The Pace of Innovation: Systems Thinking for Faster Engineering

In this episode of "How Many CTOs Does It Take?" podcast, hosts Scott Porad and Brad Hefta-Gaub open with travel and sports talk, including World Cup rules, then pivot to Scott's change-management training on systems thinking and unspoken norms. They explore a meta-question: if non-engineering teams couldn't tell engineering to "go faster," what would they change to increase engineering throughput? Using AI as a lens, they argue the bottlenecks become: deciding what to build, keeping a prioritized "shovel-ready" backlog, and handling downstream constraints like training users, releases, and integrations. They emphasize learning feedback loops, including studying what went right, and discuss long-horizon thinking for durable platforms. The conversation touches on Spain's mail-based customer service requirement, balancing innovation vs basic fixes (TaskRabbit categories), intentional tech debt, and ideas from Eric Ries's book "Incorruptible," plus examples of enduring companies like Costco and century-long businesses.

00:00 Cold Open 00:31 Podcast Kickoff Banter 00:44 Mountain Adventure Recap 01:37 Sports Week Highlights 03:53 Change Management Systems 05:10 Elevator Norms and Rules 07:51 Meta Question On Speeding Up Engineering 09:56 Instant Code Bottlenecks 12:03 Shovel Ready Planning 14:29 Downstream Release Constraints 19:35 Build the Right Stuff 24:59 Learning Loops and Postmortems 28:01 Spain Side Quest 30:23 Stop Forcing Revenue Targets 34:01 Mission Metrics And 3M 39:42 Innovation Versus Basics 42:37 AI Changes Tech Debt Math 49:03 Think In Decades 53:38 Costco Mission And Hotdogs 56:00 Subscribe And Credits

Resources:

• How Many CTOs Pod: https://howmanyctospod.com
• Scott Porad: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottporad/
• Brad Hefta-Gaub: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradheftagaub/

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