Before You Deploy: AI and the Art of Getting It Right the First Time
Every engineering team has one: the good idea that's technically correct, strategically obvious, and perpetually low on the sprint board. For me, it was consolidating two separate React Native apps for Frog Ferry into a proper monorepo.
Two apps. Duplicated components. Shared logic living in two places, drifting apart silently. Classic technical debt. Classic backlog hostage.
The fix was never in question. It was the cost. Monorepo migrations are tedious, time-intensive, and easy to deprioritize when features and deadlines are screaming louder. So it sat. Until I stopped using AI as just a code generator and started treating it as a force multiplier.
With Claude as my co-pilot, I analyzed both codebases, identified shared dependencies, scaffolded the monorepo structure, and began migrating common components in a fraction of the time it would have taken manually. The kind of work that earns a thirteen-point story and a "we'll get to it" became a focused, single-afternoon task.
The data backs this up. Developers using GitHub Copilot code up to 55% faster in controlled studies, with a 26% increase in productivity measured through pull request velocity (1). Developers save 30 to 60% of time on coding, testing, and documentation when using AI tools, time that flows directly back into higher-value work (2). And Gartner identifies AI-augmented development as a top strategic technology trend, noting it reduces toil and friction across the full SDLC while improving code quality and maintainability (3).
This is exactly the philosophy behind how I approach engineering leadership: I help software companies bring products to market faster, without slowing down innovation. AI isn't a shortcut that trades quality for speed. Used with intention, it's what lets you finally do the right thing instead of just the fast thing.
If your company wants to ship faster without sacrificing quality or burning out your team, let's connect — I'd love to talk about what's possible.
#SoftwareEngineering #AIAugmentedDevelopment #EngineeringLeadership #Monorepo #ReactNative #TechDebt #Innovation #FrogFerry
(1) https://www.fullview.io/blog/ai-statistics
(2) https://www.netcorpsoftwaredevelopment.com/blog/ai-generated-code-statistics