Discover how we shifted from testing WhatsApp bots by hand to automated Generative AI testing with LLM-as-a-judge and CI/CD at Grupo Esfera.

If we have an AI agent that knows it all, what do I gain from talking to my colleagues while developing software? At times, it seems like an ideal scenario to have an entity that answers whatever I throw at it and gives me countless alternatives (even the exact number of alternatives I ask for) to solve my problems. Of course, it depends on how you use the genie, as Kent Beck calls it, but even in good hands, it's not the same experience as collaborating with a person. The di

Writing less code is not the same as solving a problem better. Here is what we learned when we integrated AI agents directly into our development process. What is agentic engineering, and why did we stop talking solely about "generating code"? For a while, the conversation around AI and software development revolved almost exclusively around speed: AI writes code faster than a human team. This is true, and we see it every day in our active projects. Code that used to take day

“You are always losing the race against tests.” This quote by Alan Cyment made me reflect on the time we invest in maintaining acceptance tests—a practice that, due to its repetitive nature, the fragile tools we use, and the heavy time commitment it demands, is often abandoned without fully realizing the value it delivers. At Grupo Esfera, we have been walking the test automation path for years. While we know there is still plenty of room for improvement, we have a few insigh

The question pops up in every hallway chat, every LinkedIn thread, and every client meeting after someone reads a headline: is AI going to replace software development as a profession? I don't have the answer, and I'm skeptical of anyone who claims to. What I do have, after months of working this way daily, is something likely more useful than a prediction: a pattern. A cycle I repeat, that I see colleagues repeat, and that I haven't yet learned to break. The Beginning: When

If your AI cannot interact with your company’s production systems, you don't have a product yet—you have a demo. Many companies have already experimented with artificial intelligence. They built a chatbot, connected a model to internal documentation, or ran a proof of concept that answered questions about their data. And then comes the hard part. How do we get that AI to query our production systems? How do we allow it to create a task, check an order, or update information w

Test-Driven Development (TDD) is a design and development technique where the traditional workflow is inverted: automated tests are written before the production code. Rather than using tests solely to verify what has been built, they are used to guide the software architecture and design.

When I decided to work at Grupo Esfera back in 2018, I did so knowing that I wanted to learn about technical agility. “I want to learn from what you do,” I told Diego Fontdevila (founding partner of Grupo Esfera) when he offered me a job with them. Nothing about that statement struck Diego as odd; in fact, during my first few days, he introduced me as "the non-technical person who is coming to learn from us, while we learn from what she knows." And I thought to myself: what c

When we started asking around at Esfera about how we perceived our own culture, many people noted that as an organization, we strived to be a benchmark for technical practices in this software and agile methodology space. We asked how we self-perceived our culture, and people mentioned product quality, flexibility in choosing the best technology for the problem at hand, continuous improvement, and agility, among other things. The truth is, being at Esfera conveys just that. B

Within the agile universe, there are strictly technical practices (such as TDD, BDD, test automation) and others focused on management (such as Scrum ceremonies). We can place DevOps in a space that cuts across both. DevOps is an acronym for Development and Operations, referring to the integration of both areas to build software products. Ignacio Raguet and Joaquín Moreno Fernandez—two Esféricos dedicated to implementing DevOps in organizations and training those who are inte

Have you ever had to delete end-to-end acceptance tests because your Continuous Integration became unacceptably slow? It has happened to all of us. Have you ever had to delete end-to-end acceptance tests because your Continuous Integration became unacceptably slow? It has happened to all of us. End-to-end acceptance tests are highly meaningful because they verify how the system is expected to behave from the end-user's perspective and in an environment very close to productio

In 2023, Grupo Esfera organized the first webinar on Transformation Experiences: From Leadership to Action, coordinated by Diego Fontdevila (founder of Grupo Esfera, executive coach, and university professor) alongside guest speakers Marcelo Vivanco (digital transformation consultant, former CTO, and psychologist), Federico Casuscelli (consultant and digital transformation strategy specialist), and Mariano Tugnarelli (computer engineer, developer, consultant, and software des

Let’s be honest… In today's fast-paced world, flooded with notifications everywhere and our minds packed with to-do lists, how many times do we truly listen to what we're being told? I mean, with full attention and a genuine desire to understand. As a Scrum Master and Coach, I experience this every day: we are right there in meetings, talking with clients, or engaging with the development team, and sometimes I feel like words just bounce off without fully landing. Does that f

The year 2025 brought us two major milestones as an organization: Grupo Esfera celebrated 20 years as a company, and we reached the 5-year mark of our organizational design based on sociocracy. I say "based on sociocracy" because I am not entirely clear on how much purity there is in our current structure. For 15 years, we ran multiple experiments, dynamics, and teams with the intention and goal of practicing self-management. We made so many attempts that I'm not sure we even