I want to make a prediction that is going to make a lot of people uncomfortable. The programming languages, frameworks, and abstractions we've spent decades building are going to start collapsing. Not all at once. Not overnight. But the direction is clear, and the pace is faster than most people want to admit. Within a decade, possibly sooner, the tools we use to build software will look…
The bottleneck of developer speed is disappearing. Agentic systems can produce robust solutions quickly in ways that would have taken a team of humans weeks. The friction that made "build it small so you can change it easily" such critical advice is evaporating. But the principle behind small steps was never really about code size. It's about maintaining optionality and creating feedback loops.…
I don't think we have five years before agentic coding becomes the mainstream context in which professional software development happens. I think we're talking about two or three. Possibly less. If that sounds alarmist, I'd ask you to consider how it would have sounded in 1983 to tell a mainframe developer they had about eight years before their core expertise became a niche. Or in 1994 to tell a…
Stewards focus on creating value. When the market shifts, they figure out how to keep contributing. They are perpetually employable. Strip miners focus on extracting value. When the market tightens, the seam runs out and the extraction ends. They are no longer employable. And, frankly, should have never been.
Roadmaps pretend to predict the future, then punish you for learning. The more detailed your roadmap, the harder it is to adapt when reality doesn't match the plan. Stop treating roadmaps like contracts and start using them as communication tools that create options instead of eliminating them.
When leaders ask teams to "go faster," they're usually not asking for better outcomes. They're asking for more output. More stories delivered. More code shipped. More visible progress. Implicit in that ask is a pretty big assumption: that we already know exactly what needs to be built, that the plan is correct, and that execution is the only thing standing between us and success. So "go faster"…
A quick validation checklist to run before committing to work. Helps teams avoid building solutions to unclear or unimportant problems.
A product manager walks into your office and says, "We need a report that shows daily active users by region, broken down by feature usage, with trend lines for the past 90 days." You nod. Sounds clear enough. You estimate it, add it to the backlog, and two weeks later you deliver exactly what was asked for. The product manager looks at it, says "thanks," and then... nothing. It sits unused. A…
A while back I worked with a large manufacturer that needed to modernize a system that managed a key part of their operations. Once completed, the company projected savings of more than $100 million a year. The plan was to go big. A highly detailed three-year plan. They assumed that if they were to get a large solution done, they needed to tackle it in big steps. We suggested small steps. Here’s…
The problem with "fail fast" is that it too often becomes "move fast." Failure is hidden or spun as success, speed is rewarded, and the learning part gets lost entirely. At its worst, "fail fast" is an excuse to rush into the next thing without pausing to understand what just happened. What I want to promote instead is Observe Often. The shift in language is intentional—when we say “observe,” we…
The other day, I was in a Slack discussion with some of the good folks at Test Double. The topic of bug bashes came up, and the conversation was rich. People brought thoughtful perspectives and experiences, and the discussion left me reflecting on what bug bashes say about the systems we work in.
Many teams want to release faster. Some even feel pressured to. They set up CI/CD pipelines, automate deployments, and start talking about daily pushes. But then things go sideways. Bugs slip through. Customers complain. The team’s stress level skyrockets.
Most teams agree that learning is key to reducing risk. But not all learning happens during implementation. And not all approaches to product discovery are as iterative as we like to think. In many orgs, there’s a tendency to treat product discovery and design work as a way to front-load certainty. Research gets packaged into polished prototypes. User flows are vetted, click-through demos…
The problem with the term best practice is not always the practice itself—it’s the perspective the phrase invites. Best is steeped in finality. It implies that nothing better exists, or ever will. That the thinking is over. And while we may not mean it that way, language shapes thought. When we call something “best,” we stop asking “is it still working?”
These days, it seems like even talking about diversity and inclusion can spark a political debate. But here’s the thing—it doesn’t need to be political. This isn’t about left or right. It’s about people. It’s about teams. It’s about building environments where different perspectives aren’t just welcomed, but seen as essential. Because they are. In tech, in product, in leadership—diverse teams…
The way your teams are structured shapes the software you build—and vice versa. In this article, we explore the profound connection between team and software composition through the lens of Conway’s Law, uncovering how misalignment leads to chaos and inefficiency, while thoughtful alignment drives collaboration, modularity, and adaptability. Learn why your true architecture isn’t in diagrams but…
When I say I’m joining Test Double as their new VP of Delivery, I’m not just making a career move—I’m making an alignment move. This is a company that already values the things I value. They’ve built a strong culture, a strong team, and a strong set of practices. I’m not joining to overhaul anything. I’m joining to help make something great even better.
When teams hear about small, frequent deployments, they often picture chaos: code breaking, users complaining, and developers scrambling to fix issues. But in reality, small deployments do the opposite. They reduce complexity, amplify feedback, and create a smoother experience for both users and developers.
Full-stack teams are a brilliant concept. They’re designed to have everything a team needs to solve problems in a given domain—front-end, back-end, database, security, you name it. When done right, these teams are little microcosms of outcome achievement, creativity, and autonomy. They blur skill boundaries, enabling faster delivery and real-time learning across disciplines. Sounds great, right?…
Today, I’m excited to announce the beta launch of Collaboration Contracts, a lightweight app designed to help teams—especially distributed ones—quickly define and manage their roles in decisions. Whether you're using it to bring clarity to one-off decisions or baking it into how your team operates every day, the app is built to support alignment, accountability, and smoother collaboration.