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What plans did you put in place? What did you do to ensure knowledge transfer?

Strict WIP limits, all non-trivial projects need two human collaborators who are both responsible for understanding and signing off on the project plan, docs, code, test strategy, etc., and regular sync-up meetings.

So do you still have humans doing code review? What did “sign off on code” look like in practice? (We’ve been thinking about this a lot too)

Yes, human code review is back. AI is allowed to help, but we require that two actual humans actually understand every change. And yeah, it did speed things up. Not the rate at which we were shipping code, of course. But the rate at which we were shipping usable product.

This is actually in line with a well-established Six Sigma practice. When you've got a poorly performing value chain, the first thing to do is find out which step is struggling and then force the step immediately before it to slow down. If the reason why isn't obvious, search for a clip of the I Love Lucy chocolate factory scene on YouTube for a perfect explanation.

"We reinvented everything and called it a success"

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