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Product teams really do outperform: bringing the receipts
Researchers at DORA, McKinsey and Google have spent a decade proving what good engineers already know. It’s time to put that knowledge into practice.
Apr 30
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Zac Beckman
2
1
Your AI is not your mentor
Use it relentlessly for code tutoring. But the formation work — being seen, stretched and told the truth — has to come from a person.
Apr 29
•
Zac Beckman
3
1
3.7 Elaboration
Elaboration takes your specifications from skeleton to sprint-ready, fully fleshed out across every layer at which the system is tested — and…
Apr 28
•
Zac Beckman
2
1
Microsoft’s collaboration stack breaks every rule of a modern delivery toolkit
How SharePoint will sink your project: hidden pitfalls that suck the life out of teams. It’s getting worse, not better.
Apr 27
•
Zac Beckman
2
March 2026
When to go waterfall
If you're working in a multi-modal organization you'll find this helpful: the canonical waterfall / agile decision tree.
Mar 24
•
Zac Beckman
2
1
Observability as architecture: why you can’t bolt it on later
Most teams treat observability like a nice-to-have. They’re building blind — and paying for it in ways they can’t even see.
Mar 13
•
Zac Beckman
2
1
How waterfall is wrong for software
We've known for decades waterfall and software don't mix; why do we keep doing it?
Mar 8
•
Zac Beckman
2
1
January 2026
What happens when the next developer has to understand your AI code?
This study into the long-term cost of AI-driven development reveals some surprising findings. Most other studies only examine short-term outcomes. But…
Jan 30
•
Zac Beckman
3
2
3.6 Specification
Before coding we need to make sure our design has enough fidelity. Specification is about adding those details, the happy paths as well as the failure…
Jan 28
2
How to fix a $25 bug before it becomes a $37,500 problem
Stop debugging and start designing by "shifting left" with BDD. It's not about testing. It's about feedback loops and thinking clearly about intent…
Jan 24
•
Zac Beckman
1
Transform your standups and retros: intention matters more than status updates
Do you try to skip your standup? Or feel like retros are a waste of time? Then your team isn’t doing it right. Here's my formula for giving your team…
Jan 14
•
Zac Beckman
4
Part 3: Refining our data pipeline architecture to solve a few hidden challenges
Ensuring scalability, reliability and responsiveness pose interesting problems in distributed architecture. Here’s how to build a forward-looking…
Jan 8
•
Zac Beckman
3
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