Knight Shift

Strategic insights on technology leadership, engineering culture, and building great teams

Don't Automate the SDLC

AI gives us the chance to redesign how we build products around outcomes. Applying it to every stage of the existing software development lifecycle would preserve too many assumptions from a world where implementation was expensive.

Nobody Deleted the Managers. We're Just Running Them at 150%.

AI hasn't removed the need for managers' judgement and attention. I think we're taking away the time for both by expecting managers to code more while keeping the rest of the job.

The Agent Is Half the System. Six Tests for the Other Half.

The rubric from my In The Loop talk, with enough method that you can run it yourself. Six yes-or-no questions about identity, spend, policy, observability, replay and oversight, scored on a four-point scale.