#133 - Build the Learning Machine: AI Adoption, Flow Metrics, and the Future of the CTO Role with Eric Bowman

Eric Bowman (CTO @ King.com, previously CTO at TomTom and VP Engineering at Zalando) returns to the alphalist podcast to unpack what “agentic engineering” really means in practice—and how to introduce it to teams without turning it into a mandate. We talk about the uncomfortable trade-offs behind “YOLO mode” tooling, why adoption should feel voluntary even when you set explicit goals (like “five AI-assisted commits” as a company-level key result), and why the real opportunity isn’t just faster coding—it’s building a learning system that relentlessly reduces time-to-learning and time-to-value. The conversation spans practical rollout patterns, DORA/value-stream thinking, Toyota’s Andon-cord mindset applied to software, multi-agent decision support with MCP, and why the CTO role may keep converging with product as AI pushes organizations to optimize for iteration speed over output volume.

You can listen to #133 - Build the Learning Machine: AI Adoption, Flow Metrics, and the Future of the CTO Role with Eric Bowman online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

#133 - Build the Learning Machine: AI Adoption, Flow Metrics, and the Future of the CTO Role with Eric Bowman is an episode from alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders by Tobias Schlottke - alphalist CTO Podcast.

This episode is 57:00 long.

This episode was published on Dec 15, 2025.

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