Blog
Articles on delivery, CI/CD, and how teams ship value to production.
Articles
Your Best Engineer Barely Writes Code Anymore
A team lead almost put his best engineer on a performance plan for low output - until his manager asked one question. When generating code is nearly free, output stops measuring value, and judgment becomes the work no dashboard can see.
Your Model Can Disappear Overnight
An export-control order disabled a frontier model for everyone - even the US customers it never targeted. The fix is not a model from the right country, but an architecture that can swap models without a rewrite.
Spec-Driven Development and the Waterfall Trap
Spec-driven development solves real problems with vibe coding, but writing a long, confident spec up front quietly brings back the waterfall assumption. The fix is to iterate the spec, not just the code.
Do Not Let AI Write Your ADRs
AI can produce polished ADR-shaped text, but it cannot weigh your real decision drivers. Use it to expose assumptions and blind spots before the team owns the choice.
Tests Have Always Been Neglected. AI Made It Worse.
AI can generate tests fast, but speed often amplifies brittle, implementation-focused test suites. The real gain comes from behavior-focused tests that survive refactors.
You Are Not Building Airplanes
Reliability does not improve by writing fallbacks for every uncertain state. Critical points need redundancy; everywhere else needs simplicity.
Overengineering vs. underengineering: a compliance near-miss
A tenant deletion endpoint looked like five lines, but multi-region data, retention rules, and auditability turned it into a business-critical workflow design problem.
Before You Choose Architecture, Answer This One Question
Teams often start with stack and architecture decisions too early. First validate whether the problem is worth solving now, then design the smallest system that proves value.
Not All Tech Debt Is Equal
Treating all tech debt the same creates false progress. Strategic, accidental, and architectural debt need different decisions and different responses.
Your CI/CD Pipeline Is Slower Than Your Developers
Developers ship fast; production does not. The bottleneck is not people—it is your pipeline, process, and architecture of delivery.
ADRs Are Useful Only If They Shape the Decision
ADRs fail when they become passive documentation. Their real value is the thinking and discussion before the decision is finalized.
Your Scaling Problem Might Be Architecture, Not Kubernetes
Before moving to Kubernetes, verify what actually breaks first. Many scaling problems come from architecture and unclear boundaries, not missing clusters.
Case studies
Real-world examples from training and consulting engagements.
