Hello!!

I'm a Microsoft Certified and Catalyst Accredited Solution Architect, who works with the customers of an awesome multi-Specialist Inner Circle Microsoft Partner to enable the delivery of their business outcome solutions using Dynamics 365 first party apps, Power Platform, AI and Copilot, and Ecosystem Architecture.

But that's only been a minute in my career history...

Before this, I worked for 30 years in social housing, starting as a front line housing officer, before progressing to work in housing policy and strategy, including with regional government.

Moving into 'special projects', me and my small team would go into problem areas of our organization, carry out discovery, and then work with that area to reinvigorate business processes, improve performance, update communication strategies and/or introduce new more collaborative ways of working.

In our last project before I joined the Solution Architecture and Design team to deliver its Fit for the Future project, we successfully brought in a 'best of breed' IT solution for delivering residents' Service Charges, along with a transformative way of communicating their annual Estimated and Actual Charges.

I wanted to share this snapshot of my career history with you so you can see how it's possible to transition from a business background into technology, and the valuable knowledge and lived experiences you'll bring with you that people who've always worked in IT don't have.  

Your ability to truly understand and empathize with your customers is an amazing superpower. 

Never forget that. 🤗

As I've been going through this transformative journey, I've been writing articles and posts to share what I've learnt, and am still learning, along the way.  Insights. Thought Processes. Strategies.

I'd like to think that these provide a uniquely different perspective you'll find interesting, insightful, useful, or perhaps even all three.

And maybe, they might even inspire you to embark on your own journey, supported as I've been by our wonderful community. 🤗

The word 'Heuristic' comes from Greek "eurisco" meaning "to discover".  

It provides an approach and strategy for selectively exploring a problem area along lines that have a high probability of success, but that aren't guaranteed to find an exact solution due to ambiguities or prohibitive costs.

Sound familiar?  🤔 

Heuristic techniques give you methods to speed up the process of finding a satisfactory solution that might not necessarily be perfect or optimal, but nevertheless reach an immediate, short-term goal or approximation.

This is why the Heuristic approach has been at the core of the development of technological advances, with AI being the latest example.

• Trial and error = Proof of Concepts
• Learning from mistakes = Retrospectives
• Self-discovery = HeuristicDev