Mahesh M. Thakur: Phil Lockwood, so nice to have you here with us today.

Phil Lockwood: Nice to be here.

Mahesh M. Thakur: Please tell us about yourself.

Phil Lockwood: I am a seasoned software professional. I have over 20 years of software experience as well as close to 15 in engineering management. At Lending Club, I led the core platform and UI tools frameworks, where I encrypted all of their core customer data as well as automated the underwriting process, streamlining the generation of loans from multiple days to a few minutes. Currently, I’m working with an early stage startup to automate the generation of psychology evaluations, generating those in multiple languages and in multiple formats via the use of AI and LLMs.

Mahesh M. Thakur: Wow, that is very impactful. Are you hands-on with those tools, Phil?

Phil Lockwood: Absolutely.

Mahesh M. Thakur: That’s great. Now, what you did at Lending Club also is very impressive in that you did loan automation. How big was your organization or your team?

Phil Lockwood: My team was about 40 people.

Mahesh M. Thakur: Great. What is your mantra for building high-performing engineering organizations?

Phil Lockwood: In order to build high-performing organizations, you have to create an environment of trust. That means that people need to feel comfortable talking with each other, expressing their vulnerabilities, and being able to collaborate and learn from each other. There’s a sense of camaraderie and belonging that needs to occur, along with shared responsibility and shared success.

Mahesh M. Thakur: Great, great. I’m assuming you’ve applied and used agile development frameworks.

Phil Lockwood: Yes, agile is certainly part of that. In the agile manifesto or mindset, you essentially take small iterative steps daily. You have a series of cadences, like a daily scrum where each person presents what they did the prior day, what they’re going to do that day, and what they might need to accomplish those goals. At the end of every sprint cycle, generally two weeks, you have a sprint demo for stakeholders, and at the quarterly level, you have quarterly alignment incorporating larger company strategic goals.

Mahesh M. Thakur: Great, great. And as you start to do that, obviously you see a lot of benefits in doing agile. So what were the top one or two benefits you saw while delivering agile in your company?

Phil Lockwood: Well, in agile, you have collaboration in solving problems. Contrast that to something like waterfall. Nowadays, product managers and stakeholders participate in ongoing development and adapt as learning occurs. This approach provides a much more nimble way of building software.

Mahesh M. Thakur: Great, great. And what are some strategies to manage legacy software?

Phil Lockwood: Legacy software ties in well with agile and MVP-type development. Organizations often shy away from legacy software, wanting to replace it with something newer. However, you often throw away valuable learning by doing that. A proven strategy is to take an incremental approach—refactor step by step, reuse what’s valuable, and put APIs or interfaces around those pieces.

Mahesh M. Thakur: And how would you approach or define an MVP?

Phil Lockwood: An MVP stands for a minimum viable product. It’s the smallest thing you can do that adds direct value. You want to have the smallest idea you can define and test, iterating rapidly. It’s about generating a lot of decoupled ideas, testing them quickly, and finding the ones that work.

Mahesh M. Thakur: That’s a great definition. And I love the fact that even when you said two weeks earlier for a sprint cycle, even that’s sometimes negotiable. Now, with AI being everywhere, how do you see it potentially applied to engineering development processes?

Phil Lockwood: There’s a statement that AI won’t replace your job; your job will be using AI. We see this in software with tools like Copilot, which make engineers more productive. Even junior engineers, when mentored by seniors, can use these tools to generate code and testing scaffolding, which traditionally has been a weak link.

Mahesh M. Thakur: Great, great. Phil, tell us about your experience with the Academy of High Achievers.

Phil Lockwood: The Academy has been wonderful. I’m still very new here, but I’ve already benefited immensely. One thing in particular has been reframing my mindset regarding how I approach future problems and how I view my work and networking.

Mahesh M. Thakur: That’s great. Thank you for sharing, Phil. Great to have you here.

Phil Lockwood: Thank you.