A global AI design thinking seriesDesigning a human‑centered SDLC pilot for real productivity gains
Overview
As MassMutual explored where AI could meaningfully support software development, there was a risk of “solution-first” thinking, deploying tools without deeply understanding developer pain points or SDLC realities.
Timeline
3-part global design thinking series as input to an 8-week AI R&D pilot
Role
Lead strategist & design director
Designed and facilitated a 3-part design thinking workshop series
Engaged development offices in India, Romania, and the U.S.
Built empathy with developers and surfaced high-value opportunity areas
Partnered with AI R&D to shape an AI-assisted developer experience and pilot
Challenge
To effectively introduce emerging AI tools into the SDLC, the organization needed to:
Understand real developer pain points, not just theoretical use cases
Build trust and buy-in among global teams
Identify where AI could augment, not replace, developer expertise
Ensure investments in AI led to measurable improvements in velocity, quality, and satisfaction
Without this, AI adoption risked becoming fragmented, underused, or misaligned
Design Thinking
Workshop
AI powered results
Full-stack demo app: 2 months → 30 hours (90.6% faster)
Unit test doc creation: 9–10 days → 4.5 hours (94% faster)
Refactor/switch protocols: 7–10 days → 6.5 hours (up
ETL pipeline: 5 days → 4 hours (90% faster)
Containerization: 2 days → 1 hour (94% faster)
AWS cost estimation: 8 hours → 15–30 min (up to 97% faster)
Context engineer repo: 9 hours → 2 hours (78% faster)
BRD from SQL: 4 hours → 1 hour (75% faster)
MassMutual Moving At ‘Warp Speed’ On AI Efforts
MassMutual is accelerating its artificial intelligence efforts, building on promising progress in software development and customer support to shift toward more agentic processes.
The company is aiming for a fully agentic software development life cycle (SDLC) across the IT organization by the end of the first quarter of 2026, said Sears Merritt, the insurer’s head of enterprise technology and experience. The 174-year-old insurer is testing agents that can help gather and draft project requirements, generate documentation, run security and quality assurance checks, and refine code over time. Before agents, requirements gathering alone could take an entire sprint cycle. Now it can be done in hours.
In the press
