Sunday reflection: Is AI quietly bringing Agile back?
Last weeks, I wrote about how context remains essential when leaders want to make better decisions.
This week, I keep coming back to a related thought:
What if AI is quietly reviving Agile?
For years, many people have declared Agile dead. In some ways, that may not be such a bad thing. We have probably had enough of Agile as a label, a set of rituals, or a goal in itself.
But when I look at the companies that seem to be learning fastest with AI, I do not see a waterfall mindset winning.
I see experimentation.
I see short feedback loops.
I see rapid iteration.
I see teams learning by doing.
I see teams adjusting as they go.
In other words, I see many of the underlying principles that made Agile valuable in the first place.
That is also very much aligned with what some of the professors on the MIT programme I am currently attending argue: in a field as new, fast moving, and unpredictable as AI, waiting for the landscape to settle is a poor strategy. The organisations that gain ground are the ones that start learning early, in practice, not only in PowerPoint.
And that is where the contrast with waterfall becomes so clear. Traditional planning heavy approaches assume that the environment is stable enough for requirements, risks, and solutions to be understood upfront.
AI does not behave like that. Models improve rapidly. Tooling evolves constantly. Use cases shift as soon as new capabilities emerge.
By the time a conventional implementation plan is signed off, the underlying assumptions may already have changed.
This does not mean organisations should act recklessly. AI clearly brings risks, and governance matters. But governance cannot become an excuse for paralysis.
In the AI space, the real competitive advantage may not come from having the best initial plan. It is more likely to come from building the strongest capability to learn, adapt, and respond faster than others.
I do not see Agile coming back as a branded movement any time soon. I do, however, see it reappearing as the most sensible operating logic for a world shaped by AI.
Agile may not have died after all.
It may simply have become common sense.
What do you think: Is AI kaming your organization more agile in practice, even if nobody calls it Agile anymore?