As Mondelēz Worldwide launched into a large methods overhaul, the snack maker was searching for methods to alleviate burdens on its tech staff and builders.
“With all of the issues we’ve been doing, discovering methods to hurry up and make [engineers] extra agile and provides them capabilities was a No. 1 precedence,” Sean Tibor, director of world cloud engineering at Mondelēz, advised CIO Dive. A coding assistant match the invoice.
Tibor gave builders entry to Amazon Q, a generative AI-powered assistant, “as early as I probably might, to be trustworthy.” Since embedding the software in engineering workflows, Mondelēz shortened its growth cycles and new hires started utilizing it as a studying useful resource.
Mondelēz measures the software’s worth in three elements: quantitatively, qualitatively and anecdotally.
“We’re arrange effectively to encourage adoption, after which we’ve obtained the suggestions loop on the metrics to have the ability to see what they’re really utilizing it for and that we’re getting the worth out of the spend that we’re placing into,” Tibor stated.
Enterprises have tied more development practices to AI as engineers have embraced coding assistants and the know-how has improved. In a single benchmark, AI methods solved almost 72% of coding issues in 2024, in comparison with simply 4.4% in 2023, in keeping with the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI’s latest AI Index report revealed in April.
Mondelēz builders have free rein to make use of Amazon Q throughout any mission within the firm’s atmosphere. An inner AI overview board helped make the choice after making certain that groups might use encryption keys to handle knowledge, monitor utilization and disable coaching for outdoor use instances.
“We’ve executed a serious migration from legacy knowledge facilities over to the cloud, and that is wave three of cloud migrations for Mondelēz,” Tibor stated. “What we’ve been migrating over has been loads of probably the most troublesome legacy methods to carry over and discovering new methods to modernize and run these workloads at scale.”
Along with code creation, engineers ask Q to validate and take a look at code generated by the software or a human. “They’ve seen a velocity up, not simply in producing code, however in validating the code earlier than it goes into our growth,” Tibor stated.
The AI software has additionally sped up server provisioning, which used to take seven to 10 days. Absolutely compliant servers are actually prepared in about 20 minutes, stated Tibor.
The developer expertise
Like most different enterprises, Mondelēz has grappled with tech expertise woes. Talent gaps can threaten mission momentum and have been blamed for hours wasted and exacerbated inefficiencies. A dearth of expertise additionally places pressure on existing staff.
Tibor stated it may be troublesome to recruit and onboard cloud engineers into the corporate’s atmosphere in an agile approach.
“It’s a really high-demand job internally inside our group,” Tibor stated. “We discovered that we are able to use Q not simply as a method to write code, but additionally to behave as a tutor in order that they’ll study extra concerning the companies and choices by chat capabilities.”
Beforehand, builders may need had a query for a senior member of the staff and needed to look forward to a response, which might decelerate processes, given the group’s world nature.
“That senior engineer may nonetheless be asleep,” Tibor stated. “It’s minimize down that cycle time for studying and made iteration so much sooner, which has been thrilling to see everybody making the most of, particularly with our new hires onboarding.”
Talent gaps may push staff to attempt to discover their very own options, resulting in issues down the road, like shadow IT.
“By providing a high-quality coding assistant, it form of eliminated the need for them to go get issues like Copilot, which we’re not utilizing,” Tibor stated. “We’re nonetheless very conscious of the safety features of it and ensure that what we’re doing is suitable.”
AI-powered productiveness pushes can result in unintended outcomes, comparable to degraded quality and security implications. Guardrails and safety are essential with output expectations on the rise as greater than two-thirds of builders say AI software adoption has put strain on them to ship on initiatives sooner, in keeping with a HackerRank report.
“Tradition makes an enormous distinction,” Tibor stated. “I’m actually happy with the engineering staff, and they’re extremely accountable and reliable. They need to do the suitable factor, and once they have a look at coding, they’re assessing it on the identical rubric that I’m, which is: how a lot is that this serving to me versus how a lot is that this creating additional issues and code integrity points.”
