consulting/ventures/writings/

Writings

What I'm thinking

Writing is how I catch myself in the act of thinking — testing a position, working through a problem, or building an understanding of something I thought I already had. Most of it starts with what I see in consulting and in building my own ventures.

I put it here in the open because working things out is more useful when others can push back. If something connects to a challenge you’re working through, I’m easy to reach.

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2026

Jul 23, 2026solopreneurship
Choosing a Domain Name for My Trading Platform
A structured, audience-first domain decision for a self-hosted retail trading platform — from ideal customer and TLD assessment through name candidates and availability to the final pick.
Jul 18, 2026solution-design
I Rebuilt My Makefile in Task
I rebuilt this site's Makefile in Task to judge the two properly. The trap is stacking the deck against a rotten Makefile — so I brought mine to its best first, then weighed Make against Task, round by round.
Jul 18, 2026larsbarkman.com
How I Picked a Comment System
Why I added comments, what I evaluated, and why I went with Hyvor Talk — on a static Astro site, DevOps overhead and vendor tracking are both non-starters.
Jul 16, 2026solution-design
My RAD Stack
The opinionated stack I've formalized after building the same kind of application too many times ad-hoc — the philosophy, principles, technology choices, the roads not taken, and why. A formalized hypothesis: individual pieces tested in practice, the combination still proving itself.
Jul 15, 2026solopreneurship
Choosing a Domain Name for My Model
How availability reshaped a structured domain name decision — from ideal customer profile and TLD assessment through name candidates to a final choice of dslmodel.eu.
Jul 14, 2026solopreneurship
Choosing a Domain Registrar
A structured evaluation of domain registrars for a solopreneur with a modest portfolio of domains. Covers Namecheap, Porkbun, Cloudflare Registrar, INWX, Hetzner, Infomaniak, and EuroDNS against requirements including stable ownership, transparent pricing, WHOIS privacy, EU sovereignty, and separation from the primary hosting provider. New domains are going to INWX; existing ones stay with Namecheap for now.
Jul 13, 2026solution-design
Choosing a Documentation Platform
A structured evaluation of ten documentation platforms — Docusaurus, VitePress, Starlight, Doks, Material for MkDocs, Antora, and more — against requirements for versioned, long-running documentation projects. Covers performance, versioning, search, and ecosystem viability, with scoring tables, a progressive elimination process, and an incremental implementation plan built around Starlight. Starting from the needs of the Digital Solution Lifecycle Model and its companion tooling, but intended as a reusable approach for future projects.
Jul 9, 2026solopreneurship
Handling Contributions as a Solopreneur
Most open source projects inherit a contribution policy they never chose. For a solopreneur with a commercial model, that default is wrong — ownership, AI noise, and commercial leverage all push toward closed. Here is when and how to open the door: with payment, with a CLA, or not at all.
Jul 8, 2026solopreneurship
Choosing My Licenses
The previous post laid out why licensing matters for a solopreneur working in the open. This one is the decision: AGPL v3 for the code, CC Attribution-ShareAlike for the writing — and the reasoning behind each choice.
Jul 8, 2026solopreneurship
Open Source as a Solopreneur
Can you give everything away and still build something financially sustainable? This post works through the distinction between open source code and Creative Commons writing, maps the available monetization models, and reasons through why open core falls short, and why consultancy alone is not enough — and what a workable alternative might look like.
Jul 8, 2026enterprise-design
Positions, Roles, and Capabilities
Position, role, and capability are not synonyms — each belongs to a different owner and fails in a different way when misread. This post defines the three, maps how they interact, and identifies three distinct gaps that emerge when they fall out of alignment: a compensation problem, an enterprise delivery problem, and a personal one that only the individual can resolve.
Jul 7, 2026visualization
Which Diagram for Which View
Each of the Ten Views of a digital solution has a natural diagram type and a tool that produces it well. This post maps them one view at a time — using PlantUML, Mermaid, BPMN.io, and DBML, with a consistent running example of a small online bookshop and source included for every diagram. A cross-reference matrix summarises the full mapping at the end.
Jul 5, 2026visualization
Diagrams as Code
Every team has that diagram — the one that was accurate once, then quietly fell behind as the system moved on. Diagrams as code is the practice that makes visual documentation reviewable, versioned, and maintainable — not by adding process, but by changing the file format.
Jul 3, 2026solution-design
The Ten Views of a Digital Solution
Most digital solutions are documented partially — the technical parts get captured, the rest is assumed. The Ten Views provide a framework for what complete solution documentation looks like: Current State, Domain, Requirements, Customer, Information, Organizational, Process, System, Interaction, and Operational.
Jul 2, 2026enterprise-design
Design Your Operating Model or It Will Design You
Every IT organization has an operating model — the question is whether you designed it or it designed you. Without intentional design, teams default to informal networks, ownership gaps, and structural failure modes that no amount of good hiring or better tooling will fix.

