* AI-native organizations work best with well-defined boundaries and decoupled services * Software engineering has discovered and proven key practices for scale and speed over 30 years * Leaders must apply these software engineering concepts to the entire knowledge work organization * The ETANO program provides the awareness and uplift than non-technical leaders need to succeed
Ultimately, AI will not manage itself, nor will it inherently understand your business goals. It requires deliberate design constraints and cross-functional human stewardship to guide its immense potential. The opportunity is not to replace teams with AI, but to supercharge cross-functional teams with AI infrastructure. By treating AI as the variable infrastructure it truly is, protecting…
One of the fundamental principles behind the AI-native operating model Bounded™ is that "Bounded Agency" is the core of success with AI. We must mandate deliberate, designed limits to an agent's scope of operation. Frameworks like Stackmint align with these principles to provide the necessary guardrails and address the execution challenges.
Just as musicians must interpret a composer’s intent when playing historical music, professionals in large enterprises must interpret the intent of their executives. In both scenarios, the "notes on the page" may seem perfectly clear to the author, but direct access to that individual is typically impossible for the people performing the actual work. A convincing execution of intent requires a…
In a disrupted market, you must remember one key thing: organizations hire human beings for the sole purpose of solving specific problems. Executives are burdened with overwhelming daily challenges, and they hire people to take problems off their plates. Leaders constantly struggle to make decisions with incomplete data, demonstrate return on investment (ROI), navigate complex compliance, and…
When AI initiatives struggle, it shows up quite quickly: 1. Ownership isn’t clear 2. Access is too broad 3. Teams don’t know where responsibility starts or ends At that point, it’s not just a technology issue but an organizational one. In this post, I’ve explored the idea of bounded agency and why it’s becoming a key factor in successful AI adoption.
The foundational principles for rapid value delivery remain the same whether you are using humans, AI, or both: plenty of the right context, clearly stated missions, clear success criteria, bounded scope, and explicit guardrails. Organizations that focus on these principles for humans will be the ones who easily translate them into the agentic AI world, ultimately unlocking rapid, high-quality,…
This post is a genuine reflection on 2025, and honestly, it has been a momentous year for me. It’s easy to get lost in the day-to-day excitement and stress of running a business, but taking this time to reflect has been incredibly valuable.
For senior product leaders and technologists, managing the AI transformation demands a shift in mindset. We must move past the excitement of new features and focus on the deep, foundational work of ensuring fast flow of value without compromising user trust or safety.
“…the shift [to a product operating model] requires far more than just rebranding teams; it demands a rigorous, uncomfortable self-examination of your organization's purpose, value structure, and, crucially, its financial habits.”
By focusing on these core principles - clarity of purpose, empowering teams to steward outcomes, and leading transformation by changing ourselves and trusting others - AI becomes a powerful accelerant, not a disruption.
Success requires clearly articulated intent and purpose to navigate rapidly changing environments effectively. By applying the Team Topologies principles—focusing on the fast flow of value and enabling Economies of Empowerment—organizations, even very large ones, can scale at speed and achieve significant agility. This approach has consistently led to clear business results across diverse…
CI/CD is not simply a tool set or minor detail for modern software delivery. On the contrary, CI/CD is a fundamental approach to software delivery that sets apart the leaders from the followers. By investing in good CI/CD tooling and practices, an organization can discover and sustain ways of working and software designs that encourage a fast flow of value. In particular, by listening to the…
So what can we learn from SRE at Google? The SRE approach can clearly be a key part of success with large-scale cloud software. However, simply adding a separate SRE team misunderstands how Google actually implements SRE. In fact, SRE teams are optional at Google and software engineering teams must work hard to persuade SRE teams that their software has good operability.