The INNOQ SCS Primer and My View on Self-contained Systems
INNOQ published a primer on Self-contained Systems in August 2026, written by Johannes Seitz. I read it with one question in mind: Does it match what I say in my talks and in my[...]
Shift Left Needs Artifacts, Not Just Conversations
Rachel Laycock wrote a post called Maybe We Shouldn’t Be Reviewing All This Code. It is a response to Brian Houck, who worries that automating code review away will cost us[...]
Agile Is Not Dead. The Agile Industry Might Be.
I keep hearing it lately: “Agile is dead because of AI.” At conferences, in customer meetings, on LinkedIn. The reasoning is usually the same: If an AI agent builds in[...]
The Three Levels of Spec-Driven Development, and Where the AI Unified Process Sits
Spec-driven development is a popular term at the moment. Everybody uses it, and everybody means something slightly different. Birgitta Böckeler from Thoughtworks wrote a helpful[...]
Code Is No Longer the Bottleneck. Requirements Are.
On August 21, 2026, Anthropic published The AI-Native SDLC Playbook. It is worth reading. It describes how the software development lifecycle changes when agents write most of[...]
A Paper from 1995 Describes How You Should Work with AI Agents
The paper is older than Java. And it answers a question everyone is asking in 2026: Who guards the architecture when AI agents write the code?
From Plan-Build-Run to Specify-Generate-Verify-Operate
For about twenty years, most IT organisations were built around three words: Plan, Build, Run. It was a good model. It gave everyone a place. Plan owned the budget and the[...]
I hear the same sentence in almost every project I join. “We have a frontend team and a backend team.” Nobody questions it. It is just how software is built today. But[...]
Modernizing Legacy Systems with the AI Unified Process
Most software modernization projects do not fail because of technology. They fail because nobody knows anymore what the old system actually does. The code is there. It runs. It[...]
Waterfall Was Never the Problem
Every time I talk about Spec-Driven Development, someone says the same thing. “That is just waterfall.” They mean it as a gotcha. It is not. Two things are going on[...]
Use-Case 3.0: The Refreshed Guide to Driving Development with Use Cases
Use cases have been around since 1987. In May 2024, Ivar Jacobson, Ian Spence, and Keith de Mendonca published a refreshed guide called Use-Case 3.0. If you read my earlier post[...]
AI Writes the Code. This Book Still Teaches the Use Cases.
In the AI Unified Process (AIUP), the spec sits at the center. The use case is the unit of work. You write a system use case, AI generates the code, and tests confirm the[...]
