Leadership.garden warns software factories repeat failures

The author argues that current industry excitement over 'software factories'—automated agent lines that write, test, and deploy code—repeats historical mistakes from attempts in the 1960s and 1970s. While factories succeeded when requirements were stable and well-understood, they historically stalled when dealing with ambiguous human needs. The author cautions that automating the coding pipeline does not solve the fundamental bottleneck of figuring out what users actually require. Open article →