Scaling AI: From Activity to Impact

Developers of the System, Not the Code: Inside Next Insurance's Agentic DLC w/ Shay Mandel

"We are now developers, not of the code. We are developers of the system." Most AI coding rollouts end up with faster typing and the same delivery system. Shay Mandel's team at Ergo-Next Insurance went after the system instead. They broke the whole product development lifecycle into skills an agent runs — problem definition, PRD, engineering review, technical design, implementation, testing, code review — and told everyone to stop writing the artifacts and start fixing the thing that writes them. 00:00 Welcome, and why this conversation 00:31 Shay Mandel, Ergo-Next Insurance, and 200 people building product 03:46 What you should get out of this conversation 05:14 Breaking the development lifecycle into skills 06:37 The engineering review skill that runs before engineering reviews 08:38 How the engineers actually feel about it 10:40 Developers of the system, not of the code 11:11 Auto-improvement loops: pointing an agent at a KPI 14:21 Where humans still decide, and where they don't 21:21 Digital twins of your best insurance experts 22:20 Ask-engineering and ask-product agents across time zones 24:21 What changed in how the work is managed, and what didn't 29:24 Epic-level Kanban and flow metrics for human and agent handoffs 30:39 Advice for leaders starting the journey 31:32 Setting expectations: 60% to 95%, and why the last 5% needs a human 33:29 When you tell a PM to open a terminal, you lose them 35:24 Avoiding skill sprawl: one shared brain, not 200 37:44 Beyond product and engineering: actuaries, finance, HR "They are not supposed to write anything on their own anymore. They just need to fix the skills or fix the context." - Shay Mandel "The initial version will probably be sixty or seventy percent accurate, and we'll get to ninety or ninety-five. The extra five percent is why we need a human in the loop." - Shay Mandel "You need to think from a product perspective, even about your AI harness and your AI capabilities." - Yuval Yeret Links and resources Shay on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaymandel/ Product Leaders AI meetup: https://luma.com/ProductLeaders.ai Yuval's Linkedin – https://www.linkedin.com/in/yuvalyeret/ Scaling AI: From Activity to Impact — yuvalyeret.com/insights Don't Redesign Your Process Yet. Change Who Writes the Artifacts. – https://yuvalyeret.com/blog/change-who-writes-the-artifacts-before-your-process How Next Insurance Broke Its Whole Lifecycle Into Agent Skills – https://yuvalyeret.com/blog/how-next-insurance-broke-its-lifecycle-into-agent-skills

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Beyond Token Caps w/ Tomer Elias: How Enterprises Actually Measure AI Impact

Most enterprise AI conversations get stuck on the wrong number: how many tokens an employee should be allowed to burn. Tomer Elias argues the cap is the least interesting question in the room. The hard part is attribution, knowing whether any of that spend moved a business metric at all. We compare notes on what enterprises are actually doing right now, why AI keeps exposing organizational problems that predate it, and what has to be in place before "AI impact" means anything. About the Guest Tomer Elias is a product executive with more than 15 years leading startups from zero to one and one to 100, through unicorn and IPO stages. His focus has been AI and data throughout. He was part of the first AI lab in Israel, helped build a cybersecurity unicorn, and served on a committee defining agentic identity standards alongside OpenAI, AWS, and Cloudflare. He is currently mapping how enterprises adopt AI and where they sit on the maturity curve. Chapters 00:00 Why this conversation 00:54 Tomer's background: AI labs, a cyber unicorn, agentic identity standards 02:26 What actually changed with gen AI: ambiguity 02:50 Human operating systems and agent operating systems 06:17 Setting a token cap, and why the number isn't the point 07:19 Measuring outcomes was broken long before AI 08:43 Activity, output, outcome, impact: what the work really looks like 10:55 AI surfaces the organizational DNA you never fixed 11:19 The factory lens: an industrial engineer's view of the enterprise 14:31 Goldratt and the constraint: where AI actually pays 15:56 Two levels of observability: spec conformance vs. value 19:00 A worked example: meeting transcripts as context 20:33 Kill criteria and staged funding for AI experiments 22:41 Build vs. buy, and the question nobody asks first 25:09 The rise of the business engineer 25:50 The digital twin that knows your stack 28:06 Data infrastructure: the real enterprise blocker 30:05 Closing the loop: telemetry, usage, decisions 34:12 Psychological safety and toxic token usage 39:32 Security guardrails: MCP safety, DLP, sandboxes 42:54 Who builds beyond product and engineering? 46:54 Teaching product skills instead of staffing PMs Notable Quotes "AI puts the credit card at the hand of the employees. But without the oversight and training, costs can spiral. But high usage doesn't really mean a bad thing. It's not good or bad. The question is what's the impact that you get out of that." — Tomer Elias "Once you implement AI in your organization, it surfaces your DNA and the organizational culture that didn't change for a while and now needs to change if you really want to push impact with AI." — Tomer Elias "Any improvement away from the bottleneck or from the constraint is meaningless, and any improvement directly at the constraint is a real multiplier." — Yuval Yeret "If it's a healthy DNA, people would feel safe to experiment. And if it's a toxic culture, you would get toxic token usage and activity theater." — Yuval Yeret Links and Resources Tomer Elias on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomer-elias1 If you're working on turning AI activity into business impact, I write about this every week in the Scaling w/ Agility newsletter. Scaling AI: From Activity to Impact — yuvalyeret.com The Scaling w/ Agility Newsletter – yuvalyeret.com/insights Yuval's Linkedin – https://www.linkedin.com/in/yuvalyeret/ How to Measure AI Impact Beyond Token Caps – https://yuvalyeret.com/blog/how-to-measure-ai-impact-beyond-token-caps Is Your Agent Harness Still Learning? Check Its Last Updated Time. – https://yuvalyeret.com/blog/your-agent-config-is-standard-work

