Forrester's 2025 Predictions: AI's Impact on Automation and Software Development

Predictions 2025: GenAI, Citizen Developers, And Caution Influence Automation

Sustained interest and experimentation in AI will support learning and steady progress in 2025. Generative AI (genAI) and edge intelligence will drive robotics projects that will combine cognitive and physical automation, for example. Citizen developers will start to build genAI-infused automation apps, leveraging their domain expertise. All promising, but challenges remain that will hinder progress in 2025. We are just beginning to understand how to manage a diverse and growing number of AI models and are faced with new questions. What level of autonomy achieves the right balance of risk and efficiency? How and when do we put humans in the loop? How do we reliably extract and provide enterprise data for AI? Despite obvious benefits and enthusiasm, these implementation challenges will hinder 2025 gains. Out of all the AI agent discussion, businesses will find only moderate success, mostly in less critical employee support applications. GenAI's ability to create autonomous, unstructured workflow patterns and adapt to the dynamic nature of real-world processes will have to wait. Here's what this means: The key to automation success in 2025 will be balancing AI innovation with the scale and reliability of traditional automation tools and methods. To help you strike that balance, here's a look at three of Forrester's top automation predictions for 2025: The coming year promises to be a dynamic period for automation, characterized by growing enthusiasm and activity surrounding agentic and AI-driven operations. 2025 will serve as a crucial stepping stone to prepare for integration of physical robots, digital systems, and human endpoints. The enterprises that make the most of these automation trends will be those that learn to balance the risk and reward of automation and target the right use cases for their organization. Forrester clients can read our full Predictions 2025: Automation report to get more detail about each of these predictions and read additional predictions. Set up a Forrester guidance session to discuss these predictions or plan out your 2025 automation strategy. If you aren't yet a client, you can download our complimentary Predictions guide, which covers more of our top technology and security predictions for 2025. Get additional complimentary resources, including webinars, on the Predictions 2025 hub.

Predictions 2025: GenAI Reality Bites Back For Software Developers

Our 2025 predictions for software development come on the heels of a year that saw nearly every software tooling vendor incorporate (or plan to incorporate) a generative (genAI) "copilot" capability into their tools. And there's good reason for them to do so, as Forrester's most recent Developer Survey indicates that 49% of developers are expecting to use or are already using a genAI assistant in the coding phase of software development. Forrester refers to genAI coding assistants as TuringBots, and we feel that genAI will become a pervasive force through all phases of software delivery, not just coding. But AI assistants are only the beginning of the genAI software development revolution. In our report, The Rise Of Application Generation Platforms, we explain how genAI will change the very definition of what software development is over the next 10 years. For the near term in 2025 we've kept our predictions real and as actionable as possible so that leaders can be prepared for the genAI reality that awaits them. In the area of software development for 2025, we predict that: Read our full Predictions 2025: Software Development report to get more detail about each of these predictions and read additional predictions. Set up a Forrester guidance session to discuss these predictions or plan out your 2025 software development strategy. If you aren't yet a client, you can download our complimentary Predictions guide, which covers more of our top technology and security predictions for 2025. Get additional complimentary resources, including webinars, on the Predictions 2025 hub.