What Is Agent Driven Development?
-
Protected: How to Build an AI-Native Engineering Team (Not an AI-Assisted One)
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
-
We Kissed Specs and PRDs Goodbye. Product Managers Pass POCs Now.
Nobody looks forward to backlog grooming. Nobody ever did. AI made it possible to skip the ceremony and hand engineering a working proof of concept instead…
-
Stop Reviewing Code. Start Proving It Works. My Take on AI in the Quality Process of Software.
Code review was supposed to be about rigor. It became a rubber stamp. AI review will not fix it. What fixes it is building systems that…
-
Dear Coding Agent Builders and Corporate Leaders Funding These Tools: Just Give Me the Best Model
An open letter to the companies building AI coding tools and the leaders paying for them. You built something that made software fun again. Now stop…
-
Your Codebase Is Not Agent-Maintainable and That Is Your Next Big Problem
Mike spent three weeks trying to get AI agents to maintain his Flink pipeline. The agents were not the problem. The code was not agent-maintainable. This…
-
Customer Absorption: Your New Software Engineering Bottleneck
Your engineering team can now ship a feature a day. But your customers cannot absorb a feature a day. The new bottleneck is not building. It…
-
Everything You Learned About the Testing Pyramid Was Based on a Constraint That No Longer Exists
The Testing Pyramid was never a technical ideal. It was a financial compromise based on the cost of human capital. In an agent-driven world, that constraint…
-
Every Consultant Says They Can Fix Your Legacy App with AI — Here Is the Test
This is the third time your company has tried to fix the monolith. The first two attempts cost millions and changed nothing. AI agents make the…
-
One Hundred POCs a Day
Picture this. You wake up to three fully functioning proof of concepts, each with a complete go-to-market plan, built and validated by agents overnight. A hundred…
-
Your Engineering Team Ships in 28 Days. Ten of Those Days Are Work. The Other Eighteen Are a Leadership Problem.
Your engineering team reports a 30% velocity improvement from AI tooling. Your CFO sees 5% on the P&L. The gap — millions per year — is…
-
The Customer Product Operating Model
Your product team spends 60% of their time on coordination that agents handle in minutes. Building is no longer the bottleneck — your customer's capacity to…
-
You Added AI Agents. Why Are You Still Running a Separate Quality Organization Like It Is 2009?
If you are adopting AI and still defending a separate quality organization in 2026, you are not making a technical argument. You are making an emotional…
-
The Fifty Million Dollar Question — Stop Transforming. Start Building.
Every leader I ask the fifty million dollar question gives the same answer. They would not build what they have now. They would start over from…
-
Your Sales CRM Is Now a Tax, Not a Moat
Your revenue team already exports pipeline data out of the CRM to do the real work somewhere else. You are not buying a strategic platform. You…
-
If Your CFO Is Picking Your AI Tools, You Do Not Have an AI Strategy
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…
-
Dear CISO — Your Job Is Not to Stop AI. Your Job Is to Make It Safe to Ship.
If your answer to AI is "no" until further notice, you are not reducing risk. You are pushing it into the shadows while your competitors learn…
-
Everything You Learned About Building Software Is Already Wrong
You read Brooks. You read Fowler. You read The Phoenix Project and highlighted the good parts. Then you built something on Claude Code this weekend and…
-
Will You Make It?
You waited on cloud. You waited on DevOps. You pushed out the people who tried to fix it. You still have a manual QA team. Your…
-
AI Will Not Save Your Monolith. These Three Things Might.
Every executive wants AI to magically modernize their 10 million line monolith. It won't. Here's what you actually need — and why you've been asking the…
-
I Think I Know Where Your High Performers Are
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…
-
First Principles for AI-Native Engineering Execution (For CxOs)
The first principles behind agent-driven development, distilled from our published body of work into a clear, executive guide for decisions, governance, talent, and operating cadence.
-
The Board Memo Version: Four Sessions, Four Decisions, One Operating Plan
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.
-
The Executive Operating Model We Run In Private: Four Sessions That Turn AI Anxiety Into Board-Grade Decisions
A detailed, private four-session executive operating model with agendas, timelines, decisions, and risk controls to move from AI confusion to measurable execution.
-
You Added AI. Congratulations — You Now Run a Slop Factory.
You gave your engineers AI tools and skipped the governance conversation. Now your PRs are tripling, your review queue is drowning, and nobody can tell the…
-
The People Conversation
Every executive conversation I have starts the same way. Tooling budgets. Adoption dashboards. Training roadmaps. All of it oriented around the technology. None of it oriented…
-
The Quiet Gift of 2025: Three Models That Changed Everything
Three frontier AI models from Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI arrived in December 2025. The gap between engineers using AI to reason through problems and those using…
-
The Use Case Is Building Software and the Best Practice Is Today
Stop asking about AI use cases. The use case is your entire SDLC. Learn why executives must build with AI tools themselves to lead the transformation.
-
If Your Engineers Only Get Thirty Minutes to Learn, That Is Not Their Failure. It Is Yours.
