SSW / SSW TV

How much Scrum admin could an AI agent take on while your team keeps control of the decisions? At SSW, Eli Kent used Claude Code and agentic workflows to triage a TinaCMS backlog from 300 Product Backlog Items down to 9. He also shows how agents can help prepare daily Scrums, refine backlog items and support sprint reviews, with people reviewing and approving the changes. Which Scrum task would you automate first, and where would you keep a human approval step? youtube.com/watch?v=JQuiP0hv…

🎟️ Your golden ticket to the AI Software Factory! Newcastle devs, join @_____Calum, SSW’s VP of AI, at the Newcastle Coders Group for a look behind the scenes of AI-powered software development. What happens when you stop asking AI to write code and start asking it to deliver software? Through real-world experiments, surprising successes and lessons learned from failures, Calum will take you on a tour of the AI Software Factory. Discover what AI agents can actually deliver, where things go off-script, and how people and agents can work together to turn ideas into enterprise-ready software. You’ll leave with practical insights to help you move beyond the chat window and put AI agents to work. 📅 Wednesday, 4 November | 6–8 pm AEDT 📍 SSW Newcastle, 432 Hunter Street 🎟️ RSVP: ssw.com.au/events/2026/newca… hashtag#AI hashtag#SoftwareDevelopment hashtag#NewcastleCodersGroup hashtag#AIAgents

Is AI making products faster to build, or making them look finished sooner? 🤔 Elon Musk's flying car demo gets people talking, but the gap between a prototype and a product people can rely on is where things get difficult. Eve Cogan and Josh Berman connect that tension to AI development. AI can make the early stages look remarkably easy, while reliability, architecture, scale and delivery still need serious work. If a demo comes together in days, it’s easy to expect the finished product just as quickly. Have faster AI prototypes changed expectations in your team? How do you explain the work still needed before something is ready to ship? For more AI news follow: youtube.com/@SSWTV/shorts #AIDevelopment #ProductDevelopment

Would you trust AI to choose your next experiment, or only to help run it? 🤔 Choosing what’s worth testing is a big part of research. TasteVal puts that judgement under the spotlight, testing whether AI can design valuable experiments. Eve Cogan and Josh Berman discuss how the agents reportedly produced better experimental plans than leading researchers from organisations including OpenAI, Google DeepMind and NVIDIA. That raises an interesting question about what comes next. A strong plan is one thing; an experiment that delivers a useful discovery is another. What evidence would you need before trusting AI to guide your research priorities? For more AI shorts, follow: youtube.com/@SSWTV/shorts #AIResearch #AIAgents

If AI agents are doing more of the coding, should we rethink the tools they use? 🤔 Git is a familiar part of development. But repeatedly cloning huge repositories for always-online agents raises a different set of questions about efficiency. Eve Cogan and Josh Berman discuss Anthropic’s Scion, a centralised version-control system designed for AI agents, and the traffic that repeated Git clones could generate at that scale. That’s an interesting trade-off: adapt agents to existing workflows, or change the infrastructure around them. Where would you draw the line? What would justify moving away from Git, and what would you be reluctant to give up? For more AI news follow: youtube.com/@SSWTV/shorts #AIAgents #SoftwareDevelopment #Git #scion

What happens when an AI agent skips the ads and upsells a website relies on to make money? 🤖 Less friction for the customer could mean less revenue for the business. Eve Cogan and Josh Berman explore how AI agents could disrupt online business models by bypassing advertising, loyalty programs, and carefully designed upsells. Add security concerns and unanswered questions about liability, and businesses have reasons to keep autonomous agents out. If an AI agent bypasses the things that make a website profitable, will that business welcome it or block it? For more AI news, follow: youtube.com/@SSWTV/shorts #AIAgents #Ecommerce

We’ve been told to skip “please” and “thank you” when talking to AI to save tokens. It's better for the environment and helps keep your model on track. But where’s the line between being direct and being abusive? Anthropic now lets Claude end rare conversations with persistently abusive users. It’s part of a bigger discussion about model welfare, but also about the behaviour we want AI systems to develop and the interactions we use to improve them. Eve Cogan and Josh Berman ask whether an assistant should be able to refuse that kind of interaction. If we talk to AI more than people some days, it’s worth asking what habits we’re developing too. Has the way you speak to AI changed the way you speak or write to people? For more AI news follow: youtube.com/@SSWTV/shorts #ClaudeAI #Anthropic #AIEthics #AIModels #PromptEngineering #AISafety #ArtificialIntelligence #TechNews #AIShorts #shorts

We’re excited to sponsor the Government Innovations Showcase in Canberra today! Michael Smedley and Larry Carland are at the SSW booth, ready to chat about all things AI, from governance and safety to implementation and migrations. If you’re here, drop by and say hello! 👋 #GIWFED #governmentinnovation #AI #consulting

Brook Jeynes at the .NET November User Group: You don't need React: Build lean with HTMX and Web Components. Brook will build a dynamic application live using HTML, JavaScript and the server, without a virtual DOM, client-side router or build step. The talk asks a useful design question: when does a site need a framework like React, and when can a simpler approach do the job? SSW Brisbane | Wednesday 18 November 2026 Event details: ssw.com.au/events/2026/you-d… #WebDevelopment #HTMX

We’re excited to be at Digital Leadership Day today at the National Convention Centre in Canberra! Mike Smedley and Larry Carland are there to chat with public sector executives about AI integration, cloud modernisation and digital transformation. If you’re there, make sure you say hello! 👋

