The Agentic Inversion Principle (www.mikebrevoort.com)

In a significant shift for software engineering, the emergence of agentic engineering—where AI coding agents like Claude Code and Codex take on the majority of implementation work—has challenged traditional project management paradigms. Previously, Brooks’s Law suggested that adding more people to late projects only exacerbated delays due to increased communication overhead. However, this model has been disrupted; one engineer can now effectively manage multiple AI agents, resulting in exponential productivity gains. Consequently, coordination among team members has become the primary bottleneck rather than individual throughput. This concept, termed the Agentic Inversion Principle, suggests that smaller, aligned teams can outperform larger groups tackling the same problem. Instead of expanding headcount within a single team, organizations are encouraged to form autonomous, domain-focused teams with clear interfaces between them. This approach allows for faster development cycles without the drawbacks of extensive coordination. As the industry embraces this new framework, they must rethink traditional staffing strategies, emphasizing quality and autonomy over sheer numbers.