A Look at What We Did

We started with an all-hands session—everyone in one room, sharing updates, talking openly about our progress, and aligning on priorities for the rest of the year.

The rest of the programme combined structured activities with time to connect. The group games sparked great energy and collaboration. Whether it was strategy-based challenges, quick decision-making, or problem-solving tasks, each activity helped bring people together in a different way.

Evenings? That’s when things really lit up.

We danced, we sang, we shared stories. The vibe was relaxed, the playlist was solid, and the energy carried long into the night.

Why It Mattered

We believe the best teams are built on trust, communication, and shared purpose. Taking time away from the screen to talk, reflect, and spend time together helps strengthen each of these core values.

This wasn’t just a break from work—it was a reminder of who we are as a team, and why our culture matters.

Check out the video for a look back at the highlights—from team sessions to challenges and late-night fun.

We’re heading into the second half of the year with stronger connections, a clearer focus, and a shared sense of momentum. Team building isn’t just a break from routine—it’s part of how we work at Damilah.

Together, we’re better.

And this sums up, in a nutshell, our philosophy when it comes to gender balance and inclusion.

Diversity isn’t our goal; it’s how we work as a business. This is not only because we believe it’s the right thing to do, but also because we know it achieves better results for us and for our clients. We therefore see it as an intrinsic part of our culture, and one of our key strengths.

Consequently, we’re extremely proud of the fact that nearly 50% of our workforce are women, with many in senior leadership roles.

Elena has seen this first-hand at Damilah.

Her colleague, Fikrije Stafai, a Senior Delivery Manager who has been with Damilah for a similar amount of time and now line manages the other DMs, strongly agrees. She also believes that balanced teams tend to result in a higher level of efficiency and productivity. “Everything is more organised when women are included!” she says.

Galina Dushanski, a Software Engineer who joined Damilah as a graduate in 2022, adds: “Gender diversity creates a more open and respectful environment, and a team dynamic where we all listen to each other, even if we don’t agree at first. That leads to better outcomes in the long run.”

Our inclusive culture

Such deep respect for colleagues, regardless of gender or background, stems largely from our company culture, where inclusivity is deeply embedded.

This leads to a feeling of empowerment for every employee, says Galina. “We are creating a place where everyone feels comfortable to speak and grow. In my team, every voice is genuinely heard. From day one, I was treated with respect, and my opinions were valued, just like anyone else’s.”

The women at Damilah also appreciate the many benefits that the business offers its employees, allowing them to progress their careers and fulfil their potential. There are training days and workshops – which are, of course, helpful for all colleagues – but also family-friendly policies, such as generous parental leave, the freedom to work from home at any time, the option to take unexpected days off (for example, to look after a sick child), and even birthday presents for employees’ children. “My kid loves those!” says Elena.

Valuable business impacts

Damilah’s women strongly believe that our inclusive culture makes a genuinely positive impact on the work we do as a business.

Elena points to the greater degree of collaboration that tends to happen when women are present. “We’re currently working on a big project with multiple teams,” she says. “I’ve been able to make a big impact by facilitating cross-team communication and collaboration, ensuring we have alignment, arranging the meetings, following up on people’s actions. I’m not sure this would happen without a woman’s input!”

Meanwhile, Fikrije constantly sees evidence that the gender balance creates high degrees of accountability and a strong focus on detail – as well as the ability of certain female colleagues to give team members a lift.

Changing the stereotypes

Everyone at Damilah agrees that IT, which has traditionally been a male-dominated world, is all the better for the growing number of women who are entering the profession despite the barriers that still exist.

Galina has some advice for women considering working in this field. “Be yourself, be proud, and don’t be afraid to speak up and share your ideas,” she says.

Elena concurs. “If your company is not valuing your voice, leave the company. Do not stop speaking,” she says.

And for businesses that are struggling to build and maintain a good gender balance, Sandra has some important advice. “They need to look beyond the numbers, because gender balance starts with culture,” she says.

