// outline - full essay drafting; takeaways and bridge below
AI-augmented teams can feel dramatically faster while the company does not ship proportionally faster. Coding accelerates, but specification, coordination, review, testing, approvals, security, evidence, and release management remain human-paced.
The article will name the plateau as a structural problem: task acceleration inside the old SDLC does not remove the translation tax between intent, context, code, quality, governance, and release.
CTO: The plateau appears when code gets faster but the lifecycle remains unchanged.
CIO: Tool ROI will disappoint if governance, review, and evidence stay bolted onto human workflows.
AI leader: Diagnose where context breaks before asking where prompts can improve.
Breaking the plateau requires changing the unit of work from conversation to contract.