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Why Agile Is Failing—and What’s Replacing It

Why Agile Is Failing and What’s Replacing It
Ana Welch
Andrew Welch
Chris Huntingford
William Dorrington

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🎙️ FULL SHOW NOTES
https://www.microsoftinnovationpodcast.com/713

What happens when agile breaks down and AI steps in? In this episode, the hosts explore how traditional delivery models are being replaced by high-impact lab cycles, where elite engineering teams solve complex problems in just two weeks. From modernizing legacy systems to navigating the rise of autonomous developers, this conversation dives deep into the evolving tech landscape—and how AI is reshaping productivity, pricing models, and the future of work.

🔑 KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Lab Cycles vs. Agile: Agile is losing effectiveness in enterprise environments. Lab cycles offer a faster, outcome-driven alternative with production-ready results in two weeks.
- AI in App Modernization: AI is now capable of refactoring legacy codebases, even without full documentation—opening doors to modernizing systems like COBOL.
- M365 Copilot in Action: Real-world use cases show how Copilot dramatically reduces proposal creation time while improving accuracy and collaboration.
- The Rise of Autonomous Developers: Top-tier engineers are expected to own the full product lifecycle—from ideation to pricing—driven by soft skills and strategic thinking.
- AI’s Impact on Pricing Models: Professional services are rethinking pricing as AI slashes delivery time, creating new revenue opportunities and client value. 

🧰 RESOURCES MENTIONED:
👉 Microsoft Power Platform – https://powerplatform.microsoft.com
👉 M365 Copilot – https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/copilot
👉 Microsoft Graph – https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/overview
👉 AI for Good Conference – https://aiforgood.itu.int  

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Thanks for listening 🚀 - Mark Smith

02:13 - Breaking Agile: Why Lab Cycles Work Better

07:43 - The Rise of Vibe Coding and AI-Driven Development

12:13 - Copilot in Action: Real-World Productivity Gains

22:13 - The New Developer: Autonomy, Soft Skills, and $10M Expectations

28:13 - AI’s Impact on Pricing Models and Professional Services

Mark Smith
Welcome to the ecosystem show. We're thrilled to have you with us here. We challenge traditional mindsets and explore innovative approaches to maximising the value of your software estate. You don't expect you to agree with everything, challenge us, share your thoughts and let's grow together. Now let's dive in. It's Showtime. Welcome, welcome, welcome. How are you, Anna? Just starting and trying some new tech out today.

Ana Welch 
Hi Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Good evening is right.

Mark Smith 
Good evening is right for you. Yeah, it's good. Good morning for me. I've been running around all morning as per us. Tell me what's been happening in your world in the last week cuz I've got some interesting topics to discuss today. 
 
Ana Welch 
Oh my goodness. Well, I cannot wait for your interesting topics. Um, you know, it's um work-wise because life-wise there's been a bit of chaos in my life, but I don't think anybody's surprised by that. Like there's always chaos in our life. But work-wise, uh, Mark, you know, um, for the past, um, for the past few months, maybe a year, we've started working on a new, uh, delivery concept or like, um, proving concept. Yeah. And we call it lab cycles uh because it's like a laboratory where you've got I don't know highly skilled engineers going into a room and trying to sort something out. Like we've been doing this for ages with hackathons and things like that, but I honestly found that the agile methodology is just not working anymore. Interesting. It simply isn't working. everybody has bent it to whatever their organization uh you know does best and um in the end you you're still going back to a sort of fragile. Everybody signs to a like fixed price project and then they're trying to negotiate. Oh no that's a change. Oh no give me all of the all of the spec estimating but not really like it just didn't work anymore. So with this labs, what we've been doing for the past year or so is put in these like highly highly effective professional expensive as hell engineers who go into a room and try to solve the the problem in in in in two weeks, right? That's very very different from like an agile sprint because at the end of two weeks these teams deliver into production like it's done. it's it's going out there and if it doesn't work it doesn't work. the a type of fail fast. That doesn't mean, oh, that feature or that user story was halfbaked or like whatever, we're going to bring another user story in or no, it's like you actually see it. And in the past week, I've been involved in one of these projects and it was amazing. like the mix of out ofthebox functionality is now mindblowing because everything's out of the box. AI, um, web development, um, I don't know, business applications development, everything's out of the box now. So, it's it's amazing. I'm very excited about it. It's so successful. I've never seen progress like that. 
 