“Businesses that find this a problem need to ask themselves: Are they creating an environment where everyone, regardless of gender, feels safe to speak, grow and lead? Because when you focus on that foundation, then gender balance becomes a natural outcome.”

Pride and positive outcomes

Unsurprisingly, the women at Damilah have a shared sense of pride about our company and how they are empowered to fulfil their potential – while also delivering great outcomes for clients.

As Galina puts it: “People here genuinely care – not just about the work, but about each other. We help one another, we share knowledge, we’re always open to new ideas. We create a space where everyone can thrive. Being part of a company where inclusion is not just a word, but a reality, makes me genuinely proud every day.”

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AI tools are capable of dramatically accelerating the pace of software development—sometimes by up to 20x. Our recent CTO Roundtable discussion explored the possibilities and how to reap the benefits.

Software developers can make huge productivity gains through the adoption of AI tools – sometimes with speed increases of up to 20x. That was the outstanding conclusion of our recent CTO Roundtable, Exploring AI-Driven Productivity in Software Development, hosted by Iain Bishop and Aleksandar Karavasilev, CEO and CTO of Damilah Technology.

Kicking off the event, they presented the findings from a series of controlled experiments they had conducted at Damilah, which demonstrated that time savings of up to 2x are quickly and easily achievable by using AI tools, in particular for tasks such as:

• Quality analysis
• Coding
• Unit testing

Furthermore, when engineers already experienced in using AI performed the set tasks, they were able to operate 4x to 6x faster.

While Iain and Aleksandar highlighted these impressive gains, the discussion revealed even greater possibilities. A start-up founder explained how combining a series of AI tools for different stages of development enabled him to deliver productivity improvements of up to 20x. To do this, he used:

• Perplexity for market research
• Replit and Lovable for building apps
• Tabnine for auto-completion of code

This illustrated how companies willing to fully embrace AI across the development lifecycle can potentially achieve extraordinary results – for example, by enabling them to rapidly put new product ideas in front of users as basic MVPs. As a result, this founder now plans to launch at least three start-ups within a year.

Increasing dynamism

This kind of accelerated development cycle can usher in a whole new era of dynamism in the market, it was concluded—the main points being:

• Start-ups are usually lacking capital.
• AI enables them to develop an application at pace and at low cost, before significant sums of money need to be invested.
• This helps to de-risk new ventures and make it easier to attract funding.

But even companies who take a steadier or more cautious approach to AI-adoption, it was agreed, can still make immediate productivity gains. This could be, for example, by starting with ChatGPT, then progressing to more sophisticated tools such as GitHub Copilot or Cursor.

Overcoming barriers and managing adoption

The conversation also turned to barriers to AI adoption. Several of those present described a certain amount of reluctance or resistance among larger enterprises, often due to concerns relating to company policies and regulatory matters.

However, it was noted that simply banning the use of AI tools can lead to “shadow AI”, where developers, in particular, will find workarounds in a constant pursuit of innovative ways of working.

Several attendees agreed that the solution to this is not to block, but rather to encourage the use of specified AI tools with some strict guardrails in place to ensure certain boundaries are not crossed, particularly with regard to security, privacy and IP protection

Addressing recruitment challenges

Questions were also raised about whether developers should be allowed to use AI during the hiring process, as often this could mask an applicant’s true capabilities when it comes to coding and testing. However, as one participant pointed out, companies should be looking to hire employees who are adept at using AI, as having an AI-proficient workforce will be necessary to maintain competitive advantage in the future.

Another attendee recommended a solution to the hiring problem: they deliberately asked applicants to use an AI tool which they knew would produce a certain bug in its code. They were then able to check whether the applicants had detected the bug, and therefore whether they were capable of testing and fixing code without the use of AI.

