Level 5: Autonomous Teams

The final level represents multiple autonomous agents collaborating on projects, each specialising in different aspects of software delivery. This level represents a fundamental rethinking of software development, with agentic AI teams delivering alongside human teams. As above, given current tech, it’s not possible to achieve this level without human supervision and direction, so we consider it experimental.

summary ai eng moving from autocomplete → autonomous agents, w/ build-time agents giving biggest near-term gains

reflection shift = coding less, defining problems & orchestrating more, like managing a fast but literal junior dev

question how do teams redesign review & governance so 3x output ≠ 3x risk?

paradox more automation → more need for human foresight, context & constraint-setting

prediction within 2y, top eng teams treat prompt-driven dev as default & code review as the new bottleneck