When I was 10, all I wanted was an Atari 2600 game system. I asked my dad for one over and over and the answer was always the same: no. Then one day, without asking, he brought home a Commodore VIC-20 home computer and said: “If you want to play games, write them yourself!” And I did. I got a subscription to Compute!’s Gazette magazine, and spent countless hours typing in line after line of code printed in the magazine so I could play a very crude version of Space Invaders. And when I was done, all my work was lost when I turned off the computer–well at least until I got my cassette tape drive and could save it and play it any time I wanted. Of course very quickly that led to other challenges like copying a bootleg game from one cassette to another on a department store’s dual cassette tape deck. Pro tip: don’t use the “fast-dub” feature–half the time your games won’t load!
This was my first introduction to automation–loading a program from a storage device so I didn’t have to type in the code every time I wanted to run the program. Technology used to eliminate repetitive, error-prone work.
My second exposure to automation was through my dad. He’s a mechanical engineer and he bought the VIC-20 to automate some tedious and complex engineering computations he and his co-workers had been doing by hand. He got it done, but did have to buy the $8K (!) expansion cartridge to make it run. And he scared the crap out of his co-workers because he could use the software he wrote to do in 10 minutes to do what it took others two weeks to do by hand.
Automation and AI have gotten a bit of a bad rap over the years. After all, who doesn’t remember War Games or Terminator. I mean Amazon or Microsoft may as well be Cyberdyne Systems, and AWS or Azure could be SkyNet.
But all kidding aside, automation is the key to reducing repetitive, error-prone work–being able to operate at a higher level and reach our full potential.
Now, think of your daily routine. How quickly can you count three daily tasks that are assisted or handled entirely by automation:
- The smart thermostat that knows which rooms are occupied and adjusts the temperature accordingly better than running up and down the stairs to change the temperature, right?
- Alexa or Siri tell you the weather forecast for the day from the app or device of your choice–better than waiting for the morning weatherperson to tell you the weather, no?
- Waze, Google, or Apple guide you to your destination via the fastest route possible–better than breaking out the Rand McNally Atlas–well that one is debatable–I’ve got fond memories of long cross-country trips guided by Rand McNally.
Over the last five years, industries have seen massive changes thanks to the benefits of artificial intelligence and machine learning. With automated decision-making solving more and more problems, we’re also seeing the benefits of AI, ML, and automation leveraged by software development teams. A recent Gartner study predicted that by 2022, at least 40% of new AD projects will have an AI-powered “virtual developer” on their team.
From agriculture to arts and entertainment, the way we work is constantly being disrupted and enabled by technological advancements. Therefore, it’s no surprise that we’re even automating parts of the software development process responsible for these technologies.
To understand where this can benefit a team, it’s first helpful to understand exactly how AI plays a role in software development automation, and how this automation can be impactful to businesses.
The Role of AI in Software Development
Like an AI supercomputer capable of starting military conflicts, software developers are creative masterminds, responsible for problem-solving and engineering solutions at scale.
But when you take a deep dive into the daily efforts of a developer writing production-level code for a commercial product, you realize the magic doesn’t just happen without a pretty daunting number of monotonous, interdependent tasks.
Engineers are responsible for:
- Researching libraries, frameworks, and dependencies
- Defining architecture and coding standards and patterns
- Building code to these standards
- Writing data persistence code
- Refactoring code
- Unit testing
- Integration, system, and stress testing
And plenty of other sub-tasks that often come with the more exciting development work. These are all completely essential for delivering production-ready code that can serve the masses, but it ultimately detracts from the real, thought-provoking creative development that delivers value to the customer.
This is where AI comes into play.
Manual tasks handled with augmented software development
Manual tasks are littered throughout software development. Adding new functionality or features can involve making changes across dozens of classes, and complex projects involve numerous API calls, libraries, and modules.
Two new methods of software development, referred to as Augmented Software Development and Architected-Rapid Application Development, are being introduced that leverage automation or AI throughout the various stages of development to aid in completing the code more quickly and with higher quality.
Automated decision-making
Any experienced engineer knows that there can be multiple ways to solve a problem. There are a number of factors that can go into design or coding decisions in order to come out with a solution that matches the customer’s need.
Decisions can range from which architectural patterns, libraries or languages to use, threading models, containerization, and shared state management. These decisions go all the way up, with an additional set of decisions at the infrastructure layer that determines overall scalability, availability, and operating costs.
AI is being used to help make these decisions in an instant and based on quantifiable data, and to fill in gaps across your code base and skill sets of your development team. It’s also used to identify inefficiencies in existing libraries or infrastructure components and can alert development teams when changes are needed.
Impact of Automation in Software Development
Faster development
Automation enables fast, accurate development that leads to a better product. By fortifying human development, architected-RAD and augmented development methods help your developers be more effective, efficient and productive. They can operate at a higher level, increasing the velocity of your company’s R&D efforts and enabling you to bring products and features to market much more quickly, cheaply, and predictably.
Testing and error detection
Arguably one of the most significant avenues for automation to assist in development is in testing and error detection. AI models can automatically detect issues and risks to a code base by identifying inefficiencies and outdated libraries. This error detection helps development teams stay on top of code updates and maintain resiliency in the product.
AI is continuously improving in human-based testing scenarios as well. With the rise of behavior driven development (BDD) and test-driven development (TDD), developers are able to integrate directly with automation testing platforms to streamline testing at scale.
Production-ready code
Making code robust enough for production use in commercial products can be one of the most time-consuming elements of development. With effective automation, this timeline is greatly reduced due to embedded architectural features and the checks and validations that ensure efficient coding practices.
The Bottom Line: How Automation Propels the Business
On the surface level, it may seem that AI and automation can constitute a replacement to existing development or quality engineering teams. That, however, is far from the truth.
Rather, automation is a way to unleash the ingenuity, passion, and drive of these team members, letting them punch much higher than their current weight and get closer to their full potential. There is never a shortage of work–just a shortage of effective workers. Automation lets you do more with the team you already have. It’s the key to empowering not only your R&D teams, but your organization’s bottom line.
The effects of automation trickle down from R&D to all parts of the business. From affording developers more time to be creative and deliver innovative ideas, to creating more resilient products that perform better in customer satisfaction surveys and reviews. Speeding up feature development allows teams to deliver superior products and even expand into different verticals, ultimately accelerating the solutions your business can market and deliver.
And as a parting reminder, never, ever ask a supercomputer to play Global Thermal Nuclear War.
Unlock the Benefits of Automation in Software Development with PlatformPlus
PlatformPlus was built to help you and your software R&D team gain more traction than you ever thought possible. PlatformPlus automates complex R&D processes to make your team more efficient and effective. And, it’s fully supported by an expert engineering team bringing the technical leadership and coaching you need to get to market faster.
PlatformPlus enables automation by unlocking the power of the “Innovation Fraction”, flipping your development team’s time from spending 80% on maintenance to 80% on innovation. We talk about that more here, in our Building an R&D Strategy for Modern Times blog.
Interested in learning more? Schedule time to talk with a team member by clicking here.