Unlocking Tomorrow: AI's Role in Reshaping Software Engineering

The key challenges of software engineering are two constraints. First, people have limited cognitive capacities that constrain the complexity comprehensible to the human mind. Secondly, despite software's malleable nature, it requires human effort to modify, necessitating architectures that facilitate ease of change. Most innovations in software engineering, such as OOP, Agile, DDD, low-code/no-code, serverless, Team Topologies, and dozens of others, are instruments to prosper under these constraints.

AI can overcome these two constraints and reshape the very essence of software engineering. When AI transcends generating code to (re-)generating and (re-)deploying entire systems and data, we will experience a tectonic paradigm shift in software engineering. Our work and software's role in the business ecosystem will change dramatically.

This talk explores how AI can revolutionize software engineering and provides ideas about what AI-driven software engineering will look like in the future.

Socio-Technical Engineering and the Role of Roles in Software Projects

In software projects, individuals and technical artifacts mutually influence each other, forming complex socio-technical systems that necessitate a holistic approach. Despite their complexity, we can approach these systems similarly to how we approach technical systems: by eliciting requirements, designing, troubleshooting, and even testing them. The talk will demonstrate how these activities of systems engineering can be reinterpreted in the realm of socio-technical systems.

Additionally, the talk will explore a new way of defining roles as bridges between social and technical elements in socio-technical systems. Roles can be likened to services. Just like with the socio-technical system itself, we can articulate requirements for roles, deploy them, and even execute test scenarios for validation. The talk will delve into the concept of 'Role as a Service' in detail.

Power of artifacts: Socio-materiality of Software Engineering

Socio-materiality explores the connections between our social interactions and the tangible or virtual objects around us, often referred to as artifacts. These artifacts are influenced by us, but they also have the ability to shape our comprehension and behaviors. As non-human actors, artifacts can exert their agency upon us.

In software engineering, the rise of complex software systems and multifunctional teams is accompanied by two further trends:

- the growing number of artifacts, ranging from user stories and UI designs to code, tests, and CI/CD scripts
- artifact-based communication between individuals.

These trends highlight the emerging role of artifacts as sources of agency in power dynamics within organizations.

In this talk, the speaker will present a framework for understanding architectures of power. Based on this framework, he will discuss the agency of artifacts we create and encounter during our work. Subsequently, he will share practical ideas on leveraging artifacts' power to enable positive transformations and drive change in software projects.

- 35-45 Minutes
- No technical knowledge required