It is not the technology that is under pressure, but its integration into everyday business operations. Budgets are tightening, regulation is taking hold, and boards are demanding robust results rather than more roadmaps. The era of non-committal pilot projects is ending.
2026 will be the year when the wheat is separated from the chaff in AI: it’s not the better model that makes the difference, but the ability to deliver impact under real-world conditions. What decision-makers need to know and do now so that AI evolves from experiment to true partner.
Romano Roth is Chief of Cybernetic Transformation at Zühlke and is deeply engaged with the impact of AI on organizations, technology, and culture. In this guest article, he explores how AI is affecting professionals, especially in the coding space.
At this event, I spoke alongside Carsten Brandt from SAP about DevOps in theory and practice. While I presented the theoretical foundations of DevOps and showed how companies can move from projects to products, Carsten brought the practical perspective from over 21 years at SAP. His honest message: the theory has been well established for years, but execution is anything but easy, especially in complex enterprise landscapes.
By Pia Wiedermayer and Romano Roth
In many organizations and projects, software development involves numerous employees and machines performing tasks separately. This approach results in problems. Here’s how going back to the original way of developing software and building an organic digital factory can help.
I’ve identified 9 types of waste 🗑 in Software Development:
🧩Partially done work
💲Extra features
😤Extra processes
🤯Task switching
🧟♀️Nonstandard work
The “inventor” of the waterfall process 💧 said in 1970: “I believe in this concept, but the implementation described above is risky and invites failure.” 😱
If you ask a development team where value is created, you will hear a dozen different answers. In the planning workshop. In the sprint. At the demo. At deployment. They are all wrong — and getting this wrong is what makes most DevOps business cases fall apart on contact with the CFO.
