Personal website and bloghttps://www.andykelk.net/en-ushttps://www.andykelk.net/blog/leadership-your-engineers-arent-afraid-of-ai-theyre-afraid-of-being-junior-again/https://www.andykelk.net/blog/leadership-your-engineers-arent-afraid-of-ai-theyre-afraid-of-being-junior-again/When organisations talk about AI resistance in engineering teams, they usually diagnose it as technophobia, change fatigue, or job insecurity. I think they're wrong and the misdiagnosis leads to the wrong response.Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.andykelk.net/blog/strategy-everyone-has-an-ai-strategy/https://www.andykelk.net/blog/strategy-everyone-has-an-ai-strategy/Visit any technology company's website - or increasingly, any company at all - and measure the time to first AI mention. A few seconds, usually...Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.andykelk.net/blog/leadership-the-90-day-window/https://www.andykelk.net/blog/leadership-the-90-day-window/Michael Watkins' influential book "The First 90 Days" made that timeframe a fixture of leadership thinking. Most people read it as a runway: time to listen before you act. But there's a cognitive reason that window matters...Fri, 10 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.andykelk.net/blog/leadership-the-first-30-days-with-a-new-engineering-team/https://www.andykelk.net/blog/leadership-the-first-30-days-with-a-new-engineering-team/There's a temptation when you step into a new leadership role to make your mark early: reorganise the team, introduce a new process, signal that change has arrived...Mon, 02 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.andykelk.net/blog/strategy-sketch-or-finished-design-the-question-at-the-heart-of-ai-coding-quality/https://www.andykelk.net/blog/strategy-sketch-or-finished-design-the-question-at-the-heart-of-ai-coding-quality/A designer’s sketchbook is a beautiful mess: half-formed ideas, crossed-out attempts, margins full of notes. Nobody expects it to be a finished product...Wed, 18 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.andykelk.net/blog/leadership-ai-adoption-isn-t-a-tool-rollout-it-s-a-change-programme/https://www.andykelk.net/blog/leadership-ai-adoption-isn-t-a-tool-rollout-it-s-a-change-programme/If you treat AI coding tools like any other dev tool rollout, you're going to hit a wall....Mon, 09 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.andykelk.net/blog/strategy-focus-the-most-underrated-capability-in-modern-business/https://www.andykelk.net/blog/strategy-focus-the-most-underrated-capability-in-modern-business/It's one of the most underrated aspects of modern business. Everyone talks about strategy, innovation, execution. But focus?...Sun, 01 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.andykelk.net/blog/strategy-build-vs-buy-a-framework-for-growth-stage-companies/https://www.andykelk.net/blog/strategy-build-vs-buy-a-framework-for-growth-stage-companies/It's a common question that gets asked as a company is growing: should we build this or buy off-the-shelf software...Mon, 26 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.andykelk.net/blog/leadership-leadership-lessons-from-volunteer-officials/https://www.andykelk.net/blog/leadership-leadership-lessons-from-volunteer-officials/Andy Kelk has a background in software engineering and is a senior manager with the Wesfarmers group, looking after digital assets across the group’s retail businesses – it’s a leadership role Kelk takes seriously...Wed, 21 May 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.andykelk.net/blog/leadership-ffs-i-am-not-a-resource/https://www.andykelk.net/blog/leadership-ffs-i-am-not-a-resource/If you’ve ever worked in a big organisation (I have) then you’ve probably heard the “r” word used when really the speaker was talking about a person or people. Something like “we have a new resource starting next week”...Sun, 10 Feb 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.andykelk.net/blog/product-dont-just-build-the-thing-right-build-the-right-thing/https://www.andykelk.net/blog/product-dont-just-build-the-thing-right-build-the-right-thing/Right now I’m a CTO but I’ve had many different roles in different companies and different countries. I’d like to take you through a portion of my career and what I’ve learned along the way....Mon, 12 Dec 2016 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.andykelk.net/blog/leadership-a-one-day-offsite-for-leadership-teams/https://www.andykelk.net/blog/leadership-a-one-day-offsite-for-leadership-teams/This week I held an offsite for my engineering leadership team. My two aims were to do some formation activities as we have a few new faces in the team and to...Thu, 24 Mar 2016 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.andykelk.net/blog/agile-the-team-that-learns-together-stays-together/https://www.andykelk.net/blog/agile-the-team-that-learns-together-stays-together/I prefer to build long-lived teams where the same people stay together over an extended period of time. I believe in the immutable team: > Teams are immutable....Thu, 03 Mar 2016 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.andykelk.net/blog/agile-culture-gardening/https://www.andykelk.net/blog/agile-culture-gardening/"Get the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats." That's the advice from Jim Collins in his 2002 book...Mon, 15 Feb 2016 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.andykelk.net/blog/devops-using-the-westrum-typology-to-measure-culture/https://www.andykelk.net/blog/devops-using-the-westrum-typology-to-measure-culture/Having a culture of collaboration where people feel safe to share their views and work across a diverse group is a must for a successful organisation. Every...Thu, 04 Feb 2016 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.andykelk.net/blog/leadership-measuring-happiness/https://www.andykelk.net/blog/leadership-measuring-happiness/As sometimes happens, I wanted to answer a question on Twitter but couldn't do it justice in 140 characters. The question was this: > @andykelk @auxesis...Thu, 04 Feb 2016 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.andykelk.net/blog/agile-why-all-the-jira-hate-ill-tell-you-why/https://www.andykelk.net/blog/agile-why-all-the-jira-hate-ill-tell-you-why/I've recently retweeted a few tweets which weren't exactly complimentary about Jira. For example: > Plenty of good things happened at work today. And then I...Mon, 21 Dec 2015 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.andykelk.net/blog/culture-the-power-of-coffee/https://www.andykelk.net/blog/culture-the-power-of-coffee/Reading this article recently, an interesting theory about coffee was raised: > The time of day people drink their coffee varies with Sydney waking up with...Tue, 15 Dec 2015 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.andykelk.net/blog/leadership-building-a-learning-culture-on-a-budget/https://www.andykelk.net/blog/leadership-building-a-learning-culture-on-a-budget/Think about the last day you spent at work. What did you learn? We usually reflect on what we achieved, what we completed, what we delivered....Wed, 09 Dec 2015 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.andykelk.net/blog/tech-blameless-postmortems/https://www.andykelk.net/blog/tech-blameless-postmortems/Let’s talk about failure. It’s not something we talk about a lot because it’s not a comfortable topic. We always hope for success but we also need to be able to deal with failure...Thu, 22 Oct 2015 00:00:00 GMT