Turn product and technology into a business advantage
I help leaders remove delivery friction, align strategy, operating models, and execution so product and engineering teams deliver measurable business outcomes.
Production is where evidence begins, not where accountability ends.
Product & Technology
Not separate support functions. One operating partnership.
Product and technology are not separate support functions. Together, they are how the business creates, ships, and scales value.
A strategic partnership between Product and Engineering is not a recurring meeting. It is a shared operating agreement.
Product and Engineering co-own outcomes. They also co-own constraints: reliability, compliance, architecture health, and cost-to-serve.
Profitable Engineering
Engineering teams do not become strategic partners by shipping more work alone. They become strategic when leaders can connect the movement of work to measurable business outcomes.
Profitable Engineering is my book for technology leaders who want to make delivery visible, connect engineering investment to business value, and build teams that move fast without heroics.
It brings together Flow, Funding, Realization, leadership maturity, modern delivery practices, and responsible AI adoption into a practical operating model for turning technology into a strategic advantage.
Available now on Amazon
Paperback · Hardcover · Kindle
For much of my career, engineering was treated as a cost center. Cost control meant shrinking teams, not improving how value moves through the system. That experience shaped my focus: connect engineering work to business outcomes, invest in right-sized teams, and build leadership systems that make alignment repeatable.
Today we have the practices, automation, and visibility to do this well, but it still requires unlearning legacy playbooks and leading differently.
How I operate
- Align product and engineering around outcomes, not output
- Design teams and operating models that reduce friction across handoffs
- Make work visible (flow), make delivery resilient (quality), and make value measurable (realization)
- Invest in people and leadership maturity as the multiplier
“The problem is that most of us are working with an outdated playbook: plays that we have been programmed to run from an older paradigm of leadership—the Industrial Revolution.” — David L. Marquet
To succeed in this era, you will have to unlearn, relearn, and
Rethink Your Understanding®
A window into how I lead, how I serve, and how modern product and technology organizations deliver measurable business value.
About me
Senior Technology Executive | Author | Industry Collaborator
Scaling Engineering Organizations, AI Adoption, Operating Model Transformation, Flow, Culture, and Business Outcomes
I am a technology leader and operator with 25+ years of experience helping SaaS, growth-stage, PE-backed, and enterprise organizations scale engineering, modernize platforms, and connect technology delivery to measurable business outcomes.
Most of my career has been spent in the hard middle of change: helping organizations grow, integrate, modernize, and improve while the business keeps running.
I have led local and globally distributed teams across software engineering, quality assurance, agile leadership, data engineering, production engineering, and platform operations. That breadth shaped how I think about technology leadership: not as a collection of isolated functions, but as a connected operating system of people, platforms, practices, decisions, and outcomes.
I am drawn to the work behind the work. The strategy behind the roadmap. The leadership system behind the delivery model. The culture behind the metrics. The operating discipline that helps teams understand the why, make work visible, reduce friction, and turn ideas into customer value.
At Parchment, later acquired by Instructure, I helped scale engineering from roughly 20 to 100+ people across 10+ countries, supported growth beyond $100M ARR, helped move the organization from large-batch releases to trunk-based development and continuous delivery, supported a platform handling approximately 55M annual transactions, enabled 3,000+ annual production changes with high reliability and quality, and supported diligence and integration through multiple acquisitions, a $200M recapitalization, and an $835M acquisition.
More recently, my work has focused on responsible AI adoption, helping engineering teams move from ad hoc experimentation to practical production use through literacy, guardrails, secure SDLC practices, peer learning, and accountable leadership.
My leadership approach is grounded in visibility, experimentation, and continuous learning: define the outcome, make the work visible, test small changes, learn from the data, and iterate until results are real. The lens I keep coming back to is flow, realized outcomes, and the strength of the teams doing the work.
I care as much about how change is led as what gets delivered. Durable transformation requires trust, leadership development, operating discipline, and a culture strong enough to absorb uncertainty without losing alignment.
The hardest thing to build is not the software. It is the organizational system, leadership discipline, and culture that can absorb change, stay aligned, and continue delivering results.
That is where I do my best work.
If you are leading a digital platform, SaaS business, or technology organization at an inflection point, I am always open to connecting, comparing notes, and exploring where the right leadership system can turn complexity into progress.