Furthermore, as one participant noted from their own experiences, many developers will decline to work for a company that denies them the opportunity to use AI tools to enhance and accelerate their work.

Encouraging adoption and keeping pace

One recommendation to encourage those more hesitant about AI, alongside formal training, was to hold informal “brown bag” sessions. The participants from Damilah talked about their own experiences of this – holding the sessions once a fortnight, and inviting anyone from their own company or their client base to share their experiences and knowledge of AI tools.

The importance of keeping on top of rapid changes in the quality of AI tools also emerged. Several participants pointed out that some, which didn’t perform well a few months ago, are now proving to be highly valuable – software-testing tool CodeRabbit being a good example of this.

Human accountability and measurement challenges

Participants also discussed optimal approaches to handling bugs in AI-generated code – as, they generally agreed, no AI tool is capable of producing perfect code.

In particular, “code bloat” was highlighted as a major issue. In other words, as AI operates so rapidly, it’s easy to generate huge amounts of code – and inevitably the more code that exists, the more bugs there will be.

Because of this, there was a consensus that:

• It’s essential to ensure human involvement at every step of the development process.
• “People must remain accountable for what they produce,” said one attendee.
• Code reviews – both by humans and tools such as CodeRabbit – are particularly important.

Measuring success

The roundtable also discussed the challenges related to measuring the gains achieved by AI. The key points raised were:

• Software development, by its very nature, involves performing a different task for each new project.
• Therefore, the only way to effectively measure productivity gains is to have two teams performing the same tasks in parallel – one with the use of AI tools, and the other without, to act as a control group.
• AI tools, used in the right ways, can clearly unlock major productivity gains – but many businesses do not have the time or resources to conduct such controlled experiments to measure the gains with any accuracy.
• In light of this, the tests conducted by Damilah have proved invaluable.

Sharing knowledge and expertise

Our roundtable participants agreed that keeping up with the lightning pace of change in AI is almost impossible. It therefore requires individuals and companies to work together to share knowledge and experiences for the advantage of all.

For that reason, we’d like to continue our series of breakfast roundtables. Exploring AI-Driven Productivity in Software Development and Agentic AI, to be held on the 13th of May, will continue to focus on the productivity benefits of AI while also addressing the emergence of agents.

We invite you to join us. Previous attendees found the session a valuable use of their time, and we’re confident you’ll feel the same about the next one.

We therefore ran a controlled experiment, pitting a team of AI-assisted software engineers and quality analysts against a ‘human-powered’ group who were only allowed to use their own brains.

Here’s what we did and what we discovered…

How we ran the experiment

In all, a total of 52 of our people took part in our experiment, over a series of two hackathons.

We split them into two groups:

• One assisted by AI tools, with 30 engineers and 8 automation quality analysts (QAs)
• A control group that was purely human-powered, with 12 engineers and 2 automation QAs – allowing us to baseline the potential gains of using AI

We gave each group three hours to perform the same task.

For the engineers, the task was:

• Develop a .NET Web API to dynamically process mathematical expressions
• Implement a custom PEMDAS-based algorithm for expression evaluation, without using any third-party libraries
• Write unit tests to validate the functionality of the solution
• Test the implementation using five provided edge cases

And for the automation QAs:

• Write three automated functional test scripts for specified scenarios
• Test these functions using the provided test web shop application

The tools used by the AI-assisted team were:

• GitHub Copilot
• Cursor IDE (using ChatGPT)
• Qodo (was Codium)
• Tabnine

The results

We expected the results of this experiment to be positive in favour of the AI team, but we were still amazed by the difference the AI tools made in terms of enhancing speed and quality.

Here are the overall outcomes we recorded… 

On average, when compared to our human-powered team, our AI-assisted engineers were able to:

• Complete the coding nearly 2x (44%) faster

• Conduct the unit tests just over 2x (51%) faster

• Cover nearly twice as many (83%) more edge cases

And when we compared our fastest human-powered engineer with our fastest AI-assisted engineer, the results were even more impressive: the AI-assisted engineer was nearly 5x (78%) faster.

