What Happens When AI Burns Down the Engineering Backlog? Testing and CI/CD Buckle First
rseroter · x · 2026-09-09
Jason Davenport explores what happens when developers using AI burn down the backlog faster than anyone can generate new work.
- Is AI actually burning down the backlog? Kind of. Companies iterate faster over code, but testing and CI/CD can't keep pace with the volume of PR-ready code AI ships. Since test generation and splitting CI/CD pipelines resemble code generation, they're the next easiest targets for AI-driven throughput gains.
- Does AI 10x good software engineering? Absolutely — but mostly for orgs with strong engineering foundations. The star companies with AI woven through the whole SDLC aren't representative; for the big middle, AI is breaking more than it's fixing.
- His framing: AI remains a business transformation problem, currently out-kicking product coverage, with org and process adaptation as the real bottleneck.
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