Why the Pivot? Tracing the Line from Scaling Agility to AI Impact

In this special episode, host Yuval Yeret flips the script with guest Philip Morgan, an expert on positioning and point of view. They discuss the recent rebranding of the podcast and dive deep into the striking parallels between historical Agile Theater and the emerging risks of AI Theater. Discover why measuring raw activity—like tokens consumed or lines of code written—is a trap, and how organizations can shift toward measuring tangible business outcomes and flow efficiency. You'll also learn about Unreasonable Agility and what happens when R&D goes on the offense. Chapters 00:08 The Agile Shift in AI and Podcast Rebranding 01:07 Philip Morgan's Background in Positioning 02:36 Yuval's Role as a Plumber for Engineering Pipelines 06:53 How Pain and Opportunity Drive Change (Gillette & Biotech Examples) 15:51 Introspective and Compound Engineering 17:08 Exploring AI Theater vs. Agile Theater 21:44 Shifting Bottlenecks: From Coding to Code Review and Adoption 28:04 The Trap of Vanity Metrics and Token Maxing 33:26 Moving from Output to Outcomes and Business Impact 40:50 Breaking the Status Quo and Resisting AI Mandates 56:21 Unreasonable Agility: Taking R&D on the Offense Notable Quotes "If you want to succeed with it, find somebody who talks about the principles, who understands it in depth, who can make changes while still being aligned to the spirit." - Yuval Yeret "People will find a way to use AI without really getting any value. They will find a way to generate a lot of activity, but not really create any change in the impact." - Yuval Yeret "There's a sense in which it seems like Agile was sort of waiting for AI." - Philip Morgan Ready to stop measuring tokens and start measuring real business outcomes? Reach out to Yuval at yuvalyeret.com or yuval@yeretagility.com to discuss how to build unreasonable agility into your organization. About PhilipPhilip Morgan is a positioning and point-of-view expert who helps independent service providers thrive by leveraging effective market positioning. He is the author of multiple books on the topic and shares his insights freely at ⁠philipmorgan.net⁠.Scaling AI: From Activity to Impact — yuvalyeret.com The Scaling w/ Agility Newsletter – yuvalyeret.com/insights Yuval's Linkedin – https://www.linkedin.com/in/yuvalyeret/ Agility Might Have Been Waiting for AI – https://yuvalyeret.com/blog/agility-might-have-been-waiting-for-ai

Claude's /goal Feature Just Exposed A Real Challenge With AI Agents

Claude and Codex have a relatively new feature — `/goal` — that lets you set a completion condition and keep the AI running autonomously until it's met. This capability exposes a real challenge with agentic AI and explains why its shifting the bottleneck to its assymetric capabilities in different stages and domains of value creation. 00:09 The new /goal capability — what it does and how it works 02:07 What the official examples reveal: all output, no outcome 03:02 The missing examples — what outcome-oriented goals would actually look like 04:00 Output vs. outcome: why the gap matters for AI impact 04:45 The real bottleneck — observability and closing the feedback loop 05:45 Live demo: setting an outcome-oriented /goal on a blog post 08:30 What the loop did — changes made, open items, what's next Are your AI goals output-oriented or outcome-oriented? What are you doing to enable outcome-oriented goals in your AI sessions? And as a final thought - What would happen if your human teams were empowered to seek a /goal? Insights on Scaling AI from Activity to Impact Join the Activity to Impact Conversation on Linkedin Goal-Based Loop Engineering: From Spec-Driven to Outcome-Driven – https://yuvalyeret.com/blog/ai-agent-completion-goals-aim-at-outcomes

