The Cognitive Leader: Newsletter #001

After a year and a half experimenting with how AI transforms the way software engineering teams build, deliver, and operate, and over 150 interviews with CTOs and engineering leaders navigating that same shift, I wrote a book. It is called:

The Cognitive Leader: How to Drive Strategic AI Transformation in Software Development

This newsletter is where that journey continues. A living extension of the book, where every two weeks I will share what we are learning, what is working, and what is changing as more engineering teams navigate AI transformation in their software development life cycle.

The manuscript is done! And I would like to invite you to read the first two chapters and share your honest feedback with me. Your perspective would be invaluable as I make the final adjustments to the book.

Every two weeks you will hear from the leaders who have been living this transformation alongside me. Franz Silva (CTO), Raúl Escobar (VP of Engineering), Héctor Pappe (COO), José Calderón (Head of Product), Alex Campotti (CMO), Roberto Ramírez (Agile Coach), and other members of our team driving the AI transformation across our software delivery organization. You will also hear from our clients, sharing their own journeys. Practical insight from a team that is living this firsthand. Because I believe that what we learn together will always be more powerful than what any one of us figures out alone.

If you are a CTO, a VP of Engineering, or a leader responsible for a software team, this was written for you. And if you are part of a software development organization in any capacity and you care about where this industry is heading, you belong here too.

You have been given a mandate. Transform the way your team builds software. Deliver more value, faster, with better quality. Integrate AI into how your engineers work, and do it without slowing down delivery. Everyone is expecting results. And no one is showing you exactly how to get there.

I know that feeling because I lived it.

In late 2024, I looked at what AI was doing to software development and felt something I did not expect: fear. After 24 years leading a nearshore software development company, I had watched every industry transform through digital technology. Retail, banking, healthcare, logistics, media. Our clients were at the center of every one of those shifts and we helped them navigate all of it. I thought I had seen enough disruption to know how to handle what came next. But this time was different. This time I realized that our entire way of building software was not just challenged. It was obsolete.

We were being asked to redesign the engine while the plane was in the air.

REDESIGNING THE ENGINE WHILE THE PLANE IS IN THE AIR

So we stopped pretending we had the answers and started doing the work. Since then we have been building, testing, failing, and refining a system with real engineering teams under real delivery pressure. What came out of that work is what I wrote this book about. And the most important thing I can tell you about it is that we did not write it from the outside looking in. We lived it first.

I am glad you are here.