Learn more from my mission, collaboration, blog, and endorsements.
Sharing knowledge and experiences
Today’s Agile, Lean, DevOps, and now AI-accelerated delivery communities are some of the most inspiring resources we have. As we strive for engineering and product delivery excellence, the real challenge isn’t adopting a new tool or framework; it’s leading meaningful, lasting change.
I’m committed to collaborating with senior leaders who are ready to rethink how we work, lead, and deliver. It’s not about pushing practices. It’s about shifting mindsets and exploring what’s truly possible in this new era of software creation.
Some of the most significant turning points in my career didn’t come from frameworks or certifications. They came from conversations. Honest ones. In trusted spaces where experienced leaders from noncompeting organizations dropped the pretense, shared what wasn’t working, and challenged each other to think differently. That’s the power of collaboration when it’s done right.
Most senior leaders won’t talk about the hard stuff in public. But in the right room, where trust is built, and there’s no need to posture, that’s where the real learning happens. That’s where meaningful change begins.
Working across different eras of software delivery has shaped my perspective on progress. From waterfall to Agile, to DevOps and automation, and now the rise of AI and agentic workflows, the pace of change has never been faster.
The leaders who succeed are the ones who stay curious and keep learning. I’ve been fortunate to share this journey with thoughtful and courageous transformation leaders across the industry. Comparing our teams’ evolution to industry benchmarks, I’ve observed the same patterns: customer experience improves when system flow improves, delivery becomes smarter and faster with the right automation, and teams thrive in environments designed for clarity and focus.
There’s still important work ahead to help organizations deliver digital products more effectively, especially as AI reshapes how we build, operate, and scale systems. But one truth hasn’t changed: sharing experiences helps. It creates momentum. It changes minds. And sometimes, it changes everything.
Stay curious. Learn to unlearn. Rethink your understanding.
Where I create value
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Scaling engineering organizations through growth, acquisition, and operating complexity
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Modernizing platforms while maintaining reliability, delivery, and customer trust
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Improving flow from idea to production through visibility, DevOps, Lean, and value stream thinking
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Helping teams adopt AI responsibly through literacy, guardrails, secure SDLC practices, and accountability
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Aligning Product, Engineering, Security, Compliance, and executive stakeholders around measurable outcomes
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Building leadership systems, culture, and operating discipline that sustain results through change
What I talk about
Leadership and change
Rethinking what it means to lead – challenging legacy mindsets, embracing transformation, and cultivating curiosity and humility in a rapidly changing world
Teams and collaboration
Building teams and partnerships that thrive through trust, open communication, shared purpose, and a culture of high performance
Modern engineering practices
- Agile, Lean, DevOps, and modern SDLC operating models
- Team design and integration
- Developer Experience (DevEx/DX), Team Experience (TeamEx)
- Value Stream Management and Product Operating models
Flow and Realization
- Delivery efficieny. Flow metrics and Flow Engineering (mapping)
- Product and Technology alignment
- Realization (a.k.a outcomes) and value
AI and innovation
Exploring how emerging technology, especially AI, is reshaping engineering workflows through responsible adoption and practical integration
Continuous learning
Staying curious, learning to unlearn, and building learning organizations that adapt and grow
It takes a team
“Let me be clear, you only get things done through committed teams.” — Mark Fields, former Ford Motor Company CEO
Great people at all levels and great teams help drive the journey together.
I am grateful for the variety of talented teams, leaders, mentors (personal and virtual), coaches, peers, industry collaborators, publishing’s, and my experiences that have helped me to shape my understandings. The journey thus far has been a very challenging and rewarding one.
“You’re either a learning organization or you’re losing to someone who is.” — Andrew Clay Shafer
Incredible conversation
Conversations can help you and your team learn how others are framing their journey, identify what to amplify, and sparking questions to find unexpected sources of inspiration to succeed within their own context.
I have participated in discussions about digital transformations, contexts, and practices with thought leaders and participants from various organizations. See conversations timeline
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Blog and podcast
Talks and presentations
Conference keynotes, workshops, and industry presentations where I share perspectives on leadership, value stream management, and digital transformation. See the comprehensive list here.
We all come from different experiences. The best insights happen when we share them.
Let’s talk