Mark Smith
Did I hear you right when you called it fragile? Did you call it fragile? I love that. I I love never heard that little take on it anymore. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's it's perfect. It's funny a I've had many fights with with project managers over my career where they want to turn the project sorry managing the project to be more important than the outcomes of the project. Um that the methodology is you know more important and I um it it can be challenging. Um I love it and the slab cycles you know from my side what I'm seeing already more and more people are um are getting on board with it. It's exciting. It's delivering outcomes rapidly um which is superb and these are in big enterprise organizations that were doing this. Can I share something with you that I found really interesting um hit this hit the um the web this week. Um I'm going to share my screen um quickly and it was this Ryan Cunningham did a post um one day ago um around the future of app development. Okay, for those that don't know, Ryan is the head of um what is he the head of? He's the head of our platform intelligent applications. Yeah, but look at this vibe coding for the enterprise. Oh no. And I found, oh my gosh, this is really interesting. Vive coding for the enterprise. Right. Right. And the reason I found this interesting is on the 7th of May, I recorded this video with Ryan. Is the power platform now the ultimate vibe platform? Vibe coding? Yes. No. Vibe. I was doing some vibe coding this morning actually. It's a it's a you know my uh controversial opinion is that vibe coding is a term software people started using to be more comfortable uh talking about low code without actually having to use that word. And there's another video that just came out with Paul Clumsy that he did today that's been posted on YouTube. Um and I'll quickly just show that for a second. Let me see this one here. So Pauly has got a podcast. Go up there and have a look at it. and and I I won't share any more but and suffice to say that he talks about the pivot Microsoft is making from not using citizen developer low code or anything like that anymore and interesting rationale it's well worth a listen it's about 3 minutes into that recording um where he once again expounds this kind of moving away and a lot of the new feature sets that are coming out is allowing this rapid ability to write code into the power platform via AI, you know, ba basically and really vibe coding, but with all the guard rails in place with all the uh you know, the ALM type functionality on the back end. Um but I think it's it's such interesting times and that the potential for us to move to or refactor but you know for years the power platform has been sold as a platform that you can um modernize your apps right it's one of the main go to market features of the power platform and I feel more than ever there's going to be this ability to rapidly modernize applications particularly applications where you might have the code either compiled or uncompiled and you can kind of give it that degree you could give AI that degree of exposure to how the logic layer etc is potentially depending how old it is and kind of what quality of code you have um but to reproduce applications of yester year and like you know they're saying now there's no cobalt programmers in the in the world but something like 30% of banks still have cobalt as a core it's what their systems are developed on, but there's no not very many um cobalt developers anymore. 
 
Ana Welch
They chill somewhere on the beach and then they charge a million dollars per hour for their expertise and it's it's insane. 
 
Mark Smith
Is it going to the future going to allow us to refactor all that like bring that back or modernize a code base that's you know potentially ages old and and and then extend it? 
 
Ana Welch
I think that's really interesting. I think it could as long as we know what it does. In in my opinion, the the in my experience, the number one uh problem when going into an institution to uh to try and refactor something or modernize something was not the code, was not the actual program, was the fact that nobody knew what the rules were. Like they knew that that, you know, this is the result that I'm getting and that's correct. but they didn't actually know that uh how how to get to the outcome. And I think it's going to be the same with these cobalt developers. It's not the fact that they're they're the only ones who know the code. They're the only ones who know the rules and how to test it. So, I think that will happen more and more, but I'm not sure that it can happen right now before you have that human input to tell you what the rules are. Or are you saying that the AI is going to be able to reverse engineer? I'm now thinking out loud actually. Yeah. Yeah.Taking taking an input and an output and saying, hm, I believe this is it.
 
Mark Smith
Yeah. Yeah. It's such interesting times we're in where it's kind of like everything we have known as being immovable now potentially allows you to look at it from a totally different view. It allows you allows you to assess it differently. I'm finding daily my productivity levels are stepping to a new level particularly of of all the um AIs out there. Um M365 Copilot I was in a position uh last week that I needed to write a proposal. I didn't know where the proposal templates were on the network because of time zone differences. There was nobody to ask. There was I had threads and threads of email conversations across the organization with the client. I was able to bring those all into a notebook and use the researcher agent inside of M365 copilot and be able to one identify what was our latest copy that we did for writing proposals. It gave me the file. So I took the file then I was able to take all the content headings of that file and say okay based on all the discussions we have refactor in all the content that we've agreed these are going to be the deliverables the blah blah blah blah and it cross references it so it goes hey in this email this is where it was said on this line so you can go and check that it's all there and accurate and it allowed you allowed me to produce a file probably in about an hour maybe an hour and a half which in yesterday year would have been a half day to a full day's work to do that same kind of draft or get it up to that point. 
 
Ana Welch
It would have been a two weeks work for me. 
 
Mark Smith
But the thing is that's data on the network, right? This is why I think Microsoft has an unbelievable advantage with the graph, the Microsoft graph in that it exposed up to me any time we had talked about this customer inside our organization. The conversations were able to be able to be crowded together to actually so nothing was missed. I did another one in the last 24 hours where I sat down with the individual that had had a conversation with the client and he went through all the things that he said, you know, he showed me on screen. This is what we've agreed to cover, blah blah blah blah blah. I was able then to just take that transcript and say, "What were the agreed deliverables with the customer?" format it up in a nice schedule of and it's and I've sent it back for review. Um, but like I know if I had just been doing that on air or just writing notes in that conversation, there would have been things missed. Absolutely. But with the transcription of that conversation, nothing is missed. 
 
Ana Welch
Yes, exactly. And how do you Okay, so I have a question here. How do you um what do you do next? Do you like read the whole thing, make sure that it's indeed correct? Do you go by your memory and do you add your expertise and does the AI learn from from from that? 
 
