Your engineers are faster with AI, but the business isn’t seeing the full value.
I find what’s delaying it, then mentor your leaders and work hands-on so you deliver more, sooner.
I work with CTOs and CPOs at software companies with roughly 50–500 engineers.
Selected companies I’ve worked for or with
Most recently I built and shipped three tools into a 25+ team organisation; only one needed an LLM, and it’s still in use there.
Christophe Louvion has hired me into four companies over the 18 years we’ve known each other. References available.
“[AAR Maker] turns a meeting Chris used to facilitate into a structured artifact the team produces continuously. Conservatively saves hundreds of engineering hours a year.”
Christophe Louvion, CTO
Where the bottleneck is
Many AI rollouts change the tools and leave the organisation alone: who owns what, how work gets chosen, what gets rewarded. I’ve spent over ten years helping organisations change those things, so I start there: that’s usually where the bottleneck really is.
I mentor leaders on how to change the organisation, coach them through it, and build tools I leave behind: one shows where work waits, another helps teams learn from their incidents.
I can drive as much of the change as you’d like, provided you give me the authority to do it and take ownership of the change with me.
Problems I can help with
The time AI saves ends up waiting somewhere else
The speed-up is real, and the time it saves usually ends up waiting somewhere else: for review, at a handoff, in an approval queue. I start with your delivery data and your people’s own accounts to find where, and what the waiting costs.
“…delivery of products that were viable sooner to our customers and stakeholders.”
SeAnne Cornelia, now Senior Product Manager at Optum (worked with me at Episource)
Teams are flat out, and the roadmap still slips
Writing code got cheaper, so the queue moved to review, decisions and planning. I measure cycle time, throughput, work in progress and ageing across every team’s backlog to find which queue is holding things up. Then your leaders choose what to change, and I mentor them and work hands-on with their teams to see it through.
“He helped us focus our attention on understanding the real value of our work, making smarter priority calls, and mitigating the bottlenecks that had been slowing us down.”
Chris Butler, Manager, Software Engineering, NRC Health
Nobody can show what the AI spend buys
If you didn’t take a baseline before the tools arrived, I build one from your own tracker with Delivery Intelligence: forecast date ranges, and a cost-of-delay ranking that carries a dollar figure wherever the people asking for the work state the value they expect. It measures delivery and the value claimed for it, not the AI spend itself. At my last client it replaced the spreadsheet the leadership meeting used for the roadmap, and a second tool kept the tracker true: teams ran their stand-ups against it, and open issues fell.
“Delivery Intelligence and Quality reporting… surfaces risk and patterns early, so the conversation in the room is informed by evidence rather than impressions.”
Christophe Louvion, CTO
Growing pains, and nobody’s sure who owns what
I work out with you who owns what end to end, then change the team structure and the career ladders to match. At my last client, each of three value streams across 25+ teams ended up planning jointly every fortnight, with the others represented and each owning its own backlog, and the CTO and I reworked the career ladders, including how each role would use generative AI.
“Chris put a lot of guidelines in place that gave our [teams] more order in terms of organization and planning which ended up paying huge dividends.”
Isaac Hernandez, now Sr. Software Engineering Manager at Optum (worked with me at Episource)
Adoption stalls, and whoever drives it has no authority
I coded the charters of 50 AI-transformation roles: two carried written authority over structure, incentives, cross-functional design or P&L, and of the 13 reporting to a CEO or board, none did. I can advise your leaders or carry out the agreed work. For hands-on work, they give me the authority to do it and take ownership of the change with me.
“His coaching was evident when senior execs turned up to attend the course without missing any session.”
Venkatesh Krishnamurthy, now Product and Engineering Transformation Lead at Magentus (the trainer I brought in for a client)
How I work
Take these steps as a starting point; on the call we’ll shape them around what you need. Each one is small and has a fixed price, and you can stop after any of them. The full terms are on the diagnostic page.
A screening call: 30 minutes, no fee
Tell me what’s not moving. I’ll tell you whether there’s a question worth investigating, and whether I’m the right person for it.
A two-day trial: USD 5,000
Two days on your queues and your people’s own accounts, ending in a written note: what’s constrained, and whether to stop, advise or diagnose. It comes off the diagnostic’s fee if you go on within 30 days.
An advisory day a week: USD 6,000 a month
If your leaders will carry the change themselves, I work with them one day a week. 30 days’ notice either way.
A diagnostic: USD 25,000, four weeks
Real work on your situation, tested against your numbers. Either of us can end it after week two, and you keep everything produced.
Embedded: a flat monthly fee
I work alongside your leaders and teams four days a week on the redesign. 30 days’ notice either way, and each month leaves something your own people own.
Evidence
Reprioritised a whole portfolio at NRC Health
I led prioritisation of NRC Health’s whole epic portfolio with 30+ stakeholders, including C-level leaders, using forced-choice comparisons. Lower-ranked epics were stopped or cut, and work in process fell overnight; throughput rose, and we realised value sooner.
Advised through an acquisition into Optum
Advised Episource’s SVP Product and CPTO through acquisition and integration into UnitedHealth Group’s Optum, and developed their operating model: who decides what, and how work gets chosen and planned. The handbook we ran on there grew into Minimum Viable Bureaucracy: A Field Guide, free online. Managed five coaches supporting a 300+ person organisation, owning their development and performance reviews and hiring one. Speed-to-market and quality improved noticeably.
Lead inventor, PagerDuty patent
For PagerDuty’s OpsDex, I devised and ran regressions on incident data across the entire customer base, excluding research opt-outs, to produce a working operations-maturity index. US 9,367,810 B1 (2016).
Edmund Hillary Fellow
The Edmund Hillary Fellowship ran New Zealand’s Global Impact Visa in partnership with the government; I was one of 525 Fellows selected from 3,400+ applicants. In 2023 I moderated EHF panels on generative AI’s impact on New Zealand and generative AI for gaming and startups.
My writing
My book for engineering leaders, serialising now, with the finale due by mid-October 2026. It argues that AI gains keep landing inside delivery structures designed before these tools existed, so the business doesn’t see them until the structure changes.
My free handbook for how a software organisation decides what to build, plans it and organises its teams, grown over my last three clients.
What the charters of 50 AI-transformation roles say about who can actually change anything.
How to rank a portfolio with forced-choice cards and Delphi rounds.
Why your AI hands you the most-published answer, and grounded-forge, the open-source tool I built so it reads the sources you choose.
I’m based in Nelson, New Zealand, and work close to US West Coast hours.