As the use of generative AI tools in software development continues to advance, more engineering leaders want to know how these tools can be effectively integrated into development workflows.
With his extensive experience in leading high performing teams and experimenting with tools like Copilot, Asana's Steve Morin provides valuable insights into the practical applications of AI tools and the considerations leaders should keep in mind when implementing them:
Key Takeaways
1. AI tools can be particularly beneficial for documentation and onboarding processes.
"When you have onboarding at a company of a certain scale, you have real deliberate onboarding training for your new engineers. You don't have to figure out how to train everyone else at the company, but you can start by training everyone who is joining the company."
2. AI tools can benefit both junior and senior developers, but in different ways.
"I've been asking questions: What value does my 15-year senior engineer, who's a principal? Do they get any value out of this tool? What does the new grad who just got out of college, grad school, or a boot camp get from it?"
3. Productivity metrics should be used to diagnose issues, not as the sole measure of performance.
"What I usually push back against leaders is when you're tightly measuring everything and they're waking up every morning and getting on the observability dashboard to see the lines of code and commits. No one wants to be treated like a human factory with how much you can produce. Humans are not dumb. They will game it."
4. Leaders need to be educated about AI to set realistic expectations and guide their teams effectively.
"As an engineering leader, you're supposed to call out where the limits are. And if you let a project go to La La Land because it's going to deliver heaven on earth, and then all of a sudden that project fails because it was never destined to succeed? You have to be part of the grounding."
5. AI will not replace engineers but will help them focus on more sophisticated tasks.
"I think engineers will be able to not focus on some parts of the work and focus more time on other parts of the work. It will improve the technology not by eliminating the person. It will improve the ability of people to do more sophisticated tasks."
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