AI, Team Effectiveness, and the Future of Software Development: A Fireside Chat with Llewellyn Falco
Guest Speaker: Llewellyn Falco
We welcomed Llewellyn Falco—creator of ApprovalTests and co-author of the Mob Programming Guidebook—to lead a structured fireside chat on how teams can responsibly harness AI in everyday development.
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Fireside Chat Highlights
1️⃣ Pace of Change
“It’s just gotten faster and faster—exhausting, really. I feel exhausted just keeping up with everything that’s coming out.”
Falco framed the AI era as an unprecedented acceleration that demands new workflows and learning approaches.
2️⃣ How AI Shows Up in Product Development
- Building AI Products at the core
- Embedding AI Features into existing apps
- Using AI to Accelerate Development (e.g., Copilot, code generation)
- “Heard of AI”—minimal hands-on use
He warned that teams lingering at the “heard of AI” level risk being overtaken by faster, more agile competitors.
3️⃣ Pair & Mob Programming with AI
Falco shared how rotating through pair and mob sessions across multiple languages creates rapid, cross-pollinated learning—surfacing fresh techniques and breaking ingrained habits.
4️⃣ Cheap, Fast Feedback Loops
Demonstrated via his JavaScript-to-TypeScript migration:
- Transform one file at a time
- Run tests immediately
- Commit successes, revert failures
This approach makes experimentation low-risk and accelerates learning.
5️⃣ Cultivating a Growth Mindset
He stressed the danger of treating AI outputs as infallible. Teams must continue to question results, embrace “failure as feedback,” and praise effort over innate talent.
6️⃣ Rethinking Hiring in an AI World
Falco revealed how traditional resumes and coding exercises can miss top talent—and advocated for short, real-work “auditions” to surface true fit and skill.
7️⃣ Embracing Experimentation
From walking every street in his town to batch-refactoring with AI, he illustrated that when failures cost little and wins are valuable, you discover far more breakthrough insights.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
Llewellyn Falco is an independent agile coach. He discovered strong-style pair programming. He is the creator of the open-source testing tool ApprovalTests. He spends most of his time programming in Java and C#, specializing in improving legacy code. He is the co-founder of TeachingKidsProgramming & co-author of Mob Programming Guidebook.
His experience comes from building products with many clients in a variety of industries, including aerospace, medical, healthcare, and finance.