Blog
Insights on housing technology, data strategy and AI from the Fuza team.
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· Analysis
Unlocking the Social Housing Innovation Fund: Data, Benchmarks, and Strategic Takeaways
An in-depth analysis of the MHCLG 2025/2026 Social Housing Innovation Fund FOI disclosure, highlighting scoring benchmarks, portfolio balancing, and core themes from the Advisory Panel.
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· AI & Housing
AI Regulation: Housing Update March 2025
A walkthrough of the important UK government reports and international developments on AI regulation, and what they mean for social housing providers.
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· AI
“Good” applications of AI
Following an AI leadership session at Yorkshire Housing, a round-up of genuinely good uses of AI, good in terms of ethics and appropriate, impactful use.
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· Data
Switching contexts: Will Machine Learning work on my data?
We might be able to guess the effectiveness of ML approaches based on data complexity alone, without training the whole model.
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· Diagrams
Why are scientists making diagrams?
Diagrams take up space in publications where space is at a premium. So why do scientists use them? Exploring the relationship between how people think and how they communicate.
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· Diagrams
Grammar of graphics?
Applying the VisDNA framework to Neural Network diagrams of Computer Vision and NLP systems, with frameworks for describing and critiquing diagramming practices.
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· Diagrams
Science diagrams: Correlated with citation count
An unexpected result: in scholarly AI publications, including 2–3 diagrams is correlated with higher citation counts after 3 years.
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· Diagrams
Structuralism for diagrams
Elements of human culture must be understood by way of their relationship to a broader system. Exploring diagrams through a structuralist lens.
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· Diagrams
Rethinking how we share scientific understanding in ML
A paper from ICLR 2021 on diagrammatic summaries for neural architectures. Diagrams are used a lot, but no-one thinks about it much.
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· Diagrams
How do we know if our diagrams are any good?
Summarising ‘Measuring diagram quality through semiotic morphisms’, winner of the Mouton d’Or award for best paper in Semiotica 2021.
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· News
Remember remember (to take time to share)
A return to blogging after a few years, covering a PhD, two kids, COVID public policy research, and what Fuza has been up to.
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· Reflection
Report released: COVID modelling with Test, Trace and Isolate
Abstract: The efforts to contain SARS-CoV-2 and reduce the impact of COVID-19 have been supported by Test, Trace and Isolate (TTI) systems in many settings, including the United Kingdom. The…
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· Agile
I'm speaking at Agile Manchester
Following on from recent international experience, I will be speaking at Agile Manchester on " How to make multicultural agility work ". The blurb: " People are different, and when you add country…
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· Culture
Working with the Polish as a Brit
I have spent quite a lot of time in Krakow, Poland, working with tech firms. I've been really lucky and made some amazing friends (and some annoying friends too, you know who you are). I like to…
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· Agile
A non-IT executive’s guide to Agile Coaches
Agile is an almost management-philosophical idea that is about getting better at delivering valuable working software. There are people calling themselves agile coaches who try and help do this. In…
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· Reflection
Fuza end of year update
2016 This year, being the first year of Fuza's operation, has seen a lot of change. Especially as December marks not only the end of the calendar year, but also Fuza's financial year, I thought it…
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· Reflection
Blogging pause
I've decided to take a bit of a pause from blogging, to reassess how I'm investing my time. Thanks to everyone who has been reading and commenting. I hope that you found it as interesting and…
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· Culture
Life lessons from chickens
It's no secret I keep chickens. I find this thoroughly rewarding, as not only are they lovely primordial creatures, but with some love and care will endow a supply of tasty eggs for around the same…
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· Data
Lean Manufacturing: Limiting innovation?
I've been running a "lean" business for 6 months now, and I've noticed that Lean Manufacturing principles applied to software development could lead to bad business. Let me explain: Primarily, my…
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· Analysis
Climate Change
In the past week, I've been to some excellent talks. The first was on Biomarkers at the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society , and the second was Misinformation in Climate Change at…
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· Analysis
Open Data
In a previous post, several months ago, we talked about Chaos and the Mandelbrot Set : an innovation brought about by the advent of computers. In this post, we'll talk about a present-day innovation…
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· Agile
Agile outside of IT
The Agile Manifesto was created for software development, but there are many lessons we can use outside of IT. This is not to say I think we should "be Agile" in everything. Individuals and…
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· Analysis
DNA sequencing: Creating personal stories
Data matters. A great example of a smart use of data is genetic sequencing. This involves 3 billion base pairs , although scientists only know what around 1% of these do. The arguably most important…
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· Agile
Proof: Little’s Law (why to Limit WIP)
A mathematical proof of Little’s Law and its application to software development, showing why limiting work in progress leads to faster delivery.
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· Agile
Anti-agile conferences
Let's start by looking at what a conference is... Conferences Definition: "a formal meeting of people with a shared interest, typically one that takes place over several days." Agile On The Beach…
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· Agile
Pilates changed the way I run
I tried a Pilates video a few weeks ago. I know that might not be very manly, but I thought I would try something different to shake things up. I hoped it would be a bit like yoga, and help with my…
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· Agile
Introducing... Active Procrastination!
