adoption-Research Lens: Why Functional Specs Should Start with the User
RICEFW (Reports, Interfaces, Conversions, Enhancements, Forms, Workflows) is treated as a deliverables taxonomy. It's actually a governance framework that exposes adoption risk before configuration begins. A reframing of how FSDs and FDDs should be authored — and read — by the people who will eventually be responsible for adoption outcomes, with implications for fit-to-standard discipline and the clean core principle.
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October 2027
Forthcoming
Reading Banking Automation as Workflow Design: A Human Factors Take on EBS, Lockbox, APP, and DMEE
Electronic Bank Statement processing, Lockbox file consumption, the Automatic Payment Program (F110), and DMEE format generation are configuration topics with deep workflow implications. A human-factors read of the cash application and disbursement loops — including the Vertex, HighRadius, and OpenText VIM integration patterns that increasingly anchor them — and what the adoption side of FICO programs gets wrong about these flows.
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Roughly two essays a month — one on enterprise process and adoption, one on research practice. No marketing, no funnels, no subject lines designed to manipulate you. Just the writing.
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