The International Workshop on Envisioning the AI-Augmented Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), collocated with FSE 2025, seeks to explore how AI might transform end-to-end software systems development workflows and emphasizes the need to collect relevant data now to assess the long-term effects of AI throughout the SDLC. The workshop will be conducted through interactive sessions and aims to develop use cases collaboratively with the attendees on how SDLC activities may shift with increased application of generative AI tools. In addition, the workshop will (1) capture the changing landscape of software development through emerging research results and position papers and (2) identify key activities needed to make progress towards an AI-augmented SDLC research roadmap through interactive discussions.

As the adoption of generative AI-based tools gains momentum, software engineers are facing the reality of envisioning a future where software-reliant systems will be designed, tested, deployed, and maintained with AI-enabled tools playing a greater role than they do today. The analysis of developer data to date reveals that while generative AI tools offer numerous advantages, they are also non-trivial to apply at scale. In response, the research community has begun evaluating the implications of generative AI for software engineering. Examples range from researching LLMs (large language models) for code or investigating use of foundation models for various software development activities to investigating the democratization of software with prompt-based interactions may replace portions of software capabilities. While significant ongoing work is attempting to understand how generative AI can improve various software activities, a concerted emphasis on how generative AI impacts the overall orchestration of SDLC workflows is missing.

To fill this gap, our proposed workshop aims to galvanize the research community’s focus on the implications of the changing software engineering landscape by understanding how the SDLC is being transformed by automating and enhancing various development stages via generative AI approaches. In particular, the workshop will focus on how end-to-end SDLC workflows may be influenced and what data should be collected to better assess end-to-end outcomes.