How AI Is Changing the Way We Structure Engineering Work – and How It Shouldn't

Name: How AI Is Changing the Way We Structure Engineering Work – and How It Shouldn't
Uploaded: 2026-03-24T16:46:54.000Z
Duration: 37 min 41 s
Channel: JetBrains

JetBrainsMarch 24, 202637m

Topics21

Introduction to the Webinar Series0:07 Guest Introduction0:31 Team Topologies Core Concepts1:01 AI's Impact on Team Topologies3:31 Cognitive Load and AI7:00 Developer Productivity vs Developer Experience11:00 AI for Value Flow Understanding13:00 IDE Integration and Context Switching13:30 Multiple AI Models and Perspectives15:00 Monolith Approaches and AI17:31 Role Evolution and Team Composition21:02 Team Types and AI Application23:30 AI-Enabled Organizational Monitoring Tools24:36 Detecting When Services Stop Functioning as Services26:01 Enabling Teams Integration Challenges27:31 Managing Expertise and Ego in Enabling Teams29:01 Platform Capacity Constraints and Shadow Solutions30:30 Innovation Diffusion and Harvesting33:04 Shadow IT and Shadow Innovation Framework34:30 AI's Limited Impact on Team Structure Fundamentals35:00 Designed Organizational Evolution36:31

In a Nutshell

AI amplifies existing organizational patterns—good or bad—rather than fundamentally changing team structure principles. Organizations succeeding with AI focus on end-to-end value flow and managing cognitive load, while those treating AI as a code-generation tool will fail and revert to 1990s practices. Team Topologies remains the core framework; AI's real value lies in detecting interaction failures, harvesting shadow innovations, and enabling teams to act as better stewards of their domains.

AI-Generated Notes

These notes were generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.

Blueprint Plus Plus is a webinar series interviewing leading thinkers at the intersection of technology and business. The series focuses on trends in software development and AI, along with best practices helping enterprises achieve better results. This particular webinar was pre-recorded but features live chat interaction for questions.

Mish Evink, VP of Business Development at JetBrains, has spent the last 13 years working with JetBrains to change the lives of software developers.

Matthew Skelton, author of Team Topologies, joins the webinar. The book was first published in 2019, with the second edition released in September 2025. The second edition includes 10 case studies from organizations worldwide applying the ideas successfully.

Team Topologies provides a blueprint and set of principles for organizing capabilities, skills, and technology within organizations in the context of fast flow of value. The patterns emerged from the DevOps movement and software delivery in the 2010s. The ideas evolved between 2013 and 2018 during the book's writing period.

High-velocity software delivery solved problems in organizational operating model space. People building software think about boundaries and interfaces, which apply valuably to organizational operating models. The patterns were initially experimented with in software delivery and have since been applied outside of IT and software delivery.

The framework includes terminology and types of teams, types of team interaction modes, and a mindset for deciding how to use technology to enable value delivery. Team Topologies applies to knowledge work in general.

AI is amplifying existing practices, whether good or bad. A bad approach involves AI generating millions of lines of code that no one understands, then passing it to a separate testing team. This represents a return to 1990s practices and fails to focus on actual value delivery.

A Goldman Sachs report released days before the webinar indicated AI added almost nothing to the US economy in the previous year, serving as a warning sign that AI usage in organizations lacks focus on value and is being used as a "shiny new toy" in some cases.

Good uses of AI align with Team Topologies principles: end-to-end value flow with teams as stewards of that value flow, and managing cognitive load. Organizations thinking about value flow and empowering teams will succeed with AI, while those focused only on generating lots of code will fail.

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How AI Is Changing the Way We Structure Engineering Work – and How It Shouldn't

Introduction to the Webinar Series00:07

Guest Introduction00:31

Team Topologies Core Concepts01:01

Sign in to read the full notes