Welcome to Edition 7 of The CAIO.
I have argued for years that the model is the small part and the discipline around it is the work. It is a claim that is easy to nod along to and easy to dismiss as a consultant’s line. In July it stopped being a line. A research group tested it on 5,000 codebases and put a number on it. A systems engineer took apart a viral “37,000 lines a day” boast and showed what that volume actually costs. Both posts reached far beyond my usual audience, one of them among the highest reach I have had all year. The audience is not tired of the argument. It wants the evidence.
Welcome to the first edition of The Cybernetic CxO. A monthly newsletter for CTOs, CIOs, and digital transformation leaders navigating the AI era.
Each month, I’ll share patterns I’m seeing in the field: what’s working, what’s breaking, and what it means for how we build and run technology organizations. Expect honest takes, practical frameworks, and one thing you can do this week.
What defines high-quality work in software engineering? Is it Scrum? Clean Code? TDD? Functional programming? In this Expert Talks session, my colleague Milan and I present two complementary perspectives. Milan covers the pillars of high-quality engineering work, from team building and customer centricity to clean code and engineering culture. I then show how DevOps and continuous delivery help build great products by moving from a project mindset to a product mindset.
My chapter from the book: Machines, Code, People: 50 things Zühlke engineers are passionate about
