But something has happened. A small, insignificant phenomenon called AI. And it hasn’t just changed the playing field; it has flipped the table.
Development used to be a neat three-step staircase:
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Requirements
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Design
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Code
Now it looks more like this: Requirements + Code + Design = Simultaneously.
It’s a bit like going to a restaurant and discovering the chefs, waitstaff, and head waiter have all moved into the middle of the dining room. It’s not always as tidy as in theory but you get your food a whole lot faster when you don’t have to send notes back and forth between the kitchen and the guests.
Today, a developer (or an entire team) can write code with AI support, validate ideas directly in an interface, and generate test cases before anyone has time to ask, “Is there a Teams resource for this?” And the customer? They might as well be in the room when it happens. Because when development moves this fast, waiting two weeks for a “sprint demo” feels about as outdated as ordering clothes from a mail-order catalog.
Simultaneity requires a new mindset
This means the old ways of working, where the stack of documentation weighed more than the actual code, are starting to really change. To put it mildly: it’s not ideal to work as if we still need to warm up the fax machine.
We shouldn’t throw everything out. Traditional methods are stable, predictable, and comforting. They worked beautifully in a world where everything genuinely moved slower. But they’re not built for a reality where business value is a perishable item.
Simultaneity isn’t just faster, it’s smarter
When requirements, design, and code emerge at the same time, something important happens; the team and the customer see the same thing at the same time. There’s less “we thought you meant this” and more “we can immediately see that this is better.”
We produce fewer documents that take up space on servers (you know, those “work in progress”). Instead, we build value you can actually click on.
Ironically, the world keeps talking about how much energy AI consumes. But no one talks about all the project plans, pre-studies, release notes, and data flow diagrams that sit glowing in server halls around the world without ever being read. There’s a reason the cloud is warm.
But if everything happens at once… how do we control it?
We’re not saying every project should work this way. There are situations where you should play it safe and waterfall methods are exactly the right choice. Both heart and brain are needed.
But in initiatives where you need to get started quickly, where direction must be shaped together, and where AI accelerates every part of the process, simultaneity doesn’t just work well. It’s necessary.
The only question is; if requirements emerge at the exact moment the code is written, and decisions are made while the interface is being drawn, what working model keeps everything from turning into chaos?
We’ll look into that in the next article.
