Your Pipeline Is the Bottleneck

Automation and AI-powered development tools are dramatically increasing how fast we can write code, but most teams aren’t shipping any faster. The bottleneck has shifted.

In this talk, we’ll explore the growing gap between code generation and code delivery, and why traditional engineering practices are struggling to keep up. While developers can now produce changes at unprecedented speed, teams are still constrained by long testing cycles, slow and inconsistent code reviews, and branching and release processes designed for a different era.

We’ll examine the systemic challenges that emerge when scaling AI-assisted development across teams, including maintaining code quality, ensuring confidence in automated changes, and avoiding process bottlenecks that negate productivity gains.

More importantly, this session will focus on practical strategies to close the gap. We’ll cover how to rethink testing through automation and continuous validation, how smaller and more frequent changes can reduce risk and accelerate feedback, and how modern release and branching approaches can enable faster, safer delivery.

Attendees will leave with a clearer understanding of why speed gains from AI often stall before production and what concrete changes are needed to truly accelerate software delivery end-to-end.

About Cory Lucas

Cory Lucas is a Principal Engineer at American Express, where he helps drive architectural strategy, mentors engineering talent, and helps drive enterprise transformation initiatives focused on cloud, automation, and modern delivery practices.

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