Expected Delivery in the AI Era

Generative tools have changed what a client believes a piece of software should cost in time. Work that was quoted in weeks is now quoted in days, and the number is often set before anyone has looked at the system the change has to land in. The tooling genuinely did get faster — but it did not get faster uniformly, and it did not get faster in the places that usually decide a release date.

That mismatch is where delivery relationships break down. The team is not slower than it was; the expectation simply moved further than the work did.