Iguanatronics
Practical Strategies for Aligning Business Goals and Development Teams
Date
October 9, 2025
Duration
30 mins
Guest
Joe Hubert
Joe Hubert is a technical manager, systems analyst, and solution architect. He provides strategic guidance to professionals and organizations on leveraging LLMs and generative AI technologies to enhance business operations and customer experiences. Joe wrote and self-published an e-book titled Concept-Based Machine Intelligence.
About The Episode
Software projects often fail not because of technical shortcomings, but rather due to unclear guidance, misaligned expectations, and communication gaps between business leaders and development teams. Agile practices promise flexibility but can sometimes lead to endless iteration without a clear direction. How can organizations bridge these gaps to foster innovation and discipline in software development?
Seasoned software developer Joe Hubert urges leaders to frame problems clearly and align business and development teams to prevent costly overhauls. Creating psychological safety in the workplace, building trust, and encouraging honest feedback enhance developer performance. Joe also recommends balancing agility with disciplined scope management, adopting innovation practices from startups and enterprises, and approaching AI tools as productivity enhancers while maintaining engineering discipline.
In this episode of Lessons From The Leap, Ghazenfer Mansoor interviews technical manager, systems analyst, and solution architect Joe Hubert, about bridging gaps between technology and business. Joe explains how to use practical frameworks like use case narratives, manage product scopes, and build adaptable careers in a changing tech landscape.
What You Will Learn
- [2:46] How initial software project failures shaped Joe Hubert’s leadership approach
- [4:30] The football analogy that applies to software development
- [6:33] Why business leaders give insufficient guidance to development teams
- [10:06] Joe’s perspective on software agility
- [11:29] A use case of bridging the gap between product leaders and developers
- [14:45] Why servant leadership and psychological safety strengthen technical teams
- [20:33] What startups and large enterprises can learn from each other about innovation
- [22:39] Joe’s predictions on how AI will impact software development
- [29:38] Advice for aspiring developers: stay adaptable, develop soft skills, and build trust with colleagues
Quotable Moments:
- Developers can pretty much do anything… if there’s a failure, it’s usually insufficient support and guidance.
- Managing the scope is key… we have to be reasonable on how much we can take.
- The personal interaction is key. No matter what our profession is, we’re people first.
- When you build it up on trust and responsibility, developers are going to stick with you.
- AI tools are valuable and can really help productivity, but they’re still assistants to developers.
Action Steps:
- Use a “use case narrative” to define requirements: Clearly outlining user roles and actions prevents misalignment and reduces costly rework in development. This framework makes it easier for business leaders and developers to agree on product outcomes.
- Balance agility with disciplined scope management: Agile practices work best when paired with realistic project boundaries and clear priorities. By defining what can be achieved within specific timeframes, teams can deliver value without spiraling costs or endlessly iterating.
- Lead with trust and psychological safety: Developers perform best when they feel supported and safe to share ideas or mistakes. Building this environment increases collaboration, innovation, and long-term loyalty within technical teams.
- Adopt AI tools as productivity enhancers: Generative AI can accelerate debugging, prototyping, and data analysis, but it should complement — not replace — engineering discipline. Using AI responsibly helps teams boost efficiency while maintaining quality and reliability.
- Learn from both startups and enterprises: Smaller companies excel at agility, while large organizations provide rigor and governance. Blending these approaches allows businesses to innovate quickly while scaling responsibly and avoiding unnecessary risks.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
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This episode is brought to you by Technology Rivers, where we revolutionize healthcare and AI with software that solves industry problems.
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