Is AI the future of Software Delivery: Can it replace a Feature team?
A Testing United 2025 talk that asked whether AI can replace a feature team, with the answer I reached after shipping a product that way.
By Michał (Mike) Buczko, quality and delivery leader at Carrier/Viessmann and founder of BowSmith.
This talk asks whether AI can replace a feature team. When I gave it in Milan in November 2025, the question rested on a one-week, after-work experiment. A year later I can answer it with a shipped product: AI replaced the production capacity of a feature team. It did not replace the judgement of one.
What the talk covers
- The question as I put it in 2025, and the experiment behind it: one week, after work, me as product owner and founder, AI as the only developer. The result was thousands of lines of Swift and partial functionality.
- What AI did replace: the typing, the boilerplate, the first draft of almost everything and a large amount of test code.
- What it did not replace, part one: someone who knows what the requirement is. AI-generated tests adapted to the code, not to the requirements.
- Part two: someone who reviews with different eyes. Same-model review is confirmation bias, so independence has to be designed in.
- Part three: someone who owns the gate, with a defined input, an explicit pass condition and a real consequence on failure.
Who it is for
Testers, quality engineers and delivery managers whose organisation is asking whether AI can replace part of a team.
What you take away
- Three functions a feature team performs without anyone noticing: holding the requirement, independent review and gate ownership.
- A check for your own workflow: write a name next to each of those three functions. A blank line means a function has been removed, not replaced.
- A narrower claim to carry into planning: speed is not the achievement, justified speed is.
Where I have given it
- Testing United 2025, Milan, Italy, 13–14 November 2025. Recap: Testing United 2025 - Milano.
The Milan version posed the question. The answers in the list above come from the recap, which I wrote a year later, after BowSmith reached the App Store in July 2026. The full follow-up is my CAST 2026 session; see the CAST 2026 talk page.
Format and practical details
- Room and tech: a projector or screen to connect to.
Related talks
- From Idea to Working Product: How AI-DLC Unlocks Human Creativity (CAST 2026)
- From Tester to AI Operator: 20 Months of Shipping with AI Agents
- Don't Cut Your Testers, Promote Them
Book this talk
To book this talk, start at the Speaking page, book a 30-minute call or message me on LinkedIn.
