5 Boring Things That Have a Bigger Impact Than AI Assistants on Dev Productivity
Published on: 2025-06-29 11:39:23
Here are 5 factors that make a bigger difference to software development outcomes than “A.I.” coding assistants, but teams don’t address because they’re “old news, granddad!”
Smaller teams are better value/$ spent
More frequent releases accelerate learning what has real value
Limiting work in progress – solving one problem at a time – increases delivery throughput
Cross-functional teams experience fewer bottlenecks and blockers than specialised teams
Empowered, self-organising teams spend less time waiting for decisions and more time getting sh*t done
Now, I appreciate that every one of these is a can of worms that many organisations simply do not wish to open. They all have deep implications, and require foundational changes not just to the way we work, but the way we think.
For example, smaller, more frequent releases implies software’s in a shippable state more often, which implies faster build & test cycles… and down the rabbit hole we go: into testing pyramids and separatio
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