Governance in the Age of AI: A Conversation with Sarah Wells

Governance in the Age of AI: A Conversation with Sarah Wells

July 13, 2026 · 48 min

About this episode

Michael Stiefel interviews Sarah Wells about the intersection of governance and software architecture in the context of AI development.

In this podcast Michael Stiefel spoke to Sarah Wells about the relationship of governance to software architecture. Governance enables teams to work effectively by establishing procedures that minimize system complexity, improve security, and reduce repetitive tasks. Targeted checklists help engineers by reducing the stress over these procedures. This is especially critical in high pressure situations like critical incident response. Architecture should focus on the technical decisions that are difficult to reverse. The conversation then shifted to exploring the relationship of governance to agentic AI software development. While AI can be very effective for writing code, building internal tools, and automating tasks, experienced engineers still need to validate tests, review outputs, establish clear architectural guidelines, and demand that the AI agents be hypercritical of their own work. With the focus on AI software development, architectural skills are at a premium. Talented individuals that demonstrate architectural skills need to be found and sponsored. Read a transcript of this interview: https://bit.ly/4fndHG3 Newsletter: Subscribe to the Software Architects' Newsletter…

People in this episode

Host: Michael Stiefel

Guest: Sarah Wells

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Organizations: InfoQ

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