I stopped telling engineers to 'just try AI' and started giving them a failing test

For the first three months after we rolled out AI coding tools, my advice to engineers who asked how to get started was: "just try it on your next task." That advice was well-intentioned and almost completely useless.

The problem with "just try it"

"Just try it" puts the entire cognitive load on the learner. They have to pick a task, figure out the tool's interface, formulate a useful prompt, evaluate the output, and decide whether it was worth the effort — all at once.

The failing test approach

We changed the approach for the next pilot group. Instead of open-ended exploration, we gave each person a very specific exercise: clone a real repo, check out a branch with one failing test, and use Claude Code to make it pass in 30 minutes.

The results

Four weeks after the lab, 80% of that pilot group was using Claude Code at least weekly. The engineers told us what changed: "I did not understand what it was good at until I used it on a real task with a clear goal."