InfoQ

InfoQ Culture & Methods Trends 2026: The Human Side of AI Engineering Podcast

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This is the Engineering Culture Trends Report for 2026. Featuring a panel of QCon speakers and InfoQ contributors, they discussed AI adoption maturity and risk.

Source: Culture & Methods Trends 2026: The Human Side of AI Engineering

InfoQ Culture and Methods Trends Report – 2026

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This report summarizes how the InfoQ Culture and Methods editorial team sees the ongoing and emergent trends in the culture and methods space in 2026.

  • AI adoption demands maturity frameworks that assess risk and context, and organisations must be honest about what they are actually trying to achieve with AI in their specific circumstances.
  • Collaboration patterns are changing fundamentally: Teams are shrinking, roles are blurring, and the question is no longer how to structure teams but how to make collaboration more effective in whatever form it takes.
  • The explosion of AI-generated code demands entirely new processes for quality, cognitive load management, and accountability.
  • Organizations that failed to embed agile fundamentals face catastrophic risk with AI adoption; fast feedback loops, reflective learning, observability, and shipping the right value to the right users remain as critical as ever.
  • Engineers are shifting from contributors to custodians: The defining future skill is not writing code but effectively directing, validating, and building guardrails around AI agents.
  • The industry must confront the environmental costs of AI usage, the erosion of diversity of thought from homogenized agent outputs, and the accountability gap when no individual fully owns AI-generated systems.

In the annual Culture & Methods Trends Report podcast, a panel of QCon speakers and InfoQ contributors discussed AI adoption maturity and risk, the transformation of engineering team structures and roles, and the human dimensions of software development that must not be lost in 2026. The discussion was hosted by Shane Hastie (Lead Editor, Culture & Methods) and included Ben Linders, Rafiq Gemmail, Craig Smith, Vanessa Formicola, Shawna Martell, Phillip Mortimer, and Yinka Omole.

Source: InfoQ Culture and Methods Trends Report – 2026

I was quoted in the article:

It’s the gap between the good and the not so good and the haves and the have-nots. Some organizations have embraced this and ran with it, but there are many organizations… they never really made the leap to agility practices in the twenty-five year span that we had in order to do that. And now they’re trying to adapt to these new practices and still building it on organizations that are still tending software’s being built in 1995.

InfoQ Culture & Methods Trends in 2025 Podcast

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This is the 2025 Engineering Culture Trends Report. The InfoQ editorial team and special guest Charity Majors discuss how AI is transforming software development and team performance.

Source: InfoQ Culture & Methods Trends in 2025

InfoQ Culture and Methods Trends Report – 2025

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This report summarizes how the InfoQ Culture and Methods editorial team sees the ongoing and emergent trends in the culture and methods space.

  • AI tools dramatically increase development speed but come with quality concerns, creating a need for new testing and quality approaches.
  • Team collaboration remains essential despite AI advancement; there’s a risk of engineers turning to AI rather than colleagues for solutions, potentially undermining the collaborative culture that drives high performance.
  • Junior engineers remain vital to the industry, with today’s juniors adapting quickly by using AI as a learning accelerator before approaching senior colleagues with more refined questions.
  • Psychological safety continues to be fundamental for high-performing teams, though it’s being challenged by post-pandemic organizational cultures and economic pressures.
  • Observability costs are constantly growing, organizations need to view observability as a strategic investment rather than just a cost center.
  • Agile and DevOps practices have become so integrated into industry standards that they’re now “the air that we breathe,” with platform engineering emerging as the next evolution, bringing product and design mindsets to developer tooling.

In the annual Culture & Methods Trends Report podcast, InfoQ’s Culture & Methods editorial team, with special guest Charity Majors, explored the shifting landscape of software development culture, tools, and practices. The wide-ranging discussion revealed several key trends shaping how software teams are working in 2025, from the profound impact of AI tools on development practices to evolving perspectives on team performance and observability.

