Why AI Engineering Needs Old-School Discipline

Thoughtworks adviser Nimisha Asthagiri says many AI proof-of-concepts fail to make it into production.

She warns that Gartner expects many agentic AI projects to be canceled as companies run into scale and governance issues.

Thoughtworks says classic engineering practices are coming back: TDD, mutation testing, DORA metrics, and zero-trust security.

As AI agents write more code and systems grow more autonomous, teams need stronger testing, observability, and access control.