You can 10x engineering and still not 10x the business

AI coding assistants are genuinely good now — coding, debugging, tests, docs. But faster engineering output doesn't automatically become faster business impact. AI has quietly moved the bottleneck: from building working software to validating whether that software creates value for anyone who adopts it. This episode uses flow thinking, cumulative flow, and the theory of constraints to help leaders see where AI speed is creating congestion — and where human + AI effort should be aimed next. Key takeaways:• AI creates speed, not automatic value — speed only counts if it improves end-to-end flow• AI impact is asymmetric: engineering scales faster than discovery, adoption, and value validation• Local productivity can create system-level congestion once the bottleneck moves• Tech debt hides the new bottleneck — engineering absorbs extra capacity into easy-to-validate cleanup• Inventory is the signal: watch where work waits, loops, or gets reworked• Subordinate human and AI effort to the current constraint — don't spread enablement evenly Chapters:00:00 — The promise of AI in engineering02:04 — Why AI's impact is asymmetric05:02 — Spotting the moved bottleneck07:56 — From activity to impact: visualizing flow10:19 — Driving adoption, not just output13:15 — Subordinating people and AI to the constraint15:47 — Continuous improvement and real value Monday morning diagnostic — pick one AI initiative and ask: What outcome should it improve? Where does work wait or get reworked? If this team gets 2x faster, which group becomes the constraint — and what AI support should be redirected toward them? "You can 10x engineering and still not 10x the business. Don't force everybody to scale - help the constraint scale." If this helped, share it with a leader trying to turn AI activity into real business value.

Avoiding AI Theater: Strategies for Real Impact

Yuval Yeret explores the evolution of AI adoption in organizations, from activity and output to impactful results. He discusses common pitfalls of AI theater, the importance of focusing on real impact, and strategies to leverage AI for organizational bottlenecks. 00:00 The Journey from AI Activity to Impact 03:59 Understanding AI Output and Its Limitations 07:24 Achieving AI Impact Across the Organization Dive deeper into how to shift AI from Activity to Impact Follow Yuval on Linkedin for insights on AI adoption and impact, AI-native organizational strategy, AI bottlenecks, scaling AI intelligently, AI in engineering, and beyond. Why Your AI Effort Has Activity But Not Impact – https://yuvalyeret.com/blog/your-ai-problem-might-not-be-an-ai-problem

Beyond AI Hype: Building an AI-Powered Organization w/ Kumar Venugopal, CTO of Zoetis

The new season of the podcast explores a question that's top of mind for many technology, product, and business leaders these days - How do you scale AI from Activity to Impact? What should your "ways of working" look like to enable you to build great products with AI? To use AI to become a 10x organization? Today's conversation is with a CTO who's working in the trenches to scale the impact of AI on their organization. Kumar Venugopal, CTO of Zoetis, the world's largest animal health company, is redesigning how the entire organization makes decisions, builds products, and defines roles — with AI at the center. In this episode you'll learn what it actually takes to move from personal productivity to organizational transformation, how Zoetis is targeting a 26-day infrastructure workflow down to 2-3 days using a three-agent pipeline, why design thinking is the skill that separates useful AI output from useless output, and why agile matters more in the AI era, not less. "The real opportunity with AI isn't strictly automation. It's how you embed it into how we make decisions." — Kumar Venugopal "We are doubling down on Agile. Even the agentic approach has to be built with a minimum viable product approach, with proper user stories. The cycles are a lot faster, but the process doesn't go away." — Kumar Venugopal Chapters: 00:00 Introduction — from 8086 to the AI era 03:01 Why this AI wave feels systemically different 05:30 AI in veterinary diagnostics and decision-making 08:12 The four levels of AI integration 11:01 Infrastructure automation — 26 days to 2-3 days 13:57 Design thinking as the missing AI skill 16:29 Build vs. buy — can vibe coding replace SaaS? 19:26 Who does this work and what's the real constraint 21:58 Three competencies every employee needs 25:11 Why Agile is more important now, not less 27:45 Scaling AI beyond the technology organization 30:30 Kumar's three-step change model for leaders Follow Kumar on LinkedIn for practitioner-level insights from inside a live AI transformation. Zoetis CTO on AI Operating-Model Change – https://yuvalyeret.com/blog/from-personal-productivity-to-ai-operating-model-change

