In this episode of Shortcu.tt Podcast, we sit down with Thomas Jespersen, a tech leader with 30+ years in the industry. As a former CTO of successful startups, including Templafy, Thomas shares his insights on engineer empowerment, managing startups vs enterprises, and achieving harmony between business, product and engineering.
From leading a company that has achieved technical excellence and deploys 30 times per day to production, Thomas has shared his hard-earned lessons, some of them may be unconventional, that have true impact in building high-performing engineering teams that deliver quality at scale.
Key Ideas & Takeaways:
Empowered engineers are essential for building successful tech products.
Silos between business, product, and engineering lead to inefficiencies.
Startups should focus on solving customer problems, not just shipping features.
Continuous Discovery Habits (by Teresa Torres) is a must-read for product teams.
DORA metrics are key indicators of engineering team performance.
Feature flags & CI/CD pipelines are crucial for scaling engineering teams.
Deadlines should be replaced with high-confidence commitments to avoid technical debt.
Timestamp:
00:00 Meet Thomas – 30+ years in tech, from startup to scale-up journey.
02:00 Simplicity in Engineering – Why "simple" doesn’t mean "easy."
06:00 Breaking Silos – Why engineers should be involved in product discovery.
12:00 Delivery vs. Discovery – Moving beyond a feature factory mindset.
18:00 Measuring Success – DORA metrics and replacing deadlines with high-confidence commitments.
25:00 Practical Engineering Practices – CI/CD, automation, and scaling teams.
32:00 Next Episode Sneak Peek – What is developer experience for small teams and startups?
Mentioned Resources & References:
📖 Books:
Inspired by Marty Cagan – The definitive guide to building great product teams
Continuous Discovery Habits by Teresa Torres – Making discovery a weekly habit
📊 Industry Metrics:
DORA Metrics – Deployment frequency, lead time for changes, change failure rate, and mean time to recovery
🛠️ Tools & Practices:
CI/CD pipelines, feature flags, and automated testing for scalable development
PlatformPlatform – Thomas’s open-source project for codifying engineering best practices
Connect with Us:
Thomas Jespersen - https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomasjespersen/
Morten Christensen - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mortenchr/
Marilag Svennevig - https://www.linkedin.com/in/marilag/
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