Why AI Is Multiplying Technical Burden
AI is accelerating software delivery tenfold and a hundredfold — but it is also accelerating waste, AI slop, and what Craig Statham calls a coming “technical burden” crisis. Dr. Craig Statham, Chief Software Architect at SAS Institute, and Stephen Walters, Field CTO at GitLab, join Alan Shimel on Techstrong TV to preview their Flowtopia 2026 session, Perspectives on Value. Together they co-founded the Value Stream Reference Architectures Community of Practice, applying Team Topologies as a pattern language, graph theory as a tool, and the Inverse Conway Maneuver to help organizations design for flow before they scale automation. They unpack why value means different things to different stakeholders, why most organizations get the order of operations wrong — automating broken processes instead of fixing the org first — and how AI exposes weak foundations at unprecedented speed. The conversation also previews Flowtopia 2026 (June 24) and what Helen Beal’s flow community is building around value stream management.
