Field notes
Practitioner essays on building production software with AI agents.
Operator-grade reports on the systems, decisions, and economics of shipping software with AI — what worked, what failed, and what changed.
Articles
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Your Transformation Org Just Got a Fifteen-Year Service Award. Now You Want to Repeat That Pattern with AI?
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗Your Agile Transformation VP just got a 15-year service award. The org still cannot release without a CAB meeting. Now you are building an AI team with the same playbook. You know how this ends.
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Waste Density vs Value Density: Managing the Emotions of Your Board with Real Economics
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗Learn to communicate AI value to your board using waste density vs. value density. Move beyond emotional arguments to real economics.
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Every Agile Artifact Was Built to Derisk Humans Writing Code
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗Every agile artifact exists to derisk humans writing code. AI changes that equation. Here’s what to keep and what to throw away.
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If Your Vendor Doesn’t Ask These Three Questions Before the Demo, Politely Ask for a Field CTO Who Will
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗Before your next AI vendor demo, make sure they ask these 3 critical questions. If they don’t, you’re getting a performance, not a partnership.
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The Board Memo Version: Four Sessions, Four Decisions, One Operating Plan
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗A concise board memo for executive teams: the four-session operating model, timeline, decisions, governance, and risk controls to move from AI ambiguity to measurable execution.
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What Got You Here Won’t Keep You Here: A Letter to VPs of Engineering
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗VPs of Engineering: your playbook is obsolete. Here’s how AI changes everything about how you lead, measure, and develop your organization.
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If Your CFO Is Picking Your AI Tools, You Do Not Have an AI Strategy
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗Your CFO should absolutely control the money. Your procurement team should absolutely manage the buying process. But neither of them should be deciding which AI capabilities your company adopts, because AI is not a printer.
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He Cannot Hire the Engineer He Needs. Here’s What He’s Doing About It.
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗When you can’t hire the engineer you need, build one. How one leader is using AI to upskill existing team members and close capability gaps.
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I Think I Know Where Your High Performers Are
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗Your heaviest AI users are probably your best people. That’s the easy part. The harder question, the one that actually matters, is who still is not really using it. Go find out. It’s going to be an awkward conversation.
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You Do Not Have Time for a Two-Hour Kickoff but You Have Time to Fail for a Year
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗A VP told me his org only had 30 minutes for AI training. I recommended the two-hour kickoff that has consistently produced results. He said they did not have time. That told me everything I needed to know.
Corporate fiction
Three books. One operating problem. No clean hero.
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