Software Factories as a Collaboration Model

X postcole murrayOpinion

Cole Murray argues that building a 'software factory' is not merely an engineering or tooling exercise, but fundamentally about shaping how teams within a company collaborate.

Key points

  1. Software factories should not be viewed merely as code-generation assembly lines.
  2. The true focus must be on designing internal collaboration and organizational workflows.
  3. The post links to an X article exploring the operational and collaborative aspects of software factories.

Why it matters

As AI agents reduce the marginal cost of code creation, organizational bottlenecks shift toward review, trust, and cross-team coordination, making collaboration design critical.

Analysis

Murray reframes the discussion around automated software factories, moving focus away from pure infrastructure toward Conway's Law dynamics. Effective orchestration depends on how well tools align with team ownership and decision-making flows.

Original post

cole murray

@colemurray · 11 September 2026

you are not building a software factory, you're building the way your company works together. t.co/7mKbQjhXgn

822 likes48 replies2.3k bookmarks77.2k views

View on X
More posts in the thread (1)
  1. @jp_aidev 🙌 awesome!
Selected replies (5)
  • @KakaluoteW45042 @colemurray factory 这个隐喻的坑在于：agent 把写代码的边际成本打到接近零，但 review、信任、协调的成本一点没降。优化吞吐的隐喻会把力气花在已经不瓶颈的环节上。真正要设计的是：代码怎么被相信。
  • @jp_aidev @colemurray Been following your journey for quite a while and you mentioned this on some podcast, trying to sell the infra is silly, ur not going to beat big players and its the antithesis of “open” anyways. You can make tons of money being a subject matter expert and I couldn’t agree more
  • @mrinal @colemurray Cole, love this! I open sourced my factory after very similar thoughts. I think the line between a product and its factory will blur. Products that have a better factory will work better than its competition. It a layer product teams should full control and customize to their
  • @RobinHill85 @colemurray Open source lets teams audit the orchestration layer, exposing the real ROI beyond token spend
  • @OfficialSynoviq @colemurray Exactly. Tools are the easy part. The factory only sticks when it matches how decisions, reviews, and ownership actually move through the company.

Mentioned links

Summary generated by AI (Gemini 3.8 Flash, 27 September 2026). It may contain errors – the original source is authoritative.

Related entries

Similar in content, found by the AI search.

  • X post:Justin Duke

    Software Factories: Why the Value Lies in Org Process, Not Infrastructure

    Justin Duke highlights an essay by Cole Murray exploring the concept of the 'software factory'. Murray, maintainer of the open-source platform OpenInspect, argues that agentic development systems succeed or fail based on organisational processes rather than commoditised tooling.

    1kbookmarks124.8kviews

    AI & LLMs· Opinion

  • X post:Gergely Orosz

    Inside OpenAI’s Agentic Software Factory

    In an in-depth report, Gergely Orosz explores internal operations at OpenAI, where Codex and ChatGPT Work have evolved into the operational foundation across technical and non-technical teams. Powered by deep integrations with systems like Slack and Kubernetes, automated feedback loops like 'Perf Factory' are reshaping engineering workflows and organisational structures.

    6.5kbookmarks456.2kviews

    AI & LLMs· News

  • X post:Ben Holmes

    Building a Software Factory: Zach Lloyd's Crawl-Walk-Run Framework

    Ben Holmes highlights an architectural guide by Zach Lloyd detailing how engineering organisations can progressively adopt an agentic software factory model, moving from isolated point automations to governed cloud workflows.

    1.3kbookmarks124.2kviews

    AI & LLMs· Resource

  • Article:Gergely Orosz

    Inside OpenAI’s agentic software factory

    Gergely Orosz provides an inside look at OpenAI, where Codex and ChatGPT Work have transformed internal operations, shifting workflows away from IDEs to autonomous coding agents while a tenfold increase in PR volume forces a rethink of CI/CD.

    AI & LLMs· News

  • X post:Mario Zechner

    Pragmatic Leverage in the AI Software Factory

    Mario Zechner highlights an analysis by Dex Horthy on achieving true leverage with AI in software engineering. Horthy argues that accelerating code generation alone yields minimal overall gains, as writing code historically represents only 25 to 50 percent of delivery time. Substantial acceleration occurs only when AI aids planning and alignment.

    913bookmarks98.2kviews

    AI & LLMs· Opinion

Back to the knowledge base

Let's talk about your project

Get in touch

Locations

  • Mattersburg
    Johann Nepomuk Bergerstraße 7/2/14
    7210 Mattersburg, Austria
  • Vienna
    Ungargasse 64-66/3/404
    1030 Wien, Austria

Parts of this content were created with the assistance of AI.