Mark Smith 
Yeah. So, a couple of things that I did is that one, I read it with an audio reader, right? And the reason I do that is that I pick up mistakes in the air quicker than I do in the eyes, right? And so for me, I'm like, "Oh, that doesn't that's not right. I wouldn't say that." And so then I can go in and correct it, right? And or it it mixes or let's say it brings in content that's not relevant to this discussion and being able to go, okay, let's clean that up and then oh, I know this is going to be really important for the customer because of the conversations I've been in. I will then, you know, do some free form writing. So it is a fully collaborative document. It's already based on theframework of how we propose. So it's not like um you know I'm not writing a prompt that just says hey create a proposal based on everything you can find right it's not it's very section by section it's not like do the whole thing so you know um so once I'd create it all for example I'd say okay now let's look at an executive summary as an example and so I know it's going through auto you know I was like up to 15 pages I think by that point and then was able to and of course I didn't let it do the pricing I did the pricing in a in a you know another uh document and then brought that pricing back in. So I'm and and I don't I I'm finding at the moment it's not good at formatting. So I don't let it do any of the formatting type things. Um and then there's also some what I call AI fingerprints, right? Which are things that are kind of like they're almost jarring in that this is definitely a way AI talks. And I actually just wrote a um a mega prompt the other day that um and when I say it's a mega prompt, it's a prompt that's what I call well I also call it a recursive prompt. So before it runs it's it goes out on the internet and says identify any new changes since the last date of this prompt and I have the the prompt date built into the prompt. Any new kind of words, phrases or things that people across any social media is going, "Oh, that looks like AI." So the common ones are the em dash, right, or overuse of the Oxford comma. Mhm. And and and and we had a discussion with this a few weeks ago with Andrew on the podcast and cuz he's written a book, right? And one of the things that when you're going through editorial review and writing a book is that EM why EM is a big flag nowadays is it's not a character on the keyboard. You have to put the code in to make the em dash which is a long dash and you can either have it butt up hard against each word or you can have a space between the words and how you use it. But the thing is in correct grammar it is the right thing to use. And in his book um what was it? Field of dreams.
 
Ana Welch
No was field blends. 
 
Mark Smith
Field blends. In his book field blends his editor had said to him and of course that was written what in 2018.
 
Ana Welch
I think so. 
 
Mark Smith
Roundabout. How's that? I'm I'm pretty I think I'm pretty old on think pretty 2019 to be fair around that that time frame and so and his editor said to him I'm very impressed in the way you know how to use the you know the em dash or that long dash but now nowadays of people it's a very clear indicator particularly in any type of social content if you see it you know it's AI generated right it's just like red hearing and then um and then there's a lot phrases um where it kind of overengineers a structure of a sentence and things like that doesn't sound genuine. And so now I've got this prompt that goes out and it's like the prompt is probably about three pages in length with all the phrases and stuff that I have collected that I will sanitize if I have used AI as part of something of authoring. I will do this as a final sanity check to say hey flag on every line where this sounds like it is AI content that's been generated. So it's you know how you said do I do a review and do I do yeah I do a whole bunch of steps of clean up and and adding my expertise that the AI doesn't know and of course then inside your organization that now becomes part of the knowledge that your next response you know engagement with the client etc can be built on. So I think the ability for an organization now to capture its internal knowledge that is in the way people communicate whether it's on teams or in word documents or powerpoint presentations becomes incredibly available to everybody to create a better outcome um in the organization and you couldn't do that with publicbased AI I don't think.
 
Ana Welch 
I remember when uh going to work for Microsoft because they have their like whole entire Bing search engine, right? And they're being kind of takes now it works for for any organization too, but back then it only worked for for Microsoft. So when you typed anything within the search engine in Bing, you could see all of your colleagues PowerPoint presentations, documentation, things like that. And there was even like an a little RFP library where you had a little um a helping hand to be able to from in my in my particular case to help customers um uh to help uh to help partners, sorry, price something correctly when they went to do a pitcher deal. and that without having any sort of discounts or like whatever from from Microsoft because they didn't know because they didn't have the deal yet. Anyway, I thought that was magical. Um that alone improved my productivity immensely because I could immediately see like those decks, demos, little videos, like anything that an individual would have created for their job and you could use that freely. And of course, it was all labeled. Yeah. nothing perview like client confidential or like whatever and you you knew what to do like it was in full display. But I guess what I'm saying is tying back to what she was saying. I never expected you know the Bing engine to give me exactly what I want. I expected it to give me bits of information that I could then you know put into my work and and assemble. And uh you know the the researcher engine now is so much more advanced but you're still using your experience you know your knowledge your your prompt engineering. So whenever people whenever people say oh I don't know like AI is just like rubbish. it just doesn't work or or um they overuse it and they let those in these ingenuine phrases sleep into conversations, emails, documentation, thus proving that their skill in AI is simply not on par. Right now it's framed to say something about the technology, but I think very soon it's going to be like clearly you don't know how to turn on the lights type of situation, right? So it's creating new jobs.

Mark Smith
Honestly, I I I do not see a future where AