Governance around AI agents is becoming a louder topic. That’s not a reactionary trend. It’s a predictable one. When agents move from generating text to taking action inside real systems, governance stops being theoretical. Most organizations approach governance as a policy problem.Write the document. Define the rules. Approve the tool. That’s not enough. Agent governance […]
Last week was full of impressive AI headlines. New models from OpenAI and Anthropic. New benchmarks. Even stories about AI writing compilers that can run games like Doom. That level of capability is remarkable. The progress is real. But most organizations don’t struggle with what’s possible.They struggle with what’s usable. A capability without integration is […]
Winter has a way of exposing weak systems. Pipes freeze.Roads fail.Schedules fall apart. It’s rarely because someone didn’t work hard enough.It’s because the system assumed ideal conditions. Software systems behave the same way. Everything looks fine when volume is low, timelines are loose, and the same people are always around to remember how things work. […]
The trophy is easy to see. The work that earned it isn’t. When you watch a championship game played in brutal conditions, the lesson is obvious. The teams that survive aren’t the flashiest. They’re the ones that can execute the fundamentals when everything else breaks down. The 2025 Patriots are a good example of a […]
Before going any further, I’ll name the product I’ve been circling to and hinting at the past several posts. The system I’m building is called CoffeeBreak. It’s a human-in-the-loop AI teammate designed to assist across the entire software development lifecycle. I’ve avoided leading with the name because this problem exists whether CoffeeBreak ever ships or […]
Every product has early users. The question is whether they’re chosen intentionally or show up by default. Too often, early access is treated like a reward. The loudest voices get in first. Feedback comes quickly. Expectations get set before the product has found its footing. That rarely leads to better software. Early Users Shape the […]
Most software teams aren’t short on tools. They have ticketing systems, CI/CD pipelines, observability dashboards, documentation platforms, chat tools, and now a growing set of AI-powered assistants layered on top of everything else. And yet, many teams still feel slower than they should. The Work Between the Work When teams describe their challenges, they often […]
As teams look toward a new year, a familiar cycle starts. Budgets reset. Roadmaps get drafted. Tools get evaluated. Vendors make their case for why this platform or that solution is the missing piece. Before any of that happens, there’s a more important question worth asking: What problem are we actually trying to solve? Technology […]
This year, I’ve heard a lot of concern from early-career engineers about their place in the industry alongside AI. That concern is understandable. In 2025, we’ve seen large-scale layoffs from some of the biggest names in software. Many of these companies have framed those decisions as preparation for what they expect from AI, not necessarily […]
I recently had a conversation with a peer who was genuinely worried that we’re all going to lose our jobs to AI. I get where the fear comes from. Every major shift in software has triggered the same concern. We heard it during the rise of the web, the move to cloud, and the spread […]