When One Product Needs More Than One Leader: Getting Multi-Team Product Ownership Right

The question isn't how many product owners you need. It's how many genuine product problems your product actually has. In the final episode of this three-part series, Yuval Yeret works through the most complex version of the product ownership question: what happens when a product has grown to multiple teams? The default answer — one team, one product owner — often creates titles without real ownership, especially when teams are organized around technical components rather than product value. Yuval walks through when multi-team product leadership genuinely works, when it doesn't, and what the more uncomfortable conversation underneath usually turns out to be about. This episode lands the series with the most structurally challenging scenario, and connects product ownership topology directly to team design — one of the most consequential and often avoided conversations in scaling organizations. Essential listening for product directors, heads of engineering, and CTOs navigating a growing product org. The right question: Not "how many product owners do we need?" but "how many genuine product problems does this product have?" — a reframe that clarifies the structure instantly. Mini-products inside a larger product: When teams are organized around real, independently deliverable slices of product value, multi-leader structures work well. The razor example makes this concrete: shaving experience, handle design, packaging, and price viability are all genuine product problems that can be owned semi-independently. The symptom vs. the diagnosis: If your teams can't deliver value independently, giving them product owner titles won't fix it. The ownership problem is a symptom. The team design problem is the diagnosis. "Product ownership only really makes sense when a team can deliver something of genuine value independently. When they can take a customer problem, work on it, and ship something that actually moves the needle — without needing three other teams to complete it first." "Giving each of those teams a product owner doesn't change the underlying dynamic. It adds titles without adding real ownership. And what you often end up with is product owners who feel like they should have more authority than they do, and teams that are still fundamentally waiting on each other." "If your teams can't deliver value independently, the product ownership question is a symptom. The underlying question is whether the team structure is set up to enable that kind of independence — and if not, what it would take to get there."— Yuval Yeret Related reading on yuvalyeret.com: When and Why Do We Need a Product Operating Model? Are your teams structured around genuine product problems they can own end to end? Or around technical components that make independent ownership hard? Experiment to try this week: Pick one team in your product org. Ask them: what's the last thing you shipped that delivered value to a customer without depending on another team to complete it? If they struggle to answer, you have a team design question hiding inside your product ownership question. Yuval Yeret helps leaders maximize outcomes through strategic, nuanced agility. As both a SAFe Fellow/SPCT and Professional Scrum Trainer, Yuval is frequently brought in to help organizations evolve from agile theater and feature factories toward product-oriented agility — building on existing investments rather than starting over. 📩 Start here: Scaling w/ Agility Crash Course — a free email course to help you scale without falling into the process theater trap. 🔗 Follow Yuval on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/yuvalyeret

Who Actually Owns Your Product? Why the PM/PO Split Often Creates More Confusion Than It Solves

Two titles, one product, and a gap in accountability that's quietly costing you more than you think. In this solo episode, Yuval Yeret tackles one of the most common structural problems in product organizations: the split between product manager and product owner that creates ambiguity instead of clarity. Drawing on client patterns across hardware, software, and platform organizations, Yuval unpacks the misunderstanding at the root of this confusion — and makes the case that product ownership is an accountability, not a workload. The result is a practical framework for knowing when one role is enough, when splitting genuinely makes sense, and how to tell the difference. Accountability vs. workload: Product ownership means being accountable for the value the team creates — not writing every story or attending every standup. Confusing the two leads to a split that solves the wrong problem. The proxy problem: When someone gets the product owner title but not real decision-making authority, you've created a proxy. Proxies manage queues. Teams that work with proxies quickly learn the real decisions happen somewhere else. The no test: Can the person who's supposed to own your product say no to a feature request without escalating? If not, the structure isn't supporting the accountability. "Product ownership doesn't mean doing all the inbound work yourself. It means being accountable for the value the team creates. Owning the outcome." "When you split the role and give someone the product owner title but not the real decision-making authority — when they're essentially relaying direction from the product manager to the team — you've created a proxy. Someone who manages a queue rather than owns a product." "Teams pick up on this pretty quickly. They learn that the real decisions happen somewhere else. So they start going around the product owner, escalating directly, or just making calls themselves and hoping it works out." If you're not sure whether your product org is set up to make real product decisions or just manage requests, that ambiguity is worth resolving. Experiment to try this week: Ask your product owner (or product manager) to say no to the next non-critical feature request that comes in — without checking with anyone first. Watch what happens. The reaction will tell you whether the authority matches the title. Yuval Yeret helps leaders maximize outcomes through strategic, nuanced agility. As both a SAFe Fellow/SPCT and Professional Scrum Trainer, Yuval is frequently brought in to help organizations evolve from agile theater and feature factories toward product-oriented agility — building on existing investments rather than starting over. 📩 Start here: Scaling w/ Agility Crash Course — a free email course to help you scale without falling into the process theater trap. 🔗 Follow Yuval on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/yuvalyeret

