Thoughts on Developing Artificial Intelligence in an Agile Environment

If you are an AGILE development shop, that has no thoughts or future in applying new cutting edge Artificial Intelligence functionality into your products and services, this article is definitely not for you.

If you're a company that wants early adoption into Artificial Intelligence functionality into your product and services, you need to really think about how your teams are structured.

The proven Agile Method Shop

The Agile Method Shop, when implemented right, provides, a great development structure for companies building medium or large software platforms. There are as many flavors of Agile as there are companies implementing it. They all have their own nuances patterned after their development team, skill sets, geolocations, and support teams. It provides higher quality and on time delivery at budget when all the pistons are running at top dead center.

Artificial Intelligence and its related functions are bringing something totally new to the table for those that design products and services for the product based OEM’s. Previously software development created functionality with tools with strict rules and guidelines. You follow as close to the rules at every level, and chances are your team would be highly successful while the stakeholders are taking their money to the bank.

This has changed! Artificial Intelligence brings something to the table technologically that we have not seen before. Infinite paths, infinite possibilities, infinite destinations.

Analogy:

What software developers have been producing are primarily very structured systems in very structured silos. AI breaks down these structures and borders.  It is much like the difference between the imaginative world behind a Pixar film and a 1960's episode of "Lost in Space".

AI is about creative results, not production metrics. You cannot put creative work in the AGILE or production line box. You will have horribly weak results. You can still measure, quantify and budget the efforts, through measuring proof of concept successes and direct results to the organization's bottom line.

Those of us with manufacturing backgrounds know this very well. We build prototype teams offline and provide them with special productivity tools to translate imagination into reality. So many times I see Software Development Companies “force” their production team to spearhead the innovation process. Innovation is about exploring not just the knowns, but the “unknown-unknowns".

Companies tend to look at innovation teams as being a “negative burden" on the books of their organization. This is the furthest from the truth. Look at the “Innovation Dynasties” (example: Google and AWS) in their markets. They feed off of innovation scooping up companies and the very best in minds. They do not wait for someone in a basement or garage to create the next best thing. They just do it.

Who are the players?

The innovation movers and shakers in the industry create environments and hire people that do not fit the traditional development mold. They hire charismatic leaders with “Imagination” to drive the thought process behind creating the impossible. Creating is not a science it is much closer art. It taps into intuition and those things we call 6th sense. A company needs to support a self-defined team with a self-defined space to cultivate this thing we call innovation. The art of producing AI features and functions will be more about the creative mind and less about production line rules and guidelines.

Being a musician myself, another analogy I like to make is that the unharnessed creative mind is what created Blues, Rock & Roll, and much modern music's that entertain us today.

Many of the pop writers were not people that could understand and communicate with theory and rules that produced the great classical pieces. What they created was billions if not trillions of dollars of product and services that we all know and love. Imagine our world if music studios would not have tapped into musicians outside of box many decades ago. Boring! They learned at that point that not everything should follow the path of yesterday and today. They learned to navigate into a new frontier.

So tomorrow's authors and architects of products are not going to be Java and Python programmers that work in the box. They are going to be frontiersmen with imagination, communication skills and abilities to challenge their peers and industry. It is those companies that tap into these resources that will produce billions if not trillions in product and services. The pie that Artificial Intelligence is going to cook up, is going to be large enough for all, and grow into industries we have never imagined.

So as a small to medium sized company or organization do you have the means and budget to jump on the AI train today? Absolutely. With the right leadership, vision, and independence a small team can materialize unbelievable possibilities for your current product and services. Even budgetary constraints can be removed by a diplomatic initiative to pool resources from some of the most unlikely relationships.

A great model I always bring up is DARPA; they do not produce, they create what is initially impossible to create and produce proof of concepts that are then handed over to the very industries that mass produce the product and services.

Today the ability to build AI Assistants that actually do something productive for our departments and products has amazing potential. Being on the cutting edge of integration and automation of machine/app to human productivity enhancements will be the next leap forward in technology. You can wait until it gets crowded, or you can invest today for that exponential piece of the pie.

Whether you are small or large, technical or non-technical, the ability to prospect this technology can be open to all. The question is, what side of the fence do you want to be on, those creating and making money from the technology or those that are paying for it in the end?

Remember, no different than the old saying about NASA, the amount of money we put into new technology as a collective group is exponentially felt in new products and services in the rest of the economy. R&D teams benefit companies, they do not hold them back.

It takes the right type of mind to lead these groups though. It takes vision, charisma and an entrepreneurial spirit.

Earl Stoddard…