# What Happened When We Treated AI Like an Engineering Teammate

DevFeed: [What Happened When We Treated AI Like an Engineering Teammate](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/what-happened-when-we-treated-ai-like-an-engineering-teammate-23981.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://medium.com/mcdonalds-technical-blog/what-happened-when-we-treated-ai-like-an-engineering-teammate-4745e9a54a59?source=rss----3bac42476d27---4>)

Author: Global Technology

Published: 2026-04-28T13:23:51Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [McDonald's Technical Blog - Medium](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/mcdonald-s-technical-blog-medium.md>)

Topics: [Artificial Intelligence](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ai.md>), [AI Engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ai-engineering.md>), [maintenance](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/maintenance.md>), [Security](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/security.md>), [Cloud](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/cloud.md>), [test-coverage](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/test-coverage.md>), [Documentation](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/documentation.md>), [Framework](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/framework.md>)

Tags: [agent](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/agent.md>), [ai](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ai.md>), [ai-agent](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ai-agent.md>), [ai-engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ai-engineering.md>), [autonomous](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/autonomous.md>), [cloud](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/cloud.md>), [development](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/development.md>), [documentation](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/documentation.md>), [maintenance](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/maintenance.md>), [platform-engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/platform-engineering.md>), [security](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/security.md>), [software-engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/software-engineering.md>), [test-coverage](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/test-coverage.md>), [the-result](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/the-result.md>), [velocity](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/velocity.md>)

## AI overview

The Restaurant Topology Management team used an AI-powered, agent-based engineering assistant within its development workflows to handle repetitive maintenance work, including configuration updates, security patches, framework modernization, test coverage, and documentation. The article reports 20% faster sprint velocity, security updates completed twice as fast, and modernization delivered up to 10 times faster.

## Source excerpt

How an AI engineering assistant boosted sprint velocity by 20% and modernized services up to 10x faster. by: Sumedha Shenoy, Director, Engineering Tech Lead, and Kamal Jackson, Sr Manager, Engineering Tech Lead Quick Bytes: A growing backlog of essential but repetitive "glue work" was slowing the Restaurant Topology Management (RTM) team's ability to modernize and deliver new features By treating an AI engineering assistant as an autonomous teammate -- not a chatbot -- the team offloaded end-to-end maintenance tasks at scale The result was 20% faster sprint velocity, security updates completed twice as fast, and modernization work delivered up to 10x quicker without sacrificing quality In fast-moving software environments, critical but repetitive "glue work" like configuration updates, security patches, and documentation often compete with time that could be spent delivering new features. For the Restaurant Topology Management (RTM) team -- who build and maintain the cloud-based platform that enables markets to create and deploy consistent restaurant device configurations -- this maintenance workload had grown quietly over time and began to limit the team's ability to innovate. To regain momentum and address mounting operational debt, the team turned to an AI-powered, agent-based engineering assistant embedded into our standard development workflows, capable of handling complex, repetitive tasks. The challenge: The "un-fun" backlog Before piloting the AI assistant, the RTM team was managing maintenance tasks that had persisted across multiple sprints: Security updates: Enhancing automated scanning workflows to maintain a strong security posture Framework modernization: Updating services to align with the team's current application framework Test coverage improvements: Strengthening unit test consistency across services Documentation updates: Refreshing internal service documentation to support smoother onboarding and troubleshooting This maintenance work was important b