I lead whole-system AI transformation and coach the leaders carrying it.
AI is changing how software gets built. The value only comes when the entire organisation is redesigned around it.
Based in New Zealand, I work across the US, Europe, and APAC on team design, how work flows, and portfolio priorities: the operating choices that turn faster coding into faster delivery.
I lead whole-system AI transformation and coach the leaders carrying it.
AI is changing how software gets built. The value only comes when the entire organisation is redesigned around it.
Based in New Zealand, I work across the US, Europe, and APAC on team design, how work flows, and portfolio priorities: the operating choices that turn faster coding into faster delivery.
I lead whole-system AI transformation and coach the leaders carrying it.
AI is changing how software gets built. The value only comes when the entire organisation is redesigned around it.
Based in New Zealand, I work across the US, Europe, and APAC on team design, how work flows, and portfolio priorities: the operating choices that turn faster coding into faster delivery.
Trusted by Fortune 100s and leading startups alike
My Work
Operating-model redesign
Re-shaping how software organisations deliver: team-of-teams structures, flow economics, portfolio prioritisation. Org Topologies, LeSS, Theory of Constraints, systems thinking, Cynefin.
Tools I build for the work
The mentoring I used to offer in person, now running as software. An after-action-review tool that turns the meeting I used to facilitate into a structured artefact the team learns from. A delivery-intelligence tool for portfolio forecasting and flow metrics on live delivery data. A backlog data-quality tool that clears hours of clean-up and coaches the team as it cleans. LLMs where they earn their place, deterministic code where consistency, auditability, and cost win.
The human in the room
Lessons-learned events for cross-team launches and incidents. Executive reviews where the execution failure was really a boundary failure. Developmental coaching for the leaders the new operating model runs on.
Evidence
100+ teams
Coached across more than a decade, most recently 15 months re-shaping a global firm’s technology operating model toward team-of-teams: 20+ teams, solo, with self-serve tooling carrying the mentoring load.
Fortune 10
Advised the CPTO through an acquisition integration in a regulated industry, leading five coaches across a 300-person technology organisation; speed-to-market and retention both improved.
US Patent 9,367,810
Named co-inventor, operations-maturity benchmarking (PagerDuty OpsDex™); I designed and built the system the patent describes.
Four companies, eighteen years
One CTO has hired me into four companies across an eighteen-year working relationship. References available.
UCLA Anderson MBA, top 15%
Certified LeSS Practitioner training completed three times, with both of the framework’s co-creators; Org Topologies Consultant (2025); trained in SAFe, and I’ve delivered certified SAFe training; coaching training ongoing since 2022; several hundred hours of formal training in all. Full details and dates on the vetting page.
Edmund Hillary Fellowship Fellow
One of 533 chosen from 3,400+ applicants for the Edmund Hillary Fellowship (the world’s first Global Impact Visa), convening founders and change-makers building from New Zealand for global impact.
Speaking @ EHF New Frontiers, 2019
The 2019 talk where this thesis started: the caterpillar, the liminal goo, and ‘if you can’t come, send no one.’ The book is where it goes next.
“We hired Chris because we needed a strong senior product manager to take on some challenging initiatives at PagerDuty. What we didn’t expect, however, was that we also got a transformative Agile leader thrown in for free.”
David Shackelford, VP of Product Management, Vanta
“Chris is hands down the best product manager with whom I have worked. He is able to seamlessly balance business, customer, and technological needs.”
Alla Weinberg, Principal Design Operations, Harmonic Design
More voices, and the record behind them, on the vetting page.
The Book
Come Prepared to Die: An Engineering Leader’s Field Guide to the Leadership Paradigms AI Is Exposing.
Serialising now through early September 2026, two chapters a week.
AI does not make execution the binding constraint. It makes the leadership paradigm the binding constraint, and the change it asks for sits at the level of identity. Most books skip that part.