Going to Production
Going to Production is the podcast where technical leaders get real about the complexities of shipping software. Hosted by Wael and David, each episode features honest conversations with VPs of Engineering, CTOs, and seasoned technical decision makers who share the unvarnished truth about what it really takes to get code from development to production. What You'll Discover This isn't another podcast about the latest frameworks or theoretical best practices. We dive deep into the messy realities that every technical leader faces: the trade-offs that keep you up at night, the production incidents that teach hard lessons, and the organizational challenges that textbooks don't prepare you for. Our guests share real stories from the trenches—the moments when "it works on my machine" meets the harsh reality of production environments, scaling challenges, team dynamics, and the pressure to deliver reliable software under tight deadlines. Who This Is For Going to Production is designed for technical decision makers who need more than surface-level advice. Whether you're a VP of Engineering navigating organizational complexity, a technical lead managing production systems, or an engineering manager balancing technical debt with feature delivery, you'll find actionable insights from leaders who've been where you are. The Format Each series focuses on a broad topic critical to production success, explored across multiple episodes with different perspectives and real-world case studies. From deployment strategies and incident response to team scaling and technical decision-making under pressure, we cover the full spectrum of challenges that define modern software delivery. Join us for conversations that matter—where technical leaders share what they've learned, what they wish they'd known, and what really works when the stakes are high.
Episodes
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...
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 cr...
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 environmen...
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...
Most engineering teams struggle with backlog grooming because they focus on estimating story points and debating technical implementation details rather than defining user value and thin slices. In this episode, David Dieruf and Wael Rabadi discuss why traditional backlog grooming often becomes a solutioning session—and how to shift toward grooming that enables rapid iteration, effective testing, and better product outcomes.
...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-...
Your technology stack isn't just a list of tools—it's the foundation of your entire delivery system. In this episode, we introduce the Modern Delivery Stack methodology: how to connect business goals to technical decisions through a unified platform that enables sustainable velocity.
What You'll Learn:
- The Modern Delivery Stack framework: Customer Value → Domain Applications → Domain Services → Runtime Platform
- How...
Your system architecture mirrors your organizational structure—whether you planned it that way or not. In this episode, we explore Conway's Law in practice: how team boundaries, communication patterns, and organizational design directly shape the technical systems you build.
What You'll Learn:
- How team structure inevitably dictates system architecture
- Why organizational design is a technical decision
- Real-world ex...
Why do organizations end up with multiple platform teams building the same infrastructure? In this episode, we explore the platform multiplication problem—how well-intentioned teams create duplicated effort, fragmented systems, and wasted resources across the organization.
What You'll Learn:
- Why platform teams naturally duplicate effort across organizations
- The hidden costs of fragmented infrastructure and tooling ...
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