Simulation Bias & Ground Truth
The starting problem: representations become operationally real while drifting from the work they claim to describe.
- Programs Are Networks of Commitments Under UncertaintyA working model of programs as linked commitments rather than task collections, and a set of ways the model could prove less useful than it sounds.
- Program Operating SystemA provisional architecture for representing, observing, governing, and executing complex programs across humans, agents, software systems, suppliers, and physical work.
- Program as Code: The Full ArgumentThe reporting-centered model of program management is being replaced by something with software-like properties. Here is the full argument, what it makes possible, where it breaks, and what I still cannot answer.
- Program ObservabilityThe sensing and state-reconciliation layer of a proposed Program Operating System: evidence, claims, provenance, uncertainty, and 10 signals that can still be gamed.
- Program as CodeComplex programs are networks of commitments under uncertainty. Program as Code is the implementation philosophy for making that system observable, governable, and increasingly executable.
- The Sanity Check Was an AccidentOne person deciding to check one figure found 3 months of invented analytics. I am still trying to work out what a real control would look like.
- Simulation Bias is Already HereA Reddit post about an AI hallucinating analytics data for months is the clearest real-world example of simulation bias I have seen yet.
- A Day in the Life of a Technical Program Manager in 2035Imagining how AI-native teams, agent swarms, and simulation bias reshape a TPM daily routine, and which parts of the job survive it.
- Are Our Programs Simulations?When status replaces reality, programs collapse. On simulation bias, watermelon programs, and keeping teams grounded as AI-mediated insight becomes the norm.