Business leaders are regularly asked to decide on technology they did not choose to become expert in. The recommendation that reaches them has usually been shaped along the way by the people presenting it, and rarely arrives with the reasoning that would let them test it.

This series takes one recurring decision at a time and offers prescriptive guidance: the questions worth asking, the options that should have been on the table, and what the numbers in front of you tend to leave out.

It begins with three. Whether to build, buy or accelerate. How to read a business case, where the baseline is the part that decides everything. And which platform to fund when AI, data and integration are all asking at once. More decisions will be added as they come up.

The aim is not to make business leaders technologists. It is to give them a way to see past how a choice has been framed and decide on the evidence that actually matters.