How AI Can Erase Technical Debt and Reignite Developer Joy

Countless factors prevent engineering organizations from becoming world‑class software teams, from outdated tools and rigid processes to a risk‑averse culture. A frequently overlooked factor is developer experience—when work feels like a chore, creativity and motivation fade, harming overall company performance.

Since joining Atlassian as CTO, the leadership team has focused on creating a world‑class engineering organization and developer experience. Over two years they cut pull‑request cycle time by 50%, increased the number of experiments developers run tenfold, and raised developer satisfaction by more than 50%.

AI Solving Technical Debt

AI cannot magically erase all debt, but it can scan codebases to uncover stale feature flags, poor test coverage, and other junk. Teams can use Jira or similar tools to track this work, with AI agents acting as copilots. Atlassian’s Rovo platform has enabled the creation of over 500 custom agents, such as the Backlog Buddy that cleans and prioritises Jira tasks, saving hours of manual effort.

Beyond backlog management, AI agents like Autodev analyse Jira issues, generate technical plans, and even produce code that can be submitted as pull requests. Autoreview then checks code changes, offers suggestions, and helps developers fix remaining issues before final approval.

AI‑Powered Documentation

Documentation is often scattered across multiple applications with inconsistent naming, making search unintuitive. Imagine an AI search bot that retrieves the latest docs, relevant Slack threads, and expert recommendations in a single query. Such AI‑enhanced search reduces cognitive load and helps developers find information instantly.

Deep‑Work AI and AIOps

When alerts fire, teams scramble to triage hundreds of incidents, a time‑consuming and error‑prone process. AI can group similar alerts, detect patterns, and trace root causes, turning noise into clear signals. Atlassian’s AIOps features in Jira automatically group alerts, surface runbooks, and suggest post‑incident actions, making high‑priority events easier to identify and resolve.

By handling repetitive tasks, AI frees teams to focus on fixing issues and deploying solutions, while also enabling automated post‑mortems and preventive recommendations.

Bringing Joy Back to Development

The insights shared are real, not hype. From pre‑emptively spotting problems to streamlining incident response, AI removes the drudgery of software development, making developers happier and more capable of delivering innovative solutions. Since nearly two‑thirds of developers quit due to poor experiences, restoring joy is a smart leadership strategy.

Start by handing the most tedious tasks—"washing the dishes and doing the laundry"—to AI, and watch efficiency compound over time.