Could AI change the build-or-buy decision for enterprise software? “Reverse Engineer Anything” can help developers understand how an application works and build a similar feature. It doesn’t automatically clone a whole product, but it does raise a question: if features become easier to reproduce, what happens to the incentive to keep building SaaS products? And will vendors respond by making their applications harder to inspect? Copyright already protects software such as Adobe’s. But where should the line sit between learning how a product works, building an alternative, and copying the work behind it? Eve Cogan and Josh Berman discuss what this could mean for enterprise software. What would your team need to understand before deciding to build instead of buy? For more AI News follow: youtube.com/@SSWTV/shorts

Would you let an AI read your personal messages if it made it a better assistant? One personal-agent benchmark currently puts Meta’s Muse on top. But its bigger advantage may be context. Meta owns WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger, where so much of our daily life already happens. That’s also the uncomfortable part. How much access would you give an AI to make it more useful? And if Meta controls the messaging platforms, what happens to competing assistants? Would you choose the assistant that knows you best, or the one that knows the least about you? For more AI news follow: youtube.com/@SSWTV/shorts #MetaAI #PersonalAI #AIAgents #WhatsApp #Instagram #Facebook #ArtificialIntelligence #TechNews #AIShorts #shorts

Tomorrow! Can AI agents make Scrum teams more productive without replacing the human touch? Eli Kent will explore Claude Code, MCP, and custom skills, showing what you can delegate and what still needs a human. 📍 SSW Melbourne | Wed 21 Oct 🔗 ssw.com.au/events/2026/becom…

Last week, our VP of AI Calum Simpson was invited by our client Whitehaven Coal to make a guest cameo at the Mining Safety Seminar and share the project we’ve been working on together. SSW had the privilege of building an AI-powered prototype that transcribes and analyses radio communications between mining vehicles, helping staff check that calls follow safety procedures. Manually auditing these calls is time-consuming, and different auditors can apply the rules differently. The prototype helps make those checks faster and more consistent, with dashboards that highlight gaps and patterns for staff to review. It’s exciting to see this work shared with the mining industry. Thanks to Whitehaven Coal for inviting Calum along! Read more about the project in our Whitehaven Coal case study: ssw.com.au/company/clients/w…

When we think about AI ending civilisation, we picture Terminators. But disruption can start with something as ordinary as a supermarket fridge. Recently, a cyberattack reportedly put supermarket fridges into defrost mode and destroyed large quantities of food. Eve Cogan and Josh Berman use the incident to raise a bigger question: what happens when ageing systems across critical infrastructure no longer get adequate security updates? Which ageing system in your organisation would cause the most disruption if it were compromised? Fore more AI news follow: youtube.com/@SSWTV/shorts

🖱️ Mouse clicks not working in Claude Code? SSW Solution Architect, Gordon Beeming, ran into this exact issue, even though mouse clicks were working perfectly for a colleague. Same tool, different behaviour. So what was causing it? It turns out one small setting makes all the difference. Gordon shares the fix in this quick, 1-min blog post: 👉 gordonbeeming.com/blog/2026-…

What happens to software consulting when a week's worth of work can be done in an hour? Does the client expect to pay less, or should they expect to get 10x more value for the same budget? AI isn't just changing how developers write code. It's challenging the entire consulting model, from discovery workshops and project pricing to team sizes and client expectations. Adam Cogan and Jonathon Towers explore what this looks like in practice, including AI-generated prototypes, searchable company knowledge, clients doing their own vibe coding, and the shift towards smaller, AI-enabled teams. But perhaps the biggest challenge isn't technical. It's cultural. How do you get an entire company embracing AI, rather than relying on a handful of enthusiasts? The consultancies that succeed won't simply be the ones using AI to work faster. They'll be the ones rethinking how they deliver value and bringing their clients along for the journey. If AI makes your team 10x more productive, should you charge less or deliver more? 🎥 Watch the conversation: youtube.com/watch?v=zmEnti7K… #AI #SoftwareConsulting #SoftwareDevelopment #AITransformation

One week to go! SSW is proud to sponsor the Government Innovation Showcase Federal 2026 at the National Convention Centre, Canberra, on Thursday 22 October. We'll be there to share practical insights into digital transformation, embedding responsible AI, improving community outcomes, and accelerating innovation through collaboration across government and industry. Come and say hi to Larry Carland and Michael Smedley at the SSW booth - we'd love to have a chat! See you there 👇 publicsectornetwork.com/even… #GIWFED @PublicSectorNetwork

Finding a vulnerability that other AI models missed could give defenders a head start. But who should get access to the model that found it? Google says Gemini 4 Argon uncovered a critical flaw in healthcare software used by hospitals worldwide, putting sensitive personal information at risk. It’s giving trusted defenders early access through Fairwind, and Wiz is using Argon in its Scan for Good work. Eve Cogan and Josh Berman ask: How do you help defenders act early without making the same capability easy to misuse? What safeguards would you want in place before a wider release? For more AI news, follow: youtube.com/@SSWTV/shorts

Can you replace REST with GraphQL without rewriting your domain? SSW Solution Architect @daniel_mackay decided to find out. He took SSW's .NET Vertical Slice Architecture template, replaced the FastEndpoints REST API with HotChocolate 16, and set himself one rule: don't touch the domain. The result? Almost nothing changed. The experiment even uncovered a hidden framework dependency along the way. 😉 But GraphQL isn't without trade-offs. While it offers flexible queries, strongly typed schemas and real-time subscriptions, there are challenges around caching, N+1 queries and added complexity. TL;DR: GraphQL works well with Vertical Slice Architecture, particularly for rich, connected domains. But REST still has its place. Dan shares what worked, what surprised him, and where he'd still choose REST. Read Dan's blog post: dandoescode.com/blog/vertica… #GraphQL #VerticalSliceArchitecture #DotNet #HotChocolate