How AI Workflows Reshape Software Development

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Developers adore methods. Individual software application developers and their operations team counterparts will typically harbor a proclivity for a particular execution methodology. More often in real world terms specified by the department or company that an engineer finds themselves in, one place of work might champion Agile (release fast, release often) software methodologies, Scrum with its fixed-length iteration “sprints”, Waterfall (often regarded as old school, linear and predictable) or Lean with its streamlined processes.

Many classical software development methodologies have been partially superseded by the arrival of DevOps and (even more recently) platform engineering, but these task systems go a long way to describing workflow structures in software teams.

Now, AI has changed things once again.

Birth Of AI Workflows

We now talk about the implementation of AI workflows as a means of describing how software teams are augmented by AI, how their toolsets are automated and accelerated by AI, how their codebase will be impacted by the AI model that they are integrated to… and what all this means for the way decisions are made at the actual command line.

At first, AI was added comparatively slowly to the developer mix, usually limited to isolated automation experiments at the start of this current decade. Fast forward to today and AI has become woven into everyday developer process and operations functions. That means it is now present throughout the roles executed by database administrators, testers, system administrators and others. This has allowed software developers and Ops teams to talk about AIOps, LLMOps (as it sounds, an operations function underpinned by a large language model) and of course AgentOps, operations with additional digital minions in the shape of agentic AI services.

So then, does this represent an organic shift that happens quite naturally, or do we need to rethink the core nature of work?

“This shift is forcing engineering and operations teams to rethink how work actually flows across their organization. Leading teams are embedding AI directly into the processes, hand-offs and decision points that make up daily operational practice. From an engineering perspective, this includes mapping out ‘decision trees’, annotating task boundaries and defining clear entry and exit points for AI intervention. Along with faster execution, this supports an inherently dynamic approach to managing digital systems,” explained Mandi Walls, developer advocate at digital operations management platform company PagerDuty.

AI Supports (Not Replaces) You

Because AI-driven workflows move organizations into a completely different operational mindset, businesses will need to understand that processes now evolve in real-time based on context and data. Walls says that this means teams are “supported, but not replaced, by AI” today. So we might see AI prove particularly useful during critical moments, such as incident resolution. Real-time telemetry ingestion and pattern recognition then become key architectural components and because AI is introduced into existing workflows rather than imposed as a wholesale change, evangelists in this space suggest that organizations have an opportunity to build trust and value faster and more organically.

All of which means, adopted prudently, AI is good news for software application development and operations. So how should teams define their AI workflow? The first task is to define what an AI workflow is.

What Is A Developer AI Workflow?

For developers, an AI workflow is a structured, systematic process underpinned by AI services that work to coalese, optimize, analyse, manage and direct workplace functions. PagerDuty’s Walls defines it much the same terms and says it as a structured series of operational tasks that relies on one or more AI capabilities to optimize, streamline, analyze or otherwise steer an action.

“In contrast to a traditional business process, an AI workflow is not static. As more data flows through the workflow, it gains new insight and adjusts accordingly. Technically, this involves the coordination of data pipelines, inference endpoints, feature stores and control systems that update workflow logic in response to both structured and unstructured inputs,” said Walls. “The front-end stages of the workflow – data collection, ingestion, preparation and context discovery – are just as important as the output, which could be a recommendation, alert or automated action. In many cases, the model selection and feedback loop becomes part of the workflow itself rather than a separate development function.”

For engineers, all this means coupling MLOps with DevOps by integrating retraining triggers, model validation steps and performance degradation alerts directly into deployment pipelines. In customer service, for example, virtual agents are triaging issues across departments. In IT, an AI-assisted workflow can now manage tasks like laptop provisioning for new employees without human intervention. Financial services teams are using dynamic AI workflows to detect fraud, route exception cases and generate regulatory documentation.

From Repeatability To Orchestration

The real value, however, comes when AI workflows progress from simple automation towards orchestration of connected operations. In software and infrastructure teams, that means going beyond a scripted response and allowing AI to understand operational context and highlight the most relevant response steps in real time.

“This is particularly evident in incident management,” clarified Walls. “When an outage or degradation occurs in an AI-augmented system, the failure patterns rarely match traditional infrastructure incidents. It might be caused by model drift, an unseen dependency in an agent chain or unexpected behavior in a no-code workflow. These scenarios demand tooling that can track model lineage and data provenance alongside system metrics. In these situations, engineers don’t need just alerts – they need contextual guidance. This is where AI becomes truly operational, flagging relevant runbooks, historical examples and remediation options so that teams can resolve issues faster and with less cognitive load.”

Change Management & Adoption

But the shift to AI-driven and automated operations also introduces new challenges. Even highly experienced technical teams can become overwhelmed if too much is automated too quickly, or if model behavior is opaque. From actual real-world deployed evidence gathered so far, it looks like successful teams are taking a phased approach by embedding AI into familiar practices first, building explainability and transparency into data usage and aligning technical leaders and businesspeople around a shared view of how AI will be used.

“The AI workflow ecosystem is broad and evolving rapidly. On one side, major cloud hyperscalers such as Microsoft, Google and AWS all provide platforms with the scale and infrastructure needed to build intelligent workflows,” said Walls. “At the same time, large enterprise software providers are weaving AI into their core systems, embedding workflow capabilities directly into the tools organizations already use every day. Specialist vendors focus on the nuts and bolts of integration, connecting disparate systems and automating processes across multiple environments, while domain-specific providers can apply AI to targeted business areas, such as marketing, knowledge management or finance.”

There are other risks to consider. When workflows can be created outside of traditional engineering, accountability can become unclear. If a no-code AI workflow produces an unexpected outcome, whose responsibility is it: data science, infrastructure or the business team that created it? This makes strong governance frameworks and clear ownership models essential. Robust role-based access controls, versioning systems and testing sandboxes should be non-negotiable.

Humans, Still In Control

“The most effective AI workflows include human review for the highest-impact decisions, not because AI is incapable, but because shared accountability builds trust and ensures critical decisions are grounded in organizational context,” clarified Walls, concluding a discussion on this topic at a developer congress this month.

As AI workflows scale, the risks scale with them. Data poisoning, adversarial attacks and model hallucination are all well-established challenges and they increasingly emerge in the middle of a workflow, not at its entry point. The most resilient platforms include continuous monitoring, including anomaly detection on input/output vectors, red-teaming exercises (simulated cyber attack training for developers) and use of synthetic data injection for stress testing, to avoid such risks.

Once again, software developers are not going to be out of a job any time soon, but they do need to know how the team dynamic (with additional machine-based staff) is changing. We can do all of this, but we still can’t agree on who goes to get the coffee.

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