Not exactly “gold plating” in the luxury sense. Worse. Engineering gold plating. They didn’t want a baggage system. That would have been what they needed, but too boring. Too normal. Too “let’s move suitcases from A to B without humiliating ourselves in front of the entire planet.” No. Denver International Airport wanted something better. A fully automated baggage system. Airport-wide. High-speed. Radio-controlled carts. Miles of track. Computers deciding where every bag should go. Basically,...

They wanted to save money. Of course. Because nothing says “excellent public procurement” like taking a complex, mission-critical system and pretending the cheap option is also the clever option. In 2007, the Queensland Government in Australia needed a new payroll system for Queensland Health. Not a tiny organisation. Tens of thousands of employees, multiple awards, complex rosters, allowances, overtime, penalties, shifts… The kind of payroll system that makes normal payroll systems cry in...

Let’s say you want to get in shape. You can buy a gym membership. Fine. You pay the fee. You get the little towel. You walk in pretending you know exactly what you’re doing. Then you start lifting weights like a chicken “sin cabeza”… no head. A machine here. Some dumbbells there. A bit of treadmill because you saw someone else doing it. And then you hope willpower, motivation, and the fitness gods do the rest. Good luck with that. Now, if you’re serious… Really serious… You hire a personal...