InfoQ - Developer Experience

Instacart Builds Blueberry, an AI-Powered Assistant to Help On-Call Engineers Investigate Incidents

Leela Kumili — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 14:34:00 GMT

Instacart introduced Blueberry, an AI-assisted incident response system that helps on-call engineers investigate production issues faster. It combines AI agents, operational data, and historical incident knowledge to generate grounded root cause hypotheses in Slack. It uses parallel subagents, MCP integrations, and incident history to reduce investigation time while keeping engineers in control.

By Leela Kumili

Podcast: Culture & Methods Trends 2026: The Human Side of AI Engineering

Fri, 07 Aug 2026 09:00:00 GMT

This is the Engineering Culture Trends Report for 2026. Featuring a panel of QCon speakers and InfoQ contributors, they discussed AI adoption maturity and risk, the transformation of engineering team structures and roles, and the human dimensions of software development that must not be lost in 2026.

By Ben Linders, Rafiq Gemmail, Craig Smith, Vanessa Formicola, Shawna Martell, Phillip Mortimer, Yinka Omole

From Projects to Products: Turning Platforms into Products People Use

Ben Linders — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 11:59:00 GMT

Having a platform is not enough; the real challenge is ensuring that it is understandable, usable, and actually adopted by its users. A capability is done when it can be reliably used by others. To evaluate progress, you can ask yourself “Is this being used?” and “Does it reduce friction for users?” This can help align development work with actual user value rather than delivery.

By Ben Linders