AI Coding: A Guide for Decision Makers

A five-part series on AI-assisted software development for executives and board members, plus a practical checklist. Not hype, not dismissal. What’s actually happening, what it means for your business, and what to do about it.

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Part 1: What’s actually happening

Cutting through the noise on AI-assisted development, for people who need to make decisions about it.

Between breathless hype and dismissive scepticism, something real is happening. The productivity gains, the quality trade-offs, and why the tailor analogy explains it better than most tech commentary.

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Part 2: The new economics of building software

When building gets cheaper, the finances change completely.

When building software gets 50-80% cheaper, the maths on maintaining it changes completely. Why the goal shifts from maintainable code to replaceable code, and what that means for your balance sheet.

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Part 3: What matters, what doesn’t

AI handles the typing. The hard part was never the typing.

What matters more now, what matters less, and why the panic about junior developers misses the point.

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Part 4: Where it goes wrong

The risks are real. They’re also familiar, and manageable.

Code that passes tests but misses requirements, security patterns learned from flawed examples, test suites that decay. The risks are also familiar, and manageable with the right process.

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Part 5: Getting started (or getting serious)

Your developers are probably already using these tools. The question is whether they’re doing it intentionally.

How to move from informal to deliberate, and why every month of delay matters.

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Part 6: What you can do right now

Specific questions and next steps depending on your role.

What CEOs, CFOs, board members, investors, and CTOs should be asking and doing right now.