Why Your Product Owners/Managers Can't Say No

In hardware-software companies, life sciences, and industrial tech, a familiar pattern emerges: a platform team serving multiple internal customers, one product owner caught between competing roadmaps, and no one with the standing to make the tough calls. In this episode, Yuval unpacks why this happens, what it costs, and what a more workable structure actually looks like. What you'll hear: Why platform teams often end up without real product leadership even when someone has the product owner title The difference between having a title and having organizational standing How escalation patterns are usually a structural signal, not a performance problem One approach to giving platform teams genuine product direction — and why it's usually less disruptive than it sounds From Shared Service to Strategic PlatformIf your platform team stopped shipping tomorrow, what would happen to your other products? If the answer is trouble — that team is one of the most strategically important things in your portfolio. It just doesn't look like it because it doesn't have a price tag on it. Strategic things need real ownership. This is part of a three-episode series on product ownership topology considerations in the trenches: Episode B (this one): The internal platform problem Episode A: One product, one team — who actually owns it? Episode C: Multiple teams — when do you need more than one product leader? About Yuval Yuval Yeret helps midmarket and scaleup leaders shift from product development and business growth friction to impact through nuanced product thinking and agility applied in the tech/product org and beyond. For more insights check out www.yuvalyeret.com/insights Follow Yuval's Linkedin – https://www.linkedin.com/in/yuvalyeret/

In the Spotlight - Building and Operating Your Revenue Machine

Most sales leaders are stuck running the machine. Few stop to ask whether the machine is even working.In this episode of In the Spotlight, Roi Carmel sits down with Yuval to break apart the two hats every revenue leader wears — operating the team and building it — and why most teams only do one.Yuval has spent over two decades helping organizations build self-improving teams, starting in product and engineering and now working directly with go-to-market leaders. His approach borrows hard-earned lessons from product development and applies them to how sales and marketing teams adopt new processes, frameworks, and tools.In this conversation, Yuval and Roi cover:· Why leaders who only operate eventually stop improving· The 30% adoption problem — and why most change initiatives fail before they start· Why deploying a framework like MEDDPICC isn't a project, it's a journey· How Computer Associates launched a competitive campaign in 6 weeks while other divisions were still planning· Why co-creating change with sales teams beats inflicting change on them· What product-market fit has to do with internal tool adoption· The role of cross-functional teams when you're building the system, not just running itThis isn't about running more sprints. It's about building teams that learn while they sell.Connect with the Spotlight Community:🌐 www.spotlight.ai🔗 www.linkedin.com/company/spotlight-ai▶️ / @spotlightaivideo Building and Operating Your Revenue Machine – https://yuvalyeret.com/blog/in-the-spotlight-building-and-operating-your-revenue-machine

Tackling the Bureaucracy That Stalls Scale-up Growth using Stewardship and Agility w/ Michelle Holiday and Tyson Bertmaring

