When the CEO starts Vibe Coding, the rules of Engineering begin to change

When the CEO starts Vibe Coding, the rules of Engineering begin to change

We read daily about AI’s rapid evolution and its impact on how software is built. Over the past two weeks, I witnessed something far more powerful in how these tools can transform mindset, confidence, and decision-making in real time.

As a Fractional CTO for a Design-industry startup, I work with a Founder-CEO who is a 30-year veteran in his field, looking to build a new software platform for design professionals. He’s a big believer in Tech but hands-off, believes in the classic model of hiring the right people to “do the tech stuff”.

Then, a weekend happened.

He signs up for Claude code and gives “vibe coding” a shot by automating a workflow that is manual today. The AI tool generated a complete working application and it was working exactly how he had imagined. With newfound confidence from “building tech stuff”, he went on to successfully build a second application, another automated workflow which was slightly more complex.

With these initial wins behind him, the following weekend he builds the first implementation of an end-user facing AI feature that we had in our roadmap. A huge step! His excitement at having built something without any prior knowledge of software systems or coding was palpable. He is not done; he now goes on to build a Multi-agent Tech Review Board - three AI agents collaborating to review the very code he was writing!

Quick decisions followed about what we could build and how fast. The CEO’s conviction now came from firsthand experience, not only from our discussions or what he’d read. The Tech team was fully aligned and inspired by the tangible progress rather than feeling the usual business pressure to deliver faster.

But watching the CEO’s transformation from a “hands-off” stakeholder to a “hands-on” creator was fascinating. The childlike enthusiasm with which he explored this new power tool was captivating. This wasn’t just about fantastic productivity, it was about pure empowerment. As a seasoned professional, I’m used to being the one building and advising; watching him take the reins on implementation was a different kind of learning.

The New “Relay” of Product Development (Idea-MIP-MVP)

Reimagined software development relay - Product idea, to Minimum Implemented Product (MIP), to MVP/Productization by tech teams. Image credit: ChatGPT/Gemini.

With the democratization of knowledge and advances in automated coding tools, the walls between specialized silos are thinning. I see a new Relay Race emerging:

  • The Shift-Left: Mature tech teams provide the guardrails: markdown files and standards that help AI agents approach production quality from the start. These guardrails keep evolving, staying in sync with technology advances, and continuously improving the quality of the MIPs.
  • The Pivot: Feedback loops happen parallel, in real-time with demos of the MIP. A customer asks for a change? The business owner vibe codes it during or soon after the demo. No more waiting for Engineering hours or prioritization challenges.
  • The Hand-off & Finish: Tech and DevOps teams pick up the baton to transform the MIP into a production-grade MVP. Their role shifts to Productization, high-level engineering: ensuring code hygiene & homogeneity, Interoperability, Security, Scalability, Observability, and Quality.
  • The Start: A Product Idea; Business owners or PMs build what I call the MIP - Minimum Implemented Product. No more lengthy PRDs; the requirements are working code. This is more than a UI prototype. It’s a functional, deployable implementation ready for stakeholder reviews and live customer demos.

I am growing confident that AI-enabled empowerment will lead to: value creation at a much earlier stage, reimagined roles and responsibilities, and re-written rules for product development. While every organization will adapt differently, the shift in confidence and possibility I witnessed is impossible to ignore.

I am enjoying this new dimension to my own role: architecting these new rules of the relay. My experience of seeing several industry transformations is proving valuable and I’m excited to rewrite the playbook once again!

Right now, I’m gearing up for Monday morning wondering what the Founder-CEO will arrive excited to share on his weekend experiments and what rules I may need to re-write next!

I would love to hear your stories: how has AI experimentation changed the behavior or culture within your own organization?

#AI #VibeCoding #ProductDevelopment #FractionalCTO #SoftwareEngineering #FutureOfWork #Leadership #Empowerment

Originally shared on LinkedIn.