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Software Engineering

Software engineering is the craft of building systems a business can change safely: values that decide where a team puts its weight, principles that turn those values into decisions, and the judgment that applies them. None of it changed when agents arrived. Agents make it matter more, because they amplify the practices a team already has.

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Software Engineering 5

Our position. We hold that agentic engineering is engineering: the same domain-driven design, separation of concerns and fast-feedback practice the field has used since the 1970s, applied to agents. That is why a senior engineer leapfrogs a junior on the same agent (the factory bootcamp (opens in a new tab)).

The agent-era practice built on these foundations lives in Agentic Engineering. Start with the philosophy if you want the argument. Start with the principles if you need a decision today.

What should an engineering team value, and why?

  • Engineering Manifesto — the five values that decide where a team puts its weight: tech follows business, move fast fail fast, low technical barriers, non-functional coverage, full ownership.
  • Architecture Principles — the eleven principles those values produce, from bounded contexts to security first. Each with rationale, implications, and the questions to ask a team.
  • Engineering Philosophy — why architecture exists at all, why complex systems need principles instead of rules, the Three Ways, the Five Ideals, and what stays scarce once AI makes knowledge cheap.

How do you find out where an engineering organization stands?

  • Senior Engineering Skills — the 23 skills beyond coding that carry engineers from mid-level to senior and staff, each read through the agentic era.

How do you decide between building and buying?

  • Build or Buy Framework — four evaluation dimensions and five cost levels, with build and buy case studies.

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In this section

  • Architecture Principles

    Architecture principles turn engineering values into decisions a team can check: align systems with business domains, communicate without blocking, keep services small, deliver continuously, couple through proven low-tech means, decide in public, and assume attack. Each principle carries a statement, a rationale, implications and review questions.

  • Build or Buy Framework

    Decide build or buy on four dimensions: functional, technical and operational complexity, plus unique business value. Then count cost at five levels, from technology and staffing up to lost business and missed opportunity. Build what differentiates the business and what your team can understand and operate.

  • Engineering Manifesto

    An engineering manifesto states the values a team weighs every decision against: tech follows business, move fast and fail fast, low technical barriers, coverage of non-functional aspects, and full ownership. Teams apply them with common sense and discuss any deviation openly with the teams it affects.

  • Engineering Philosophy

    Engineering philosophy is the reasoning beneath engineering rules: work flows best when a team can change its part of a system alone, sees the effect of its decisions fast, and keeps learning. People who have internalized that reasoning need fewer rules to act on it.

  • Senior Engineering Skills

    Senior engineers are judged less on code than on the skills around it: running meetings, writing design docs, leading without authority, picking battles and taking feedback. Agentic work raises the stakes, because design docs and shared conventions become the context AI agents build from.