How Building with AI Can Double the Throughput of Your Engineering Team#
AI Engineer Europe 2026 digest Program Adjacent pick 8–10 April 2026
Brian Scanlan — Intercom
- Why: The org-level question underneath all the infra talks: does agent-assisted development actually double engineering throughput on a large existing SaaS codebase? Intercom's in-progress attempt is a data point worth calibrating against.
- What: Lessons from Intercom's 2025 effort to double engineering-team throughput using AI tooling to get real features (not demos) into a large existing SaaS codebase and out to paying customers — what has and hasn't worked on the road toward 2x productivity.
- How: Organizational adoption story; the abstract does not give method detail beyond AI-tooling-assisted development.
- Where applicable: One company's experience — an org-specific case study rather than a validated technique; useful as calibration for what "2x" actually takes.