Why "Rules Written in Blood" Kill Agency—and How Stewardship Restores FlowWhen companies scale, the default move is to add "boxes and rules" to maintain control. But this functional isolation often creates massive friction, turning G&A into a bottleneck instead of an accelerator. In this episode, Tyson Bertmaring and Michelle Holliday join Yuval to explore how shifting from rigid management to "Stewardship" allows your organization to evolve as a high-capacity living ecosystem rather than a bureaucratic machine. Inside this Episode (00:00) The G&A Specialization Trap — Why splitting into silos for efficiency actually slows you down. (04:44) Rules vs. Trust — How to stop punishing the many for the past mistakes of the few. (10:18) Goals, Principles, and Rules — Building a framework that gives employees context instead of just a checklist. (15:05) Stewardship as Organizational Gardening — Why you must tend the "relational soil" where growth happens. (24:06) Blurring the Org Chart — Leveraging overlapping responsibilities to catch value that typically slips through the cracks. (39:49) Identifying "Zombie" Policies — How to audit the relics of past bureaucracy currently draining your team. (52:32) The Bird’s-Eye View of G&A — Transitioning to agile, interdependent service teams that scale with the business. Notable Quotes & Aha Moments "If we trust people to work on million-dollar experiments, we should probably trust them to make $10,000 decisions." "Stewardship is recognizing the complexity of an organization and knowing what should be controlled versus what should be tended." "We accept silos as 'just how work is,' but those boxes are exactly what prevents flow." "The only way out of the 'rat race' is to collaborate—it leads to belonging rather than isolation." Deepen the Relationship Connect with Tyson, who’s working on evolving partnership ecosystems in Biotech Dive deeper into the world of Stewardship in Michelle’s book The Age of Thrivability Your Next Step: Take the bird’s eye view Invite a few people from around your G&A organization to take the bird’s eye view with you. What do you see? What’s flowing? What’s clogged? What could be the benefit of taking the bird’s eye view more often? Scaling w/ Agility with Yuval Yeret Yuval Yeret helps scale-up leaders build resilient, high-capacity, thriving ecosystems that drive real business results. Get more of Yuval’s insights on scaling organizations with agility. Tackling the Bureaucracy That Stalls Scale-Up Growth: Stewardship and Agility With Michelle Holliday and Tyson Bertmaring – https://yuvalyeret.com/blog/tackling-bureaucracy-with-stewardship-and-agility

Being Agile about Scaling Agile at Aras Software w/ Andrey Knourenko

In this conversation, Yuval and Andrey Knourenko discuss Aras Software's scaling journey. They reflect on the challenges faced during the transition, the impact of COVID-19, and the evolution of planning approaches and team structures. The discussion also touches on the influence of private equity on agile practices and the need for continuous improvement in agile methodologies, particularly in the context of emerging technologies such as AI. "You have to be agile about agile." "It's about the speed of the whole system." Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Scaling with Agility 00:57 Understanding Ares Software and Its Journey 03:38 Challenges in Scaling and the Need for Methodology 05:31 Implementing SAFe: Initial Steps and Training 06:46 Outcomes of SAFe Implementation 08:28 Impact of COVID-19 on Agile Practices 11:14 Improvements and Trade-offs with SAFe 14:21 Team Structure and Mentorship in Agile 17:28 Evolving Beyond SAFe: Exploring New Methodologies 19:58 Tweaks and Innovations in Agile Practices 22:46 Analyzing Development Processes 24:12 Managing Iterations and Team Dependencies 26:53 Empowered Teams and Agile Structures 29:31 Adapting Agile Practices 32:59 Impact of Private Equity on Agile Practices 37:58 Navigating AI's Influence on Development 40:57 Key Takeaways from the Agile Journey Follow Andrey on Linkedin Learn more about Aras Software and its journey towards agility Yuval Yeret is a business flow coach for the age of AI. Yuval is focused on helping mid-market and scale-up companies such as ARAS Software tackle hard shifts/inflection points and regain traction, speed, and impact through nuanced agility interventions. https://yuvalyeret.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/yuvalyeret/ Being Agile About Scaling Agile at Aras Software: A Conversation With Andrey Knourenko – https://yuvalyeret.com/blog/being-agile-about-scaling-agile-at-aras-software

Value w/o Risk? Wouldn't that be nice...

In this conversation, Yuval explores the intricate relationship between risk and value. He emphasizes the importance of understanding and managing risk to unlock potential value, particularly through de-risking strategies such as agile/iterative discovery-based execution. "Agile is risk-driven development - You're surfing that risk." 00:00 The Correlation Between Value and Risk 04:12 De-risking Strategies in Product Development 10:46 Agile as a Risk-Driven Approach Why Agile Is Really Risk-Driven Development – https://yuvalyeret.com/blog/value-without-risk-agile-as-risk-driven-development

