Field Notes
Practical writing for product leaders and boutique advisors – on deciding what to build, answering the hard questions, and running a sharper practice.
Thirty Years of Agile and Software Success Is Still Stuck at 31%
After decades of Agile, cloud, and better tools, software still succeeds about 31% of the time. The bottleneck was never the tooling.
Your Team Doesn't Trust You, and the Data Says You Can't See It
Trust in leadership is at multi-year lows, worst in tech – and the leaders who own it are the last to see it. The cost isn't who quits.
The Verification Gap: Your Developers Don't Trust the Code They're Shipping
Developers don't trust AI-generated code – and ship it anyway. The verification gap is a management problem, not a model problem.
Epistemic Debt Is the New Technical Debt
Technical debt is code you still understand. Epistemic debt is when AI writes so much of your system that no one does – and it's the more dangerous one.
I'm Not a Coach. That's the Point.
As AI commoditizes knowledge and effort, judgment becomes the scarce skill. Joe Hudson teaches you to build it. A consultant is someone who already has it.
Your Product Strategy Wasn't Built for Things That Make Their Own Decisions
Fieldway's take on the 2026 'Agentic Product Evolution' study (IJCA; 10 enterprise implementations, 25+ product leaders): most product strategies still use
Due Diligence Now Has to Catch AI-Washing, Not Just Check the Tech
Fieldway's take on PwC's 2026 M&A outlook: roughly a third of 2025's 100 largest deals cited AI in their rationale, and PwC now calls AI due diligence
Intent Is the New Constraint: Where Engineering Craft Moved in 2026
Fieldway's take on the Goldratt-style argument running through 2026 commentary (berme.io; Linear's CEO; Theory of Constraints): as agents thin out the
The Real Threat to Boutique Advisors Isn't the Big 4. It's In-House.
Fieldway's take on the 2026 Management Consulted rankings, which for the first time added an Internal Consulting category (and put a government agency, DOGE