But Does It Move The Needle?

Had this conversation with a friend recently: Where he works, everyone, from the developers to the product managers, is using AI, and he complained that his mind is fried at the end of the day, from all the rapid context switching that ensues.

Then I asked: Okay, so you're all really embracing AI. That's great. But does it move the needle?

He knew exactly what I meant and was very direct in his answer: Nope. It doesn't. Not yet, anyway. Why is that? Because their product relies very much on human connection in the sales process, and that part of the organization hasn't quite caught up yet to their increased pace. It's one thing to produce more features at a rapid pace. It's another thing for those features to translate that into real additional sales.

And there's a real possibility that it will never translate into more sales, because every competitor will also have AI accelerating their feature delivery. Running just to stay in place, basically.

The point here is: Maybe they could take the foot off the gas a bit; clearly at their current stage, developer speed is not the bottleneck in their value stream. It's not worth it getting your team's brains fried making something faster that doesn't move the needle. Find the real bottleneck, solve that, and keep your sanity.