I think this is one of the first times I've created something new in a psychology context. Let me first outline the problem. I struggle to relax and unwind, but sometimes (even/especially during the…
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· Agile
Deep Dive: Retrospectives
The term "retrospective" is prevalent for any of the Continual Improvement meetings, largely due to the popularity of Scrum. However, this post really refers to any meeting where a change to process…
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· Agile
5 ways to be better at Agile
Dear reader, Rather than our usual short-form blog post, I have published a longer LinkedIn Pulse article containing my 5 top tips for being better at Agile . I hope you find it useful and/or…
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· Reflection
This is not a blog post
This week, we're shaking things up. Instead of the usual weekly blog, we have prepared a special something, which we will release tomorrow. Stay tuned for more details!
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· Culture
Working from home?
I'm often asked "How do you manage to ACTUALLY work from home so often?". Well, for me the answer is simple: routine and adapting. Thanks to reading lots of psychology/sociology books, I also think I…
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· Agile
Agile research needs help
Reading some academic papers on Agile recently, there is a huge misunderstanding about what Agile means. In particular, some academics use the word Agile when really they mean Scrum. There are papers…
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· Culture
Working with international teams
I thought it might be good to share some of the things I've learned from my five years working in international teams. This is purely based on my experience, so feel free to share any differing…
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· Agile
Deep dive: Planning
In this post, we'll discuss different ways of planning. When I talk about planning, I mean deciding what to do or what objective to achieve. As such, estimation and other timeline-related activities…
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· Culture
Our language, our worldview
Language shapes the way we view the world, as George Orwell points out in 1984 through the genius of Newspeak : part of the idea being that by replacing the word for "bad" with "ungood" for example…
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· Agile
Guy's favourite Agile links
I thought I'd share with you some of my favourite tools and resources I use as an agile coach. I find all these topics to be essential for being a coach. Retrospectives I love helping teams do…
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· Mathematics
Thoughts on Quantum Computing and engaging people into science
Recently, the Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau amazed journalists by giving a short explanation of quantum computing. In the weeks after, many articles about quantum computing were written…
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· Culture
More trees, please!
A few weeks ago, I attended the Presidential Address at the Institute of Mathematics and it's Applications (IMA). Using this, the IMA President Chris Linton argued the need for bridging the…
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· Agile
Technical Debt
According to wikipedia... Technical debt is "a concept in programming that reflects the extra development work that arises when code that is easy to implement in the short run is used instead of…
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· Reflection
Research in Agile
This post is inspired by a question from one of our readers, Lukasz. I'm going to outline how I find and examine research on organisations, agile/lean, and culture. Hopefully this will inspire you to…
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· Analysis
Pretty maths
Bear with this post as it goes through some equations at the beginning, but it is worth it. We'll be doing some of the calculations to get this picture: The Mandelbrot Set This is the set of numbers…
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· Reflection
The oldest profession?
Apologies for the late sharing last week, the integration between Wordpress and Linkedin/Facebook was more login-dependent than I realised! I hope you managed to catch up when it was shared on…
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· Analysis
Should I buy wine?
Orley Ashenfelter, an economist at Princeton, wanted to guess the prices that different vintages of Bordeaux wine would have. This prediction would be most useful at the time of picking, so that…
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· Agile
Keep it lean
I spent last week with a friend, trying to help him spring clean his house. He's been struggling with feeling overwhelmed with all the complexities of life, and wanted some external help. "Being…
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· Agile
Data-Driven Decisions in Culture Change
Today I want to share some thoughts around data-driven decisions. Rather than present some evangelical-sounding argument, I think it might help if I speak from my personal experience: I care about…
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· Reflection
My first... business proposal
Several months ago I had my first ever formal pitch to a company where I didn't know the people at beforehand, and I found my notes on it which I thought I'd share! It was actually not that…
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· Culture
More Happiness!
One of the things I'm trying to optimise for is my happiness. Hopefully it doesn't come as a huge surprise that this is a pretty complex thing to do. In my time as an Agile Coach, I've read a lot of…
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· Culture
The journey to a company culture
I like to think of culture as what happens when no-one is looking. As a new company, you're in a unique position to genuinely define your culture, rather than adapt to someone else's [1]. Who do you…
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· Reflection
The key to being awesome: feedback
Last week I was talking with one of my friends. "I'm going to get fired, I know for sure I am delivering below what they had hoped" he said. This isn't the first time I've heard these kinds of fears…
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· Data
Collecting data, the smart way
Here is my short, simple step-by-step guide for smart collection of data. Step 1) Determine what matters, ideally in accordance with a Company or Product vision Step 2) Come up with as many different…
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· Agile
Making lean decisions in the wild
The wild In the lead-up to founding a company, like many others in my position, I thoroughly enjoyed "The Lean Startup" by Eric Ries. Inspired accordingly, I've been trying to make smart decisions…
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· Agile
Your life is like a software product
Your life is like a software product. Not in the sense that people are a bit like robots... I mean that you can choose your life's features, look-and-feel, and what it does! (If this analogy doesn't…
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· Reflection
Why I jumped
I've started writing this today for two main reasons: 1) Because I'll forget some of what happened (and what I learned!) if I don't write it down 2) Because it's the top card on my Kanban board Ok…
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· Reflection
Vive le Mathématique
The question then came as to what I'd precisely do… From my previous jobs, from university, from family, and from the Institute of Mathematics, I had quite a few contacts in various places: so I…
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· Reflection
If not now, when?
In November, following our wedding, my wife Chaohui and I were looking for a "family home". In the car on the way to visit my Grandad Jim in South Wales, we had a nice chat. Chaohui had the idea not…
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