Giving the AI what you wouldn’t give your team…

Isn’t it funny? For years, people have said that product requirements need to be clear and unambiguous, or that big tasks need to be broken down into smaller, more manageable tasks, or that an order, work item, or support ticket should have all the necessary context attached to it. And for years, their concerns were brushed aside. But now that it turns out that AI works best if you give clear, unambiguous requirements with properly broken down tasks and all the required context, everyone’s on board.

Why do we bend over backwards to accommodate the requirements of a tool, after telling the humans for years to suck it up and deal with it? Maybe it’s because humans, with their adaptability, can actually “deal with” suboptimal solutions, whereas a computer can’t.

As Luca Rossi, writer of the Refactoring newsletter for engineering managers, points out: What's good for humans is good for AI. And we are lucky that that’s the case, because it means our incentives should be aligned. If we want to drive AI adoption in our business, for example, we can look at what our team needs to flourish, what they’ve been asking for over the years. Then we should actually give them that thing. Whether that’s clearer communication patterns or better workflows, they’ll love it and it’ll make it easier and more effective to bring AI into the mix.

Don’t worry so much about “how to get the most out of AI.” Worry about how to get the most out of your team, and the rest will take care of itself.