The next phase of innovation in enterprise technology is being defined by agent-driven development — a model that merges automation with human insight to reshape the software lifecycle. As companies scale artificial intelligence into core engineering processes, the focus is shifting from productivity metrics to code quality, collaboration and governance.

Across industries, teams are exploring how agents can streamline complex development environments while keeping human creativity in the loop. It’s no longer about how many lines of code an AI can generate — it’s about how efficiently teams can guide, review and deploy code with confidence. That shift has set the stage for a broader reimagining of how developers and digital agents work side by side, according to Francesca LaBianca (pictured), head of business operations at Factory.ai.

Factory.ai’s Francesca LaBianca talks about how agent-driven development is transforming enterprise software engineering.

“How we think about it at Factory is you’re moving from single human in an IDE writing every line of code to now being able to send a task to an agent, let it run to end to end,” LaBianca said. “That requires a fundamentally new way of working. We call this agent-driven development … you spec out a task to an agent much like you would to an engineer on your team, being very thoughtful about how you do that, delegating that task, watching the agent run, seeing everything that it’s doing as it pulls in context, calls tools and then reviewing it.”

LaBianca spoke with theCUBE’s Jackie McGuire at The AI Security Summit, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed how agent-driven development is transforming enterprise software engineering by combining AI-powered agents with human oversight to enhance efficiency and creativity. (* Disclosure below.)

The new blueprint for agent-driven development

Agent-driven development is redefining how enterprises manage the entire software development life cycle, from planning to production. Instead of automating isolated steps, Factory’s model enables engineers to delegate full tasks to AI-powered agents — and then review, refine and approve their output with greater precision and speed, LaBianca explained.

“We are a platform that enables enterprises to accelerate parts of the software development life cycle with agents,” she said. “Key to that is it’s not just the coding piece, it’s really the entire SDLC. We help with everything from understanding a code change, planning the code change, coding it itself, reviewing code, testing code and maintaining code.”

That shift demands more than just technology adoption — it requires cultural change. As organizations embrace this new paradigm, many are realizing the need for “agent readiness,” a foundational step that defines the rules, standards and guardrails for how agents operate within an enterprise codebase, LaBianca explained.

“We talk about this a lot with our large enterprise customers,” she added. “How can you best set up your org so that you can have agents running and they have these very clear guardrails so that their output is better? We think about this as agent readiness.”

The evolution of agent-driven development is also reshaping engineering roles. Developers are increasingly focused on creative problem-solving and system design, while agents take on repetitive or low-value tasks such as code review, testing and documentation. This balance helps scale productivity without losing the human ingenuity at the heart of software creation.

“Our mission, at a high level, is to bring autonomy to software engineering,” LaBianca noted. “The greater amount of time we can save engineers to free up their time to work on the creative aspects of software engineering — systems design, building things up, coding … that is really what we set out to achieve.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of The AI Security Summit:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for The AI Security Summit event. Neither Snyk, the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE