Trusting AI: evaluation as engineering discipline

For decades, software quality has been a solved organizational problem, or at least a well-understood one. Teams write tests. Tests run automatically. When a change breaks something, the pipeline catches it before it reaches production. This discipline, built up painfully over thirty years of software engineering practice, is why modern development teams can ship multiple … Read more

Who needs data when you can create it?

Over the last decade, many of the companies I work with through Software Center have made significant investments in data. Sensors have been deployed, systems instrumented and pipelines built to collect and store vast amounts of information. In principle, this should provide a strong foundation for data- and AI-driven innovation. In practice, however, a recurring … Read more

The power of building two-sided markets

Two-sided markets are among the most powerful business models in the digital economy. Instead of selling a product to a single customer group, you build a platform that connects two distinct communities that benefit from interacting with each other. The platform becomes valuable precisely because it attracts both sides simultaneously. Each new participant increases the … Read more

The data advantage

Over the last decade, companies have increasingly discovered that the most valuable assets they possess aren’t necessarily their products, their brands or even their intellectual property. It’s their data. Data about customers, markets, operations and competitors has become the raw material from which modern companies derive insights, predictions and, ultimately, competitive advantage. However, collecting and … Read more

User feedback as code: virtual users in AI-driven value loops

One of the defining shifts in modern software development has been the gradual automation of feedback. We no longer wait for quarterly reviews to understand performance; we instrument systems, collect telemetry, run experiments and close loops continuously. Yet, one feedback loop has remained stubbornly manual: user feedback. From a Radical and continuous value delivery perspective, … Read more

Data as infrastructure

We’ve explored how modern software-intensive companies must move beyond projects and Agile rituals toward continuous value delivery, superset platforms, data- and AI-driven learning loops and autonomous cross-functional teams. These aren’t isolated concepts, but they form a coherent operating model that I’ve coined Radical. But beneath all of them lies a deeper, more fundamental layer: data … Read more

Cross-functional teams: from autonomy to accountability

For many years, organizations have talked about cross-functional teams as a desirable end state. The idea is appealing: Bring together people with different skills, remove handovers and let teams move faster. In practice, companies struggle with creating effective cross-functional teams. The teams may be created and have the right form but fail to embrace the … Read more

The AI-driven company: conclusion

Over the last months, this series has explored the transition toward becoming an AI-driven company, with a particular focus on software-intensive systems industries such as automotive, industrial automation, telecommunications, energy and manufacturing equipment. These sectors face a unique constellation of challenges: long product lifecycles, safety-critical functions, complex supply chains, heterogeneous technology stacks and deeply embedded … Read more

The AI-driven company: super-agents

Humans are the first and only species that possess reasoning capabilities beyond the most basic ones that are exhibited by other mammals. We build amazing infrastructures, put people on the moon, can talk to anyone on the planet at any point in time using phones and create advanced medication and procedures to treat people who … Read more