The evolution of software development environments has been a journey from per-developer environments to multi-tenancy, where the focus has shifted from the developer to the change. This shift is driven by the advent of coding agents, which enable developers to run multiple agent sessions simultaneously, leading to a surge in the number of changes in flight. As a result, the traditional concept of a tenant, which was once defined by the developer, has now evolved to encompass the change itself. This transformation is crucial for platform engineering, as it allows for more efficient resource allocation and management. The new tenant, the change, has specific requirements that differ from person-level tenancy. It must be nearly free to create, isolate only the changed components, and have a lifecycle bound to the change itself, not a ticket or timer. Platform teams already employ this approach in production, but it's not consistently applied to the platform that builds the product. By treating every change as a tenant, platform teams can align their practices with the multi-tenancy playbook used in production, ensuring that the platform is designed to handle the increased demand from coding agents. This shift in perspective is essential for organizations to effectively manage the growing number of changes in flight and to support an agent-native software development lifecycle (SDLC). Embracing change-level tenancy will enable organizations to optimize their infrastructure and workflows, leading to more efficient and scalable software development processes.