We also compared a human-powered engineer with one who already had experience using AI tools (in this case, GitHub Copilot). We found that:

• For the coding, the AI-powered engineer was 4x (75%) faster

• For the unit tests, the AI-powered engineer was 6x (83%) faster

This demonstrated to us that, as our team of engineers become more experienced with AI tools, our productivity gains will increase even further.

For the QAs, we also saw a significant improvement in the times it took the AI-assisted analysts: the average overall time was just over 2x (54%) faster with AI.

And, as with the engineers, we compared the two fastest times, and found that the first AI-assisted QA to complete the task was 9x (89%) faster.

A comparison of AI tools

We also aimed to make some comparisons between the four different AI tools that we used in the experiment, in particular with regard to user experience, productivity gains, and security and IP protection.

For user experience: GitHub Copilot came out on top. Our developers rated it as a robust and mature tool, suited for .NET application development. It offered consistent suggestions and responses as well as strong context management. Cursor and Codium came in joint second place.

For productivity gains: Cursor came out on top, allowing our team to be 3.2x (69%) faster than human-only developers when it came to completing the full task. GitHub Copilot was in second place, making the team 2.7x (62%) faster.

For security and IP protection , we found the following:

• GitHub Copilot transmits code snippets from the integrated development environment (IDE) to GitHub in real time to generate relevant suggestions. Once the suggestion is created, both the prompt and the suggested code snippet are immediately discarded—but note that this is only the case for the Business and Enterprise licence options.

• Cursor provides a Privacy Mode that can be activated during the onboarding process, ensuring that no code is stored on their servers or by their sub-processors.

• Qodo: Paid licence user data is not used to train its AI models. The data is deleted from their storage after 48 hours. Also,
they provide an option for a zero-retention policy, where data is removed immediately if users specifically request.

All three tools are certified for SOC2 compliance.

(Note that we didn’t assess Tabnine as we felt the model wasn’t mature enough and its users struggled to complete the task.)

Conclusion and our next steps

Our experiment made it clear that AI could offer us some huge benefits in productivity and quality. In every aspect of the tests we conducted, from coding to unit tests to automated test script production, there was a clear time saving – in most cases very significant. It will also enable us to improve the quality of our outputs, as AI-generated code was able to give us broad edge case test coverage.

Furthermore, we expect our efficiency gains to improve further as it is clear that development speed increases with experience when it comes to using AI tools. We found that just a short amount of training significantly accelerates outputs.

As for the future… Our product owner colleagues also ran an experiment to understand how AI can accelerate and improve the product discovery process. We are now looking at how we can use their AI-generated requirements as prompts to build applications – ultimately with the possibility of using AI-assisted processes from an initial description of requirements right through to final outputs.

Meanwhile, right now, we’re already starting to reap the benefits of AI-assisted development with some of our clients, delivering even greater value for them.

If you’d like to find out more about how AI-assisted software development can benefit your business, get in touch now.

Aleksandar Karavasilev, CTO at Damilah

But my husband, who at the time had more experience than me in using AI, suggested I was asking the wrong question. He recommended that I reframe it as: “Are there any scientific articles that prove placing a chopped onion in a room will help with a cough?”

This time, the response was far more credible and useful (and, it turns out, onions do really help).

I learned an important lesson here: although the potential for AI is enormous, when most people engage with it for the first time, it’s usually in a superficial way, often leading to poor results. In order to gain maximum value from the tools, and improve outputs, it’s worth learning the best ways to provide context and specificity, while also asking for an answer based on relevant sources.

Putting AI to the test

At Damilah, we’re very excited about the transformative potential of AI. We have, therefore, been exploring how it can augment our business activities and help deliver greater value to our clients. For example, our engineering teams ran a series of hackathons to calculate whether using AI tools could accelerate software development and improve quality (in a nutshell: yes, it can – hugely).

