Resources · honest stack

Everything I use. Nothing I’m selling.

No affiliate links. No sponsorships. Just the tools, frameworks, and reading I lean on to ship business analysis and product delivery work for Banking, Financial Services and Insurance teams and hiring conversations.

01

My AI Stack — $60/month

These are the exact tools I use to build CatalystAgile and the 54 live experiences. No affiliate links. No sponsorships. Just what works for me.

Research & Learning

Perplexity Pro — $20/month

Deep research and conceptual depth. This is where I do the architecture-level thinking behind every Business Requirements Document — Sonnet 4.6 access for nuanced analysis, deep-research mode for primary-source citations, and comparative reasoning across alternative framings before any decision lands in the spec. Perplexity sharpens the questions I ask. The architecture is mine.

Gemini AI Pro — $20/month

Comparative reasoning across long-context material and multi-source synthesis. NotebookLM is the work surface here — I use it to ingest 30 to 40 reference documents at once and surface the patterns. Particularly strong for designing a single Business Requirements Document while driving, listening to videos, audio, podcasts, and interactive slides.

Code Generation

Claude Code — $20/month

My primary building tool. This is where most of the 54 live experiences, Ignite Intelligence v15, Ignite IDE, Ignite AI and this website were built. I describe the workflow, acceptance criteria, and validation path. Claude assists implementation.

Claude CLI — Free

Command-line interface for rapid iteration. Useful for quick changes and debugging.

Project Management

Notion — Free tier

Planning, documentation, content management.

Total: $60/month

Stack cost is incidental. The work is in the brief and the architecture, not the bill.

For practitioners who want to go further: deeper, paid-tier delivery tooling is in build at catalystagile.ca. Launching soon.

02

The AI Execution Guide

Free download. My complete step-by-step process for building tools with AI:

  • Problem identification framework
  • How to describe what you want to AI (with examples)
  • Testing checklist
  • Ship/kill decision criteria
  • 15 real examples from my work
  • Common pitfalls and how to avoid them
Download Free Guide →
03

Frameworks I Use

These are the methodologies behind the 54 live experiences. All are well-established, publicly available frameworks.

Agile/Scrum:

  • Scrum Guide (Schwaber & Sutherland)
  • Richard Lawrence's Story Splitting Patterns
  • Spotify Squad Health Check Model

Business Analysis:

  • IIBA BABOK Guide
  • Behavior-Driven Development (BDD)
  • Mendelow's Power/Interest Grid

Prioritization:

  • RICE Scoring (Intercom)
  • MoSCoW (DSDM)
  • Kano Model
  • Pareto Principle (80/20)

Strategy:

  • OKR Framework
  • Build vs Buy Analysis
  • Opportunity Cost Analysis
  • Change Impact Assessment
04

Recommended Reading

For Delivery Practitioners Getting Started with AI:

  • Start with Claude Code or Gemini AI Pro — get one or both as needed
  • Don't try to learn coding. Describe what you want clearly. That's it.
  • Build something small first. A calculator. A form. A checklist.

For Understanding the Frameworks:

  • IIBA BABOK Guide — the full business analysis competency framework
  • Scrum Guide — the foundation of Agile practice
  • "User Story Mapping" by Jeff Patton — best book on story decomposition

Community

I'm building this in public. If you're a delivery practitioner experimenting with AI, I want to hear about it.

  • What problems are you solving?
  • What tools are you building?
  • What's working? What isn't?

Reach out: ignatious@catalystagile.com

Or connect on LinkedIn — mention CatalystAgile so I know how you found me.

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