How to Upgrade Your Scaling SMBs Operating System Without Losing Agility

At some point on the growth journey, most leaders reach a point at which they upgrade their organization’s operating system. (even if they don’t explicitly call it that) Way too often, this upgrade doesn’t result in immediate acceleration and traction. In many cases, it feels like the organization is working FOR the new structures and ways of working, rather than the other way around. The processes often seem too rigid and theatrical, rather than outcome-oriented. In this crossover episode with the Scrum.org Community Podcast, Yuval Yeret joins Scrum.org CEO Dave West to unpack why adding these operating systems often slows down most companies instead of making them faster: * The Founder’s Trap: Why the skills that get you to 30 people (and product-market fit) are the wrong skills to get you to 100. * Functional Fiefdoms: How organizing by “departments” (Sales, Marketing, Product) optimizes for silos and guarantees systemic slowdowns. * The “Responsible Adult” Problem: When new leaders, hired to bring order, inadvertently introduce bureaucracy that stifles the system. * Scaling Framework “Theater”: Why so many implementations of EOS, Scaling Up, and OKRs become activity checklists—and how you’re likely serving the framework instead of it serving you. * The Pragmatic Fix: How to break the bottleneck by organizing cross-functional teams around outcomes (like “pipeline health”) instead of org charts. 00:00 Introduction: The Paradox of Growth00:37 Scaling Challenges in Startups02:44 The Role of Responsible Adults in Scaling03:21 Why Scaling Slows Down Organizations12:18 Cross-Functional Teams and Market Segments20:29 Operating Systems for Scaling36:19 Final Thoughts and Reflections Interested in a deeper dive? Explore the role of operating systems and frameworks in regaining organizational traction - https://yuvalyeret.com/resources/mastering-organizational-traction-trail-map/ This podcast episode was recorded and published originally on the Scrum.org Community podcast: https://www.scrum.org/resources/scaling-smbs-without-losing-agility To hear more, visit yuvalyeret.substack.com Upgrade Your SMB's Operating System, Keep Agility – https://yuvalyeret.com/blog/how-to-upgrade-your-scaling-smbs-operating-system-without-losing-agility

How to Upgrade Your Organization's Operating System for the Age of AI

Episode Overview In this crossover episode with the Scrum.org Community Podcast, Yuval Yeret joins Scrum.org CEO Dave West to unpack why 95% of AI initiatives fail—not because of the tech, but because of outdated organizational operating systems. Together they explore how they’ve seen product thinking and empirical agility help leaders align strategy, product, and delivery to make AI deliver business impact. Together, they explore how mid-market and scale-up leaders can evolve their “Company Operating System” to become truly AI-ready: adaptive, outcome-driven, and designed for learning. Highlight Quotes / Concepts * “AI isn’t failing—our operating systems are.” * “Treat your company like a product—develop it with evidence, feedback, and intent.” * “Empiricism isn’t just for software teams. It’s how organizations survive uncertainty.” * “The best results come when leaders focus AI on their biggest business constraints, not shiny experiments.” Chapters * 00:00 Welcome * 02:35 Challenges in AI Adoption * 03:51 Transforming Organizational Operating Systems * 07:28 Product Thinking in AI * 19:06 Context Development for AI * 45:46 Final Thoughts and Takeaways Notable Quotes “Where people find gold with AI is when they use product techniques to think through strategy and execution—not when they chase shiny tools.” — Yuval Yeret “AI exposes every weakness in how your business learns.” — Dave West “Your operating system determines whether AI is a toy or a transformation.” — Yuval Yeret “Don’t replace humans with AI—replace bureaucracy with learning.” — Yuval Yeret Learn More: * Improving AI Impact using Agility-based Operating Systems * EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System) * OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) * Leveraging Evidence-Based Management to develop your company * Improvement Kata / Toyota Design System Is your organization’s operating system ready for AI? Take Yuval’s free AI-Ready Operating System Scorecard and find out where your business is leaking traction—and how to fix it before your next AI initiative stalls. 👉 https://scorecard.yeretagility.com/quiz/ai-traction-scorecard This podcast episode was recorded and published originally on the Scrum.org Community podcast: https://www.scrum.org/resources/ai-and-implications-your-organizations-operating-system. To hear more, visit yuvalyeret.substack.com

What's Next On Navigating the Product Operating Model Landscape? Product Transformation Journey?

