From the source
Microsoft is describing the primitives of agentic software delivery, arguing that teams should transform the software lifecycle stage by stage rather than all at once.
- The company says the SDLC keeps its familiar loop of Plan, Build, Verify, Deploy and Observe, but each stage now draws on and contributes to a shared knowledge layer.
- Microsoft argues that ambitious teams who try to transform the entire SDLC at once tend to struggle, because when everything changes together it is hard to see what is working and what to fix.
- In its account, human attention moves to choosing problems, resolving ambiguity and judging whether the system built is the one intended, while agents take on more implementation and validation work.
- Each stage produces an artifact that carries the work forward, such as goals and acceptance criteria, a candidate implementation, or auditable evidence of system behavior.
- Microsoft says it is building these primitives into its developer products, citing Copilot taking an issue, spinning up a secure
GitHub Actions environment, changing code, running validation and producing a draft PR for human review.
