bradshaw.cloud: Audio Edition

An AI agent needs more than an API token. The framework for assigning a sponsor, mandate, permissions, autonomy and evidence before it can act.

Read the written version, with its diagrams and tables: https://bradshaw.cloud/strategy/agent-authority/

Personal views, not those of my employer.

Not all debt is worth repaying, and the messiest code is rarely the most expensive. A prioritisation framework built on interest rate, change frequency, blast radius, and remaining life — so the argument stops being about taste.

Read the written version, with its diagrams and tables: https://bradshaw.cloud/strategy/technical-debt/

Personal views, not those of my employer.

Team design is an architectural act, not an HR one. The four team types and three interaction modes from Team Topologies — plus the decision layer: when each shape fits, and what breaks when it does not.

Read the written version, with its diagrams and tables: https://bradshaw.cloud/strategy/team-topologies/

Personal views, not those of my employer.

AI spend scales with autonomy, not traffic. The circuit breakers, tier routing, caching, and chargeback discipline that keep LLM and agent spend answerable to somebody.

Read the written version, with its diagrams and tables: https://bradshaw.cloud/strategy/finops-for-ai/

Personal views, not those of my employer.

MCP standardises how LLM apps call tools, moving integration from M×N towards M+N. It does not make a connection safe — identity, scopes and review stay yours.

Read the written version, with its diagrams and tables: https://bradshaw.cloud/writing/model-context-protocol-strategic-reference/

Personal views, not those of my employer.

A decision framework for 2026 — the real survey data, a workload scoring matrix, a 3–5 year TCO model, and the risks. Repatriation as portfolio management, not ideology.

Read the written version, with its diagrams and tables: https://bradshaw.cloud/strategy/cloud-repatriation/

Personal views, not those of my employer.

How a central platform team serves dozens of autonomous teams without becoming the bottleneck — the operating model behind an internal developer platform.

Read the written version, with its diagrams and tables: https://bradshaw.cloud/strategy/platform-operating-model/

Personal views, not those of my employer.

Cloud cost control is a capability you grow, not a dashboard you buy. The maturity ladder from raw visibility to unit economics — and the practices on each rung.

Read the written version, with its diagrams and tables: https://bradshaw.cloud/strategy/finops-maturity/

Personal views, not those of my employer.

Treat the people who use your internal platform like customers, not ticket-raisers. The four journeys every platform has to nail — and how to measure whether it does.

Read the written version, with its diagrams and tables: https://bradshaw.cloud/strategy/developers-as-customers/

Personal views, not those of my employer.

A principle that cannot point to the moment it says no is a preference. What separates governance from a PDF: controls in the delivery path, a data layer you can actually see into, and gates priced by reversibility.

Read the written version, with its diagrams and tables: https://bradshaw.cloud/writing/ai-governance-in-practice/

Personal views, not those of my employer.