Everyone's talking about spec driven development — and almost everyone is thinking about it too narrowly. If your spec only describes what your engineering team needs to build, you're leaving most of its power on the table. In this episode, David Dieruf and Wael Rabadi challenge the AI coding community's definition of "spec" and make the case for holistic specification thinking that drives your entire business.

What You'll Learn:

• Why spec driven development as it's currently practiced is too narrow
• How LLMs fill context gaps the same way humans do — and why that's not hallucination
• Why BRD thinking and agile aren't mutually exclusive
• How a holistic spec drives backlogs, architecture, marketing, and sales from a single source of truth
• The regeneration power of AI when product direction changes from Feature A to Feature B
• Why ubiquitous language across all teams is more critical than ever in the AI era
• How the "multiplier effect" of centralized business context accelerates everything

Key Insight: A spec isn't a technical artifact — it's a business artifact. When your entire organization shares the same context, AI doesn't just help you write code faster. It helps you change direction, regenerate plans, and move the whole business forward in days instead of months.

Is computer science a dying field now that AI can generate code? Are developers just becoming "code monkeys" who paste AI output into repositories? In this episode, David Dieruf and Wael Rabadi tackle these questions head-on and explore what true development actually means when AI handles the implementation grunt work.

What You'll Learn:

• What true development means beyond writing code
• Why context and documentation are critical for effective AI pairing
• How AI exposes the difference between code monkeys and real developers
• The importance of shared understanding and ubiquitous language
• Why interdisciplinary teams and collaboration matter more in the AI age
• How to provide AI with the context it needs to be effective
• The future of software development careers when AI handles implementation

Key Insight: AI doesn't eliminate the need for skilled developers—it raises the bar. The question isn't whether AI will replace developers, but whether you're doing true development or just being a code monkey. If you're the latter, AI is coming for your job. If you're the former, AI is your new superpower.

Hosted by engineering leaders David Dieruf and Wael Rabadi, co-founders of Kisasa.

Most engineering teams treat staging environments as a safety net—a place to test changes before they hit production. But what if that safety net is actually slowing you down and creating more problems than it solves? In this episode, David Dieruf and Wael Rabadi challenge the conventional wisdom around staging environments and make the case for production-first development.

What You'll Learn:

• Why staging environments create false confidence and environment parity problems
• How infrastructure as code (CDKTF) enables production-first development
• Blue-green deployment strategies for safe production deployments
• Why moving the edge to deployment eliminates the need for staging
• How to simplify cloud security audits with infrastructure as code
• Practical approaches to deploying directly to production safely

Key Insight: If your staging environment isn't identical to production, it's not protecting you—it's just slowing you down. Invest in deployment practices that make production safe, not in maintaining a staging environment that lies to you.

Hosted by engineering leaders David Dieruf and Wael Rabadi, co-founders of Kisasa.

The rise of AI coding assistants is fundamentally changing what it means to be a software developer. But contrary to popular fear, AI isn't replacing engineers—it's transforming their roles from code writers to context managers and decision-makers. In this episode, David Dieruf and Wael Rabadi explore how AI pair programming is reshaping development at every level, from entry-level developers to senior architects.

What You'll Learn:

• How AI is transforming developer roles at entry, mid, and senior levels
• Why context management is the new critical skill for developers
• The economics of AI pair programming and productivity gains
• How to structure development workflows around AI collaboration
• Why documentation and shared understanding matter more than ever
• The future of software development careers in an AI-augmented world

Key Insight: AI doesn't eliminate the need for skilled developers—it raises the bar. The question isn't "Can AI write code?" but "Can you provide the context and make the decisions that turn AI-generated code into production-quality software?"

Hosted by engineering leaders David Dieruf and Wael Rabadi, co-founders of Kisasa.

Tired of backlog grooming sessions that spiral into endless technical debates?

Welcome to Season 2 of "Going to Production," where hosts Wael Rabadi and David Dieruf tackle the messy realities of software development that every Engineer knows all too well. In this eye-opening premiere episode, they dissect the infamous "grooming the backlog" ritual that's happening in conference rooms everywhere.

Watch as a simple "login button" request transforms into a masterclass on why your team keeps getting stuck in solution mode instead of focusing on actual user value. Wael introduces his game-changing concept of "thin slices" – a revolutionary approach that cuts through the noise to deliver real, tangible value in every sprint.

From the dangers of premature solutioning to the art of writing "journey tests" that actually matter, this conversation will fundamentally shift how you think about product development. David's honest confessions about test-driven development and Wael's provocative stance on story points create an authentic dialogue that mirrors the challenges you face daily.

Ready to stop engineering your way through everything and start building products that users actually want?

Why do talented engineers with good intentions end up building problematic architectures? In this episode, we explore how smart teams create bad systems through local optimization, unintended consequences, and the gap between component thinking and systems thinking.

What You'll Learn:

• Why smart teams create problematic architectures
• The danger of local optimization without global context
• Unintended consequences of well-intentioned technical decisions
• Systems thinking vs component thinking
• How technical debt accumulates in successful systems
• Patterns that lead good engineers to build bad systems

Key Insight: Good engineers build bad systems when they optimize locally without understanding the global delivery system. The problem isn't skill or intent—it's perspective. Systems thinking requires seeing beyond your component to understand the whole.

Hosted by engineering leaders David Dieruf and Wael Rabadi, co-founders of Kisasa.

Episode 3 is where the rubber meets the road. After diagnosing platform multiplication and Conway's Law chaos, David Dieruf and Wael Rabadi finally reveal the cure: a methodology that brings order to organizational madness.

Picture this: You're about to renovate your dream home. Do you immediately call contractors and start swinging hammers? Of course not. You create blueprints, align on the vision, and coordinate every trade. Yet most companies dive straight into technology decisions without understanding their current mess or agreeing on where they're headed.

The hosts introduce Kisasa's Blueprint methodology using powerful house-building analogies that make complex modernization concepts crystal clear. They explore how to break down competing "monarchies" within organizations, create that crucial single source of truth, and use techniques like event storming to discover hidden duplications and pain points.

But they're brutally honest about limitations too – no methodology can fix fundamental cultural dysfunction or people who are solving the wrong problem entirely. They even call out the current AI hype as a perfect example of chasing solutions without understanding business value.

Ready to stop the chaos and start building with purpose? The Blueprint awaits.

In Episode 2, David Dieruf and Wael Rabadi dive deep into Conway's Law, the invisible force shaping every system you build. Think it's just an academic concept? Think again. This episode reveals how the way your teams talk (or don't talk) directly creates the integration nightmares, data silos, and architectural headaches you're living with right now.

Through a fascinating real-world example about something as simple as managing addresses, the hosts show how different teams inevitably build different solutions – not because they're incompetent, but because they're human. Customer service needs addresses differently than shipping. Marketing has different constraints than billing. And when these teams don't communicate, their systems mirror that isolation perfectly.

But here's the game-changer: Conway's Law isn't your enemy – it's a superpower waiting to be harnessed. Instead of fighting human nature, what if you could structure your organization so that when Conway's Law kicks in, it produces exactly the architecture you want?

The hosts explore the delicate balance between necessary domain boundaries and destructive organizational silos, introducing the concept of "monarchies" that can either drive innovation or kill it.

Ready to make Conway's Law work FOR you instead of against you?