The Velocity Lab

Dave and Dan reshape their AI adoption work: skip org-wide transformation, embed in one team on one important project, unleash agents, and build a reusable system. Free advice for leaders who want real velocity.

Show Notes

Episode Summary

Dave and Dan announce a reshaping of their AI adoption work: org-wide SDLC transformation over three months wasn't moving the needle, so they're switching to embedding in a single team — even a single repo — and unleashing agents on a big, important project. The episode doubles as free advice to engineering leaders: stop doing AI at 20%, pick one project, and crush it.

Key Topics

  • Why the org-wide "evaluate your whole SDLC" model under-delivered in three months
  • The new model: embed in one team, one project, one repo — and ship a big migration/rewrite fast
  • Coding is becoming the dinosaur skill; planning, reviewing, and sanity-checking keep humans in the loop
  • Why staff/principal engineers map most naturally onto the agent-orchestration role
  • The leader's playbook: cut the roadmap, take a handful of your best people, focus for one quarter
  • Build the system while you ship — then force the rest of the org to adopt it
  • Why five-person companies disrupt giants, and why that's even more true with AI

Notable Quotes

  • "If you're just writing code and then waiting for somebody else to review your stuff, and then you deploy it — that's going away. That's solved by AI agents already."
  • "Take a handful of your best people, only focus on this, and by the end of three months you're gonna be like, 'Holy cow.'"
  • "You're building a system. That system will work for any other project you have."

About The Velocity Lab

Dave O'Dell and Dan McAulay work inside engineering organizations every day helping them ship faster with AI. No hype, no BS — just what's working in the field.

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What is The Velocity Lab?

Dave O'Dell and Dan McAulay work inside engineering organizations every day, helping them ship faster with AI — not in theory, but inside their actual teams. Each week they share what they're seeing in the field: what's working, what isn't, and what most people are getting wrong. Covering Claude Code updates, AI-enabled SDLC acceleration, and personal AI agents. No hype, no BS.