93: From SDLC to ADLC: How Engineering Teams are Actually Adopting AI
From The CTO Playbook by Adam Horner
April 28, 2026 · 25 min · Episode 93
About this episode
This episode discusses the challenges CTOs face in AI adoption and the importance of foundational work before accelerating AI initiatives.
A CTO hired a star engineer to push AI adoption forward, and within months, the team had lost its momentum, the new hire, and any sense of where they actually were. Build your own CTO Playbook at www.theCTOplaybook.com — the leadership platform built for the full CTO journey. Coaching, podcast, and community to help you lead with clarity, confidence, and strategic impact. Almost every CTO Adam speaks to right now is carrying the same thing: exhaustion beneath loud pressure. The board wants speed. Investors want an AI strategy. The voice in their own head says everyone else has worked something out that they haven't. The pressure to go faster with AI is usually the signal that the real work is somewhere else. Adam has watched organizations try to leap from pure experimentation to mature AI practice through a single hire, and watched what breaks when they do. The fastest engineering teams aren't tuning the engine first. They're upgrading the brakes and tires, the testing automation, the review systems, and the people around the work, before they touch raw speed. Tune in to learn about the three-stage pattern of AI adoption, two contrasting examples that show what acceleration…
People in this episode
Host: Adam Horner
Topics covered
- AI adoption
- engineering teams
- CTO challenges
- organizational momentum
- strategic impact
Keywords
- AI strategy
- engineering teams
- CTO
- momentum
- adoption stages
- organizational pressure
- experimentation
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: theCTOplaybook.com
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