According to dzone.com, generative AI is removing the natural constraint that expensive engineers imposed on software development, where a team of five could cost over $750,000 annually. This cost acted as a disciplinary gate, forcing product decisions, but now tools like Cursor and Claude can produce code at near-zero marginal cost. A technique dubbed “Ralph Wiggum” development, created by Geoffrey Huntley, uses autonomous AI loops that can run for months, as demonstrated by a three-month project to build a programming language compiler. This enables a flood of commits, with one practitioner noting that while a human might commit once a day, an AI agent can pile in dozens in hours. The immediate impact is a shift from asking “can we build it?” to “should we build it?”, as the economic barrier to generating features vanishes. The danger is that without the old cost gate, teams can generate mountains of unwanted features and compound technical debt at an unprecedented rate.
The Real Agile Advantage
Here’s the thing: all that confident LinkedIn chatter about AI killing Agile or supercharging Scrum? It’s mostly noise. Both sides are missing the core issue. Agile was never about the ceremonies or the sticky notes. It was a set of principles to provide discipline in a complex, uncertain world. Back when engineers were the expensive bottleneck, the cost provided that discipline. You couldn’t afford to build the wrong thing. Now, AI is taking that job away. So the discipline has to come from somewhere else. And that’s exactly where the Agile Manifesto shines.
Take the principle of “simplicity—the art of maximizing the amount of work not done.” When building was expensive, leaving out a feature saved real money. Now? Saying “no” is a pure act of product discipline. It’s harder, because there’s no immediate financial pain to point to. The product person who can ruthlessly ask “should we?” instead of marveling at “can we?” becomes the most valuable person in the room. That’s an Agile mindset, not a process.
The Technical Debt Trap Accelerates
This is where it gets scary. AI is fantastic at producing code that works well enough. It passes the tests you give it. It satisfies the immediate requirement. But let that “Ralph Wiggum” loop run for a few weeks, and you’ll have a codebase that looks like a plausible, functioning product. Six months later, your team will discover the horror. It’s artificial technical debt, compounding at machine speed.
The Manifesto’s call for “continuous attention to technical excellence” and “sustainable development” suddenly looks less like nice-to-have advice and more like a survival manual. You can ship fast, sure. But can you maintain it? Can you adapt it when requirements change? The organizations that treat AI-generated code as a free lunch will hit a wall of unmaintainable spaghetti faster than they can imagine. Initial velocity followed by grinding paralysis. We’ve seen this movie before, but AI is putting it on fast-forward.
What Changes And What Doesn’t
So does anything change? Of course. Iteration cycles can and should compress. If you can get meaningful software in front of users in days instead of weeks, do it. The daily stand-up’s form might adapt, but its purpose—synchronizing and uncovering blockers—becomes more critical when the implementation engine is revving this fast.
But the core feedback loops are non-negotiable. Building something small, showing it to users, learning, and adapting. That rhythm is everything. In fact, with higher output velocity, these feedback loops are your only tether to reality. Otherwise, you’re just generating features in a vacuum, disconnected from what people actually need. The pressure from stakeholders will be immense. “AI can build it in an hour, why isn’t it done?” Your defense is the Agile principle of customer collaboration over contract negotiation. You’re building for outcomes, not output.
The New Bottleneck
Basically, AI inverts the traditional constraint. Implementation is ceasing to be the bottleneck. The new bottleneck is product thinking and technical judgment. The developer’s role shifts from primarily writing code to challenging assumptions, reviewing AI output for “code smell,” and protecting the architecture. The product role shifts from managing a backlog to rapidly validating what’s truly valuable.
It’s a fascinating reframe. The tools that seem to threaten Agile’s processes actually elevate its principles to supreme importance. The discipline that cost once enforced must now be consciously chosen. And that’s a much harder problem to solve. But ignoring it? That’s a sure path to building a breathtakingly efficient machine for generating waste.