In this last episode of the initial series, I share where we might go next in future episodes, exploring the product journey on the Scaling w/ Agility podcast. If you have any questions, ideas, or would like to come on the podcast to share your product transformation journey, let me know! Subscribe to the free audio mini course here: https://yuvalyeret.com/from-buzzwords-to-clarity-product-operating-model-audio-mini-course/ I’d love to get your feedback and help you navigate this landscape - https://yuvalyeret.com/work-with-me/figure-out-your-product-operating-model-strategy/ Interested in more of my insights on the Product world? https://yuvalyeret.com/category/blog/product/ To hear more, visit yuvalyeret.substack.com

Bringing The Elements of a Product Operating Model Together – From Inspiration to Transformation

Let’s talk about how to integrate the Product Operating Model elements we discussed in previous episodes: * Recap of the “flipped pyramid” concept and its importance in POM * Key aspects of a true product-oriented, agile organization * The importance of treating the organizational setup itself as a product * Preview of future episodes I hope you’re finding this audio series useful. (If you landed here through the podcast you can subscribe to the free audio mini course here: https://yuvalyeret.com/from-buzzwords-to-clarity-product-operating-model-audio-mini-course/) I’d love to get your feedback and help you navigate this landscape - https://yuvalyeret.com/work-with-me/figure-out-your-product-operating-model-strategy/ Interested in more of my insights on the Product world? https://yuvalyeret.com/category/blog/product/ To hear more, visit yuvalyeret.substack.com

How to Apply Product Thinking to Strategic Bets and Portfolio-Level Work

Did episode 4 get you thinking about how to flip your product topology pyramid and move more work towards empowered product teams and groups? I hope so... The reality is that in a multi-product organization, it’s almost impossible to manage ALL the work in these teams. Some work will still require collaboration across product groups as well as strategic consideration by product and even business leadership. You might be calling it your product portfolio. In this episode, we explore how to apply product thinking to this cross-product / organizational level work: * Managing work that spans multiple product groups or the entire organization * Applying product thinking to strategic initiatives * Examples of strategic bets * Balancing work across empowered teams, product groups, and organization-wide initiatives About the Navigating the Product Operating Model Landscape Audio Series What You’ll Learn: * Why Agile Feature Factories Fail—and What to Do About It * Assessing Your Current Operating Model—Are You Stuck in Projects? * Principles of Effective Product Operating Models * When does a Product Operating Model make sense? * Making It Real: Mapping Your Trail Toward Transformation Subscribe to the free audio mini course here: https://yuvalyeret.com/from-buzzwords-to-clarity-product-operating-model-audio-mini-course/ This is for you if you’re: * A Head of Product, Technology, Engineering, or Product Ops, trying to apply or scale product-led practices * Tired of theory or comprehensive perspective frameworks and hungry for real-world strategies that work * Too busy to sit down for training or even watch a video “masterclass” (Webinar in disguise…) and prefer to consume audio podcasts. * Not a fan of 6-figure, inspiring slide decks left behind by expensive consulting firms and product experts. Need help navigating the product transformation landscape? https://yuvalyeret.com/work-with-me/figure-out-your-product-operating-model-strategy/ Interested in more of my insights on the Product world? https://yuvalyeret.com/category/blog/product/ To hear more, visit yuvalyeret.substack.com

How to Scale Your Product/Tech Organization Without Sacrificing Your Agility

Now that we’ve established our goal - creating empowered product teams- let’s discuss how to scale a product organization using these empowered product teams as a building block and connecting them without sacrificing agility and product orientation. In this episode: * Challenges of maintaining agility as organizations grow * Introduction to the “flipped pyramid” concept * Types of teams needed for effective scaling * Strategies for “descaling” to push work back to empowered teams About the Navigating the Product Operating Model Landscape Audio Series What You’ll Learn: * Why Agile Feature Factories Fail—and What to Do About It * Assessing Your Current Operating Model—Are You Stuck in Projects? * Principles of Effective Product Operating Models * When does a Product Operating Model make sense? * Making It Real: Mapping Your Trail Toward Transformation Subscribe to the free audio mini course here: https://yuvalyeret.com/from-buzzwords-to-clarity-product-operating-model-audio-mini-course/ This is for you if you’re: * A Head of Product, Technology, Engineering, or Product Ops trying to apply or scale product-led practices * Tired of theory or comprehensive perspective frameworks and hungry for real-world strategies that work * Too busy to sit down for training or even watch a video “masterclass” (Webinar in disguise…) and prefer to consume audio podcasts. * Not a fan of 6-figure, inspiring slide decks left behind by expensive consulting firms and product experts. Need help navigating the product transformation landscape? https://yuvalyeret.com/work-with-me/figure-out-your-product-operating-model-strategy/ Interested in more of my insights on the Product world? https://yuvalyeret.com/category/blog/product/ To hear more, visit yuvalyeret.substack.com