12. May 2026

AI-driven Development Life Cycle workshop in Iceland

AI-DLC is coming to Iceland

I am going to the AI-driven Development Life Cycle (AI-DLC) workshop here in Iceland.

We do not get that many of these developer-focused AI events in Iceland. Usually I read the blog post, watch the conference recording, steal the useful parts, ignore the vendor magic dust, and try it out myself later.

But this one is actually happening here.

The event takes place on 11 June at Reykjavik University.

It is hosted by AWS in collaboration with Controlant, Reykjavik University and SoftwareOne.

But this workshop is not really about AWS for me.

It is about seeing how serious teams are now thinking about the full software development lifecycle when AI is no longer just autocomplete.

The interesting part

The workshop describes AI-DLC as a third path between two extremes:

AI as a glorified autocomplete
AI as an unchecked code generator

That framing feels right.

I have been using various AI tools and techniques for the last few years: ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot, Codex-style agents, Specify, Squad, repo instructions, prompt files, MCP servers etc. etc.

What I am looking for now is not another demo where a todo app appears from smoke and applause.

I want to see how people structure the work.

How do they move from vague idea to requirements?
How do they keep humans in control?
How do they make AI ask better questions?
How do they preserve context across planning, coding and operations?
How do they stop the whole thing from becoming one very expensive junior developer with perfect spelling?

That is the part I care about.

Iceland has had a good run of developer visits lately

This winter my company, JBT Marel, hosted a gathering with the people from ChilliCream, the creators of Hot Chocolate GraphQL.

Now it is Controlant and SoftwareOne helping bring a full-day AI-DLC workshop to Iceland.

About the host

The host listed for the event is Anthony Dupré from AWS.

According to the event page, Anthony is a Senior Partner Solutions Architect at AWS, based in Geneva. His work is focused on helping global system integrators and enterprise organizations turn ambitious ideas into production-ready AI-driven systems.

Not just “look, AI wrote code”.

how do enterprises actually adopt this?
what breaks when teams scale it?
what rituals survive contact with reality?
what is useful after the keynote energy wears off?

Anthony’s background also looks relevant. The event page mentions more than two decades of experience, including CTO, VP of Engineering and Solutions Architect roles, building and scaling engineering teams, and working across startups and large enterprises. Someone who has seen enough software projects to know that the hard part is rarely the first generated file.

What I hope to get out of it

I am going in with one main question:

What do they consider the newest practical thing in AI-driven software development?

Not the loudest thing.
Not the most magical thing.
The practical thing.

Because my own experience so far is that AI is absolutely (super) useful, but only when you give it structure, context, constraints, and human review.

Used badly, it is a faster way to create mess. Used well, it feels like having extra hands for the boring and repetitive parts of software work.

I am especially curious about their ideas around:

AI in planning, not just coding
“mob elaboration” and team-based clarification
shorter delivery cycles or “bolts”
using AI across inception, construction and operations
persistent context inside the repository
how much of this survives in real brownfield systems

Looking forward to it

I am excited for this one.

Not because I am suddenly moving everything to AWS.

I am not.

But because AI-driven development is moving fast, and every few months I need to recalibrate what “good” looks like.

Maybe I will come back with three useful ideas.

Maybe I will come back with one useful idea and a stronger opinion.

Both are acceptable outcomes.

Either way, it is good to see this kind of event happening in Iceland.

More of this, please!