What is an architect? What do they or should they do? What’s the difference between a solution architect and an applications architect? Do we even need architects anymore?

In this episode of the Steering Engineering Podcast, host, Danny Brian, and co-host, Brent Stewart, are joined by Gartner Distinguished VP Analyst, Anne Thomas, to explore these questions and determine how the role of architect should be defined in software engineering.

Anne Thomas is a VP and distinguished analyst in the Software Engineering Strategies team in the Gartner for IT Leaders research group. Ms. Thomas covers application architecture and infrastructure. Her current major topics include application architecture, application platforms, cloud-native, microservices, APIs, modernization and open-source strategies.

Join hosts Brent Stewart and Danny Brian on the Steering Engineering Podcast as they dive into the transformative role of AI in software development. Featuring Kyle Davis, an expert in low-code platforms and generative AI, this episode explores AI coding assistants, the rise of low-code, and the potential of AI agents to reshape who builds software and how. Discover how AI is democratizing development, shifting traditional boundaries, and raising critical questions about the evolving role of software engineers in a rapidly changing landscape.

Kyle Davis is a VP Analyst at Gartner specializing in modernizing application development with expertise in low-code application platforms, generative AI, citizen development, and DevOps. He advises organizations and software vendors on evaluating, deploying, and governing low-code solutions built by professional, citizen, and fusion teams. With more than 15 years of experience delivering complex solutions across healthcare, financial services, and other industries, Kyle is a trusted advisor for organizations seeking to innovate and scale their application development strategies.

DevOps platforms provide an integrated alternative to custom toolchains, offering organizations an optimized and cohesive set of capabilities. Gartner’s latest Magic Quadrant on DevOps Platform offers insights on the past, present and potential future of these platforms.

Keith Mann is a senior director in Gartner, covering software engineering strategy and practices. Keith came to Gartner after a long background in development and enterprise architecture, and is one of the authors of the Magic Quadrant for DevOps Platforms.

In this episode of the Steering Engineering Podcast, we examine the fascinating and transformative potential of AI agents with our guest Haritha Khandabattu, one of Gartner’s leading experts on the topic. We delve into the evolving role of AI agents in human-AI collaboration, their ability to work together in complex multiagent systems, and how advancements in reinforcement learning are enabling these agents to plan, adapt, and optimize their behaviors over time, paving the way for more autonomous and intelligent digital ecosystems.

Haritha Khandabattu is a Gartner senior director analyst helping C-suite leaders globally. Haritha’s current focus is on AI (including generative AI) and software engineering. She helps software engineering leaders build and execute their strategies in AI, software engineering, and leadership. She also guides organizations on the strategic, organizational and technology aspects of using AI as a driving force of their growth. Before Gartner, Haritha worked in several engineering (and executive) leadership positions in banking, retail and automotive industries.

As AI-powered tools increasingly automate tasks like code generation, bug detection, and optimization, software engineers fear their roles may shift away from hands-on development toward higher level oversight, reducing the need for deep programming expertise. However, this shift also presents opportunities for engineers to evolve their skill sets, focusing more on AI integration, data-driven decision-making, and managing complex systems, thus staying relevant in an AI-augmented future.

Our guest on today’s Steering Engineering Podcast, Cat Hicks, discusses key findings and insights from her research, including a set of thriving factors for software engineering leaders to promote and anti-thriving factors to avoid.

AI-augmented software engineering and practices are becoming common as more companies pilot them. However, the differentiating effects of AI is based on the skill sets of the engineers using them. In today’s episode of the Steering Engineering Podcast, we talk to Dave Micko about how software engineering leaders are trying to make AI-augmented engineers move from ideation to value creation.

Dave Micko is a Senior Director Analyst in Gartner’s software engineering leadership research group. Dave helps software engineering leaders with practices, methods and patterns for effective software engineering.

In this special episode of Gartner’s Steering Engineering Podcast series, we sit down with Howard Dodd to discuss some highlights from this year’s Gartner Applications Summit keynote, featuring a novel approach to AI and to managing its impact on our organizations.

Howard Dodd is a Senior Director, Analyst in Gartner’s software engineering practice. He helps software and senior technology leaders create strategies to manage and reduce technical debt while modernizing their enterprise applications and systems. He specializes in integrating concepts from enterprise architecture, software development, application architectures and software economics into application. Recommended Reading has moved out of the Google Doc canvas. Please use the Add-On or the Item Detail page to edit your Recommended Reading.

In this episode of the Steering Engineering Podcast, we explore how emerging AI technologies, such as AI code assistants, are reshaping the landscape of software design and development. Our focus is on how engineers are transitioning from hands-on coding to roles that more closely resemble that of an engineering manager. We examine the implications of generative AI for software engineering education, on-the-job training, roles/responsibilities, and career development.

Charity Majors is an operations and database engineer, “sometimes” engineering manager, author and CTO at Honeycomb. Charity was a production engineering manager at Facebook and spent several years working on Parse. She also spent several years at Linden Lab, working on the infrastructure and databases that power Second Life. Charity is the co-author of O’Reilly’s Database Reliability Engineering and author of "Observability Engineering: Achieving Production Excellence.” She loves free speech, free software, and single malt scotch.