In a recent LinkedIn post, 🌀 Luca Rossi discusses a fundamental challenge facing engineering teams: the tendency towards degradation and slowdown over time. Rossi posits that Artificial Intelligence (AI) offers a novel opportunity to reverse this trend, enabling teams to become faster and more efficient as they mature.
Traditionally, as Rossi observes, engineering teams often fall into a pattern of decreasing velocity. This is frequently attributed to factors such as prolonged work on the same codebase, team member rotation, and organizational growth. However, Rossi believes AI presents a paradigm shift.
“For as long as I can remember, the default path for engineering teams has been degradation. Years pass working on the same codebase, teammates rotate, company gets bigger — everything leads to the same thing: the team gets slower.”
The Potential for AI-Driven Acceleration
🌀 Luca Rossi argues that AI can fundamentally alter this trajectory by enabling capabilities that were previously unattainable. He highlights three key areas where AI can drive this acceleration:
Elevating Code Quality Standards
Rossi suggests that AI can help maintain and even elevate code quality to levels that are difficult to achieve through purely human effort. This consistent, high standard can prevent the accumulation of technical debt that often slows down development in the long run.
Perfecting Knowledge Capture
Another significant advantage identified by Rossi is the potential for AI to facilitate perfect knowledge capture. As information and best practices are systematically recorded and made accessible, this knowledge can compound over time, leading to a more informed and efficient team.
“Impossibly high code quality standards”
Enhancing Testing Hygiene
Furthermore, Rossi points to AI’s role in dramatically improving testing practices. More robust and comprehensive testing, facilitated by AI, can lead to greater stability and reduce the time spent on debugging and fixing issues, thereby increasing overall speed.
“10x better testing hygiene”
Building the AI-Enabled Future
While Rossi is optimistic about AI’s potential, he stresses that these advancements are not automatic. He emphasizes that organizations must actively build these AI-driven capabilities.
“None of this comes out of the box, we need to build it! But it’s doable, and it’s doable *today*.”
This perspective was recently published in an article on Refactoring, co-authored with Rob Zuber, CTO at CircleCI. This piece is the final installment in their *software factory* series, representing months of research and collaborative effort. Rossi expresses pride in the series, hoping it provides valuable insights to engineering leaders and teams navigating the evolving landscape of software development.
📝 About This Content
This article is based on insights shared by 🌀 Luca Rossi on LinkedIn.
📅 Originally posted on April 30, 2026 | View original post on LinkedIn →