Source: InfoQ Culture and Methods Trends Report – 2025

InfoQ Culture and Methods Trends Report – April 2024

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The Culture & Methods Trends in 2024 cover the value of staff plus engineers, DevEx metrics, ways to make remote teams effective, challenges with diversity and software development impact on climate.

  • Whilst remote working presents challenges to innovation and collaboration, there are effective techniques to address them
  • Staff-Plus engineers bring value through far more than their technical skills
  • Developer Experience can be measured and there are metrics that can be used to find small improvements that make a huge difference
  • It is possible and practical to include climate impact as a quality attribute of a software product
  • The use of AI tools, such as large language models, can enhance the work of good programmers but do not replace the need for human expertise and creativity

This report summarizes how the InfoQ Culture and Methods editorial team sees the ongoing and emergent trends in the culture and methods space.  We discuss evolving roles within teams, particularly the way staff plus roles can add value, the use, and misuse of DevEx metrics, how remote and asynchronous work continues to evolve, the fact that a lack of diversity is still a challenge in information technology, the slow pace of adoption of modern leadership approaches in many organizations and the need to move from climate change awareness to climate-conscious software engineering. Of course, we could not explore trends today without looking at the impact of AI and LLMs, but we looked at them from a risk and benefit perspective for the people involved in software engineering.

Source: InfoQ Culture & Methods Trends Report – April 2024

InfoQ Culture & Methods Trends in 2024 Podcast

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In this podcast the Culture and Methods editorial team along with special guest Jutta Eckstein talk about the current state and trends we see in the technology industry in 2024.

Source: InfoQ Culture & Methods Trends in 2024

InfoQ Culture & Methods Trends in 2023 Podcast

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In this podcast the whole Culture & Methods editorial team plus Rebecca Parsons, CTO of Thoughtworks, explore the trends they see happening in the technology industry in 2023.

Source: InfoQ Culture & Methods Trends in 2023

InfoQ Culture & Methods Trends Report – March 2023

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The two biggest factors influencing organisational culture in early 2023 are the highly publicised and hugely disruptive layoffs across the tech industry and the emergence of Large Language Models such as ChatGPT.

  • The layoffs in big tech have had a dampening effect on psychological safety across the whole industry
  • Generative AI tools like Co-pilot or ChatGPT can have a significant impact on developer productivity but are also significantly flawed 
  • Responsible tech is more than just regulatory compliance and companies are having to be more socially responsible in order to attract and retain customers and employees 
  • Asynchronous work is becoming much more accepted and organisations adopting the practices are gaining real benefits
  • Hybrid workplaces are now the norm, it is very important to be deliberate about the reasons for bringing people together in person, rather than just having a fixed schedule

Source: InfoQ Culture & Methods Trends Report – March 2023

InfoQ Culture & Methods Trends Report March 2022 Podcast

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In this podcast the InfoQ Culture & Methods editors, along with special guest Sandy Mamoli, discuss what they have seen over the last year and the trends they see going forward.

Source: InfoQ Culture & Methods Trends Report March 2022

InfoQ Culture & Methods Trends Report – March 2022

/ Craig Smith / Leave a comment
  • Hybrid work needs careful redesign and reassessment of the workplace and will be a significant challenge going forward
  • Culture matters more than ever before as people are reassessing their options around workplaces and styles
  • Team topologies and being deliberate about team formation are aspects of culture design that can support better outcomes
  • The gaps between good and bad workplaces are widening and people are voting with their feet (or video conferencing cameras)
  • Leadership styles and approaches need to evolve to support the needs of teams and individuals today
  • Paying attention to physical and mental wellness matters and can’t be treated as an afterthought
  • The podcast InfoQ Culture & Methods Trends Report – March 2022 is also available

This year’s trends report is definitely the most pessimistic we’ve seen in the last decade.  Some trends we saw last year have hit bumps and roadblocks and some early cultural successes have dropped back.

Many of the points we made in last year’s trend report are still true, and sadly there has not been a lot of movement in the topics on the left of the technology adoption curve.  2021 was a year of consolidation, massive movement of people and more pressure being put on already tired teams.

Source: InfoQ Culture & Methods Trends Report – March 2022

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