You called to talk about AI adoption. But you do not know your value streams, your engineers get thirty minutes a week to learn, and you…
-
Congratulations: You Just Reinvented Peter Gibbons from Office Space
A 2025 parody exploring how enterprise AI adoption recreated Office Space. Your measurement systems train top performers to do just enough. That is not their failure.…
-
The 2028 Problem You’re Creating in 2025
Your 2025 AI decisions shape your 2028 reality. Learn why waiting for clarity is the riskiest strategy and how to build for capabilities that don't exist…
-
Stop Asking for “Advanced” AI Training
Advanced AI training is a status marker, not a learning objective. Discover what you actually need to know based on your role and current skill level.
-
If Your Vendor Doesn’t Ask These Three Questions Before the Demo, Politely Ask for a Field CTO Who Will
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.
-
If You Want to Measure Macro Results, Answer These 3 Questions Before AI Touches Your SDLC
Measure AI impact at the macro level by answering three critical questions before implementation: what you're solving, how you'll measure it, and who owns results.
-
What Got You Here Won’t Keep You Here: A Letter to Technology Executives
Technology executives: the skills that got you here won't keep you here. A frank letter about adapting your leadership for the AI-native era.
-
What Got You Here Won’t Keep You Here: A Letter to VPs of Engineering
VPs of Engineering: your playbook is obsolete. Here's how AI changes everything about how you lead, measure, and develop your organization.
-
What Got You Here Won’t Keep You Here: A Letter to Engineering Directors
Engineering directors have 18 months to prove they can transform teams for AI. The market in 2028 will have directors with proven transformation track records. Will…
-
What Got You Here Won’t Keep You Here: A Letter to Mid and Late-Career Developers
Mid and late-career developers: AI isn't here to replace you. But developers who use AI will replace those who don't. Here's how to adapt.
-
The Engineers Who Can’t Use AI Agents Don’t Have a Tools Problem
Your engineers struggling with AI agents don't need better tools or training. They need permission to work differently and the organizational barriers removed that punish speed.
-
Developer, Development & Programming, Director, Industry & Business, Industry Research, Leadership, Manager
Exploring Developer Happiness in the AI-SDLC
Exploring what developer happiness looks like when AI handles the tedious work. Research and insights on the emotional side of AI adoption.
-
You Cannot Read Yourself Into AI-SDLC Literacy
Reading about AI won't make you AI-literate. Only hands-on building will develop the intuition you need to lead. Start tonight.
-
Your Questions About AI in the SDLC Reveal Exactly Where You Are in the Adoption Curve—And How to Bridge the Gap Before You Waste a Year
Your questions about AI in the SDLC reveal your adoption maturity level. Diagnose where you are and learn how to accelerate your journey.
-
Gen AI in the SDLC Is Infrastructure Now—And Every One of Your Engineers Picked Their Own
Gen AI in the SDLC is now infrastructure, not innovation. But every engineer picked their own stack. Here's why that's a governance problem.
-
Waste Density vs Value Density: Managing the Emotions of Your Board with Real Economics
Learn to communicate AI value to your board using waste density vs. value density. Move beyond emotional arguments to real economics.
-
AI Implementation, CxO, Developer, Development & Programming, Director, Frameworks, Leadership, Manager
Goodnight to Epics, Stories and Features: A Feature A Day is the New Normal
The sprint is dead. AI-native teams ship features daily, not fortnightly. Learn how to adapt your agile processes for the new velocity.
-
Your Best Salesperson Didn’t Pick Salesforce. Your Best Engineer Shouldn’t Pick Their AI.
Your best engineer shouldn't pick their AI tools any more than your best salesperson picked Salesforce. Make AI infrastructure, not individual choice.
-
How to Negotiate Your new AI Leadership Comp
Negotiating an AI leadership role? Here's how to structure compensation that reflects your value in transforming engineering organizations.
-
Leading AI in the Constraints
Leading AI adoption within enterprise constraints requires political skill. Learn to build bridges, not burn them, while driving real change.
-
As CxO, the 2 Things Your HR Needs to Do Different
Your HR is declining AI-native candidates who ship in weeks what your teams ship in quarters. Two critical changes your HR needs to make before you…
-
How to Win Without Disruption: The Senior Director’s Guide to AI That Actually Wins
Senior Directors: Win the AI transformation without disrupting your political capital. A practical guide to delivering results while managing up.
-
The Bottlenecked CEO: You Don’t Need New Metrics to Quantify AI Value. You Need the Courage to Eliminate the Silos That Make Measurement Impossible.
A CEO watches a startup take 10 percent of his market in 8 months. The problem is not metrics. It is the silos that make measuring…
-
Every Agile Artifact Was Built to Derisk Humans Writing Code
Every agile artifact exists to derisk humans writing code. AI changes that equation. Here's what to keep and what to throw away.
-
Your AI Agent is the World’s Most Educated Five-Year-Old
Your AI agent has the world's knowledge but the judgment of a five-year-old. Learn to work with it like the brilliant but inexperienced junior it is.
-
Your AI Investment Is Failing. Here’s Why.
Most enterprise AI investments are failing. Here's the real reason: you're measuring tools, not outcomes. Learn how to fix your approach.