2025

Aug 17, 2025enterprise-design
One Mode and Five Types Is All That You Need
After working with various organizational models—from matrix structures to Team Topologies—I've discovered a pattern that emerges when organizations successfully implement team-based frameworks: they converge on X-as-a-Service as their primary interaction mode and evolve toward five distinct service types. This approach reduces coordination overhead, creates clear team boundaries, and enables genuine autonomy while maintaining system coherence. The fifth service type—Stewardship Services—treats enterprise design itself as a consumable service, filling a critical gap that becomes apparent at scale.
Aug 12, 2025engineering-leadership
Making Daily Check-ins Meaningful: A Flow-Focused Approach
Learn a practical 15-minute flow-focused approach to daily check-ins that builds systems thinking, improves team coordination, and drives predictable delivery through strategic work prioritization.
Aug 9, 2025solution-design
Why I Prefer Stakeholder Stories
Picture this: You're in a product planning meeting, and someone reads out a user story: 'As a user, I want to receive email notifications so that I stay informed about updates.' Everyone nods. It sounds reasonable. But here's the problem—who actually wants this feature, and why? As an IT architect, I've seen teams build perfectly functional systems that nobody uses because they solved the stated problem instead of the real problem. This is where stakeholder stories become transformative, forcing teams to ask the right question: What outcome are we trying to achieve, and which stakeholders actually care about it?
Aug 8, 2025engineering-leadership
Beyond Team Structure: Why Intrinsic Motivation Drives Performance
Why even the best team structures fail without intrinsic motivation. How autonomy, mastery, and purpose transform knowledge workers from compliant to committed, creating sustainable competitive advantage through engaged, high-performing teams.
Aug 6, 2025engineering-leadership
The Power of Working in Pairs
Beyond team size: How strategic pairing creates resilient, high-performing teams by establishing intentional structures that maximize collaboration and minimize coordination overhead.
Aug 5, 2025engineering-leadership
Right-Sizing Your Teams: How to Fix Size Problems
This comprehensive guide helps engineering leaders identify and solve team size problems. Learn to recognize the telltale signs of oversized, undersized, and underutilized teams, then apply structured playbooks to right-size them for optimal performance. Includes practical strategies for overcoming resistance, measuring success, and maintaining team effectiveness throughout organizational changes.
Aug 1, 2025engineering-leadership
The Science of Team Size: Why Too Big or Too Small Breaks Performance
The science is clear: team size is a critical factor in performance. Too large, and communication overhead crushes productivity; too small, and you lack resilience. Discover why the 7±2 sweet spot balances communication efficiency with necessary skill coverage. Learn the research behind optimal team sizing and how to address common objections from both sides of the spectrum.
Jul 25, 2025enterprise-design
Beyond Architecture: Exploring Alternative Metaphors for the Enterprise
This post challenges the dominance of the architectural metaphor as the primary lens for enterprise design and explores more dynamic alternatives. By examining how metaphors shape our thinking, we consider machines (emphasizing efficiency), ecosystems (highlighting interdependence), cities (balancing design with emergence), and ultimately gardening as a framework that naturally resolves tensions between structure and adaptability, control and autonomy, stability and innovation. Rather than providing definitive answers, the post cultivates questions about how shifting metaphors might transform leadership approaches, team dynamics, and organizational capabilities to better address the complex challenges facing modern enterprises.
Jun 18, 2025visualization
Visualization as Strategy: Transforming Complex Work into Clear Decisions
Strategic visualization transforms team alignment, decision-making, and delivery outcomes. Learn key principles and practices that drive measurable business results through effective visual communication.
Jun 15, 2025engineering-leadership
Engineering Leadership: Making 1:1 Meetings Meaningful
A practical approach to elevating 1:1 meetings into impactful coaching and alignment sessions, grounded in research and team psychology.
Jun 10, 2025solution-design
Web Frontend Rendering Strategies: A Strategic Decision-Maker's Guide
This strategic guide helps technology leaders navigate the complex landscape of web rendering approaches—from CSR to SSR, SSG, and ISR—with a decision framework that aligns technical choices with business requirements, performance metrics, and SEO considerations to optimize both user experience and operational efficiency.
Jun 9, 2025enterprise-design
Enterprises Are Systems Too: Designing for Competitive Advantage
Enterprises function as systems where intentional design of operating models, interfaces, and feedback loops can dramatically reduce coordination overhead, accelerate decision-making, and create sustainable competitive advantage.
Jun 8, 2025larsbarkman.com
Relaunching My Website: Writing to Think
I write to process my thoughts, formulate my stances, and build my understanding of things. The material that comes out of that process might be useful to others — and gives clients a window into how I think before we've even spoken.

© 2026 • Lars Barkman