Agile is back! Thanks to AI!

Agile is returning! Fast! Thanks to AI for this, and here's why:

Long before AI arrived, Agile was an approach for complex environments, and software developers were the first to adopt it as a solution to plan-driven approaches. Later, other industries adopted Agile; however, most would agree that these adaptations were, to a large extent, mixed with plan-driven transformation approaches that literally killed Agile's core ideas by losing them in consultant interpretations and translations. The result was failing Agile changes, growing negativity, and resistance towards it—all because of a simple misuse of Agile: trying to implement a non-plan-driven approach with plan-driven thinking.

But now, amidst a post-COVID world, geopolitical instabilities, and hybrid and digital ways of working led by AI, Agile is rapidly gaining a new way of being applied and used. This is because now, in 2026, the world of work has become even more complex, chaotic, and far less plannable than ever before. This is exactly where Agile's fundamental values and principles thrive!

What do we do when the environment becomes extremely complex? What do we do when there's chaos? What do we do when it is far from obvious to understand what causes what?

The answer is: WE COME TOGETHER AND TALK.

And I do not mean a small leadership team coming together. That was possible in plannable environments.

I mean everyone coming together. Yes, leaders and non-leaders. However, in complex settings, leadership loses its formal boundaries.

And I do not mean coming together to implement Agile. Forget it. We need to come together to deal with the challenges that are coming at us from all sides.

We have to do it because we are in a storm, together. And there is no single person, nor two, able to plan or predict that storm. Instead, we have to come together and make sense of what's happening together, because we are not only in the epicenter of a complex storm, but we are also making it more complex by trying to manage it separately in our own different ways. We need to come together, share, and learn from one another how to cope with what's going on. This is the complexity way of working that we need.

What's in it for management?

Everything.

This is a new way of thinking and working with our employees. It means doing less closed-room decision-making and one-way communication, as well as less planned change management, and doing more gatherings with everyone in the room where common sense-making can happen. This is where we analyze, decide, plan, and track. Software and IT people understood it long before AI came; now it is time for others to embrace it too.

So, yes, Agile is returning very fast, and those of us who start coming together and sharing sooner will be the winners in the long term, because nothing—completely nothing—suggests it will become simpler out there...