Endava and Codex: An Agentic Revolution in Software

Endava and the Adoption of Codex

Endava, a global software outsourcing company, was among the first to adopt Codex, a tool that has transformed its way of working. With engineers spread across Europe, America, and Asia, Endava focuses on delivering high-quality software for various sectors, including banking, insurance, retail, and media. According to Joe Dunleavy, Regional CTO for Europe at Endava, the integration of Codex has allowed the company to shift from manual code production to overseeing the code generated by Codex, significantly improving the quality of their output.

"We have moved from producing a large part of the code ourselves to supervising the work that Codex can produce," says Joe Dunleavy. "The quality of production has simply exploded."

An Agentic Organization

Endava now defines itself as an agentic organization, where the expertise of senior engineers is codified into agents that collaborate with teams throughout the client project lifecycle. Joe Dunleavy emphasizes that Codex has enabled small teams to deliver substantial value in a reduced timeframe. "What Codex has really helped us do is allow small teams of people to provide enormous value in a very short time," he explains.

Collaboration Among Engineers

Mike Krolnik, Global SVP of Agentic Architecture at Endava, explains that Codex has changed the collaboration dynamics between senior and junior engineers. Senior architects can now convey their complex knowledge through Codex, making this information accessible to junior members. This allows junior developers to take on tasks typically reserved for seniors while benefiting from Codex's guidance on best practices and architectural decisions.

"Senior architects like me, coming from complex environments, can articulate what we want, and Codex makes that accessible to the more junior members of the team," Krolnik explains. "And from a junior perspective, they can adopt this tool and create senior-level, mature results."

Knowledge Transfer and Mentorship

In practice, this means giving junior developers tasks that would normally be reserved for senior engineers, with Codex acting as a guide on best practices and architectural decisions. "I can give Codex a perspective, and when they work, it helps them understand that perspective," Krolnik explains. "They can ask questions about things they don't understand. As a learning tool during development, I can take my experience, codify it, and ensure that Codex works with the team to teach them better practices in architecture and software development."

This knowledge transfer becomes one of the core values and benefits of an agentic organization. Senior judgment, which typically comes from years of collaboration, code reviews, and mentorship, becomes something a team can work on in real-time. This changes how mentorship can occur for junior developers within an organization. A single senior perspective, encoded in Codex, can guide multiple less experienced teams in parallel.

"Codex has matured as a tool. We use it for requirements analysis, design, specifications, development, and operations; it is a general office agent throughout our lifecycle," adds Krolnik.

Reducing Work Timelines

The use of Codex has allowed Endava to significantly compress work timelines. For example, a complex project involving the analysis of thousands of pages of contracts was reduced from several weeks to just a few hours by using Codex to generate functional specifications from meeting transcripts. This time-saving is also reflected in client interactions, where teams can produce design documents and diagrams in real-time.

A recent inter-team engagement illustrates what this looks like in practice. Endava's legal team presented a complex issue to engineering: thousands of pages of contracts to review against a specific set of criteria. Translating what the lawyers needed into something engineering could build would normally take weeks of back-and-forth. Instead, Krolnik's team recorded an in-depth two-hour meeting with the legal stakeholders, fed the transcript into Codex, and used it to generate a functional requirements specification. What could have taken one or two weeks of revisions was compressed into two one-hour meetings and produced a usable specification.

Leadership Lessons

Endava shares some lessons learned from its experience with Codex. It is crucial to capture the judgment of senior architects in Codex so that juniors can benefit from it. Codex should be viewed as a versatile office agent, not just a simple coding assistant. Finally, it is recommended to start with non-coding workflows to discover the full value of Codex.

"Codex amplifies every skill I have, and everyone who learns to use it sees every skill they possess amplified," concludes Mike Krolnik.