At the same time, we wanted to test whether AI could do the equivalent for our product discovery and inception processes – and if so, in what ways. So we ran an additional hackathon to examine this. In it, we asked three teams to work on a fictional brief, using a variety of AI tools, including ChatGPT and Perplexity (using Claude).

As with our engineering colleagues, the results were astounding.

We discovered that AI could significantly reduce the amount of time we spent on discovery – by anywhere from 20% to 50%, depending on the task and the tools being used – and with results that matched the quality of the work done without the assistance of AI.

And, most importantly of all, it revealed areas where AI could free us from routine, repetitive work, allowing our people to focus on higher-value activities.[

Accelerating and improving workflows

Specifically, we identified two primary ways that AI can accelerate and improve workflows:

1. Jump-starting a project: For example, when preparing for a client interview, we can use AI to generate an initial list of questions based on the context we provide. These AI-generated prompts serve as a springboard, helping us refine ideas faster, and ensure we’ve covered everything.
2. Enhancing existing work: In other cases, we can input a draft of some work we’ve already created, prompting the tool to polish and improve it, as well as asking whether we may have missed something. This approach allows us to benefit from AI’s ability to enhance clarity and suggest useful amendments and additions.

Another of our most impactful findings from the hackathon was the way in which we could use AI to accelerate the creation of wireframes with Figma. This aided our conversations with developers while showing similar levels of quality outcomes compared to when we use the traditional discovery processes.

And a real game-changer has been using AI tools for writing acceptance criteria. Traditionally, creating detailed, actionable user stories (which list the requirements that a developer has to meet) is time-consuming and mentally draining. Now, however, by giving a well-crafted prompt to an AI tool, we can generate acceptance criteria in a matter of minutes. This not only saves time but also ensures consistency, freeing our teams to focus on other priorities (more on that later).

AI as an enabler

Despite these extremely encouraging results, we aren’t getting carried away with AI. While it accelerates and enhances many of our processes – and we’re already using it to speed up workflows in live environments with clients  who have agreed to us using AI tools – we also believe there should always be a human involved every step of the way.

For us, quality is paramount, so our product owners will always review and refine the AI outputs to ensure they meet our standards and our clients’ needs.

We’re also conscious that an over-reliance on AI may lead to diminished problem-solving skills – a phenomenon akin to forgetting basic arithmetic because we’re accustomed to using calculators. To counter this, we view AI as an enabler, not the be-all and end-all, so will always ensure our people develop and maintain those key analytical capabilities. Above all, AI’s purpose is to enhance human creativity and decision-making, not replace them.

Furthermore, we’re wary of the common problem of ‘garbage in, garbage out’. That is, as I found out with my first experience of AI, it’s essential to take the time to learn how to craft well thought-through prompts and to train the model. AI tools can only become that valuable enabler and accelerator if we ensure we have the skills and patience to do this.

Focusing on value-creation

By learning to use AI in the most effective ways to perform routine and time-consuming tasks, we’re enabling many of our people to spend more time focusing on high-value activities, such as deepening their market understanding, engaging more effectively with stakeholders and shaping product roadmaps.

And, perhaps most excitingly of all, it means we can experiment with bold ideas that we perhaps wouldn’t have risked testing previously as we’d be concerned about the time it would consume. Instead, it enables us to ‘fail fast’ in our search for innovative solutions that genuinely solve our clients’ problems and help them to meet their objectives.

In fact, if I was a potential client looking for a software development partner, I’d always choose a firm that has already successfully established AI tools into its processes. That’s because their teams will be unburdened by all the mundane, repetitive work, and able to truly focus on building a highly creative partnership that delivers outstanding results.

To discuss how our AI-accelerated workflows enable us to deliver greater value for your business, get in touch now.

Iskra Ristovska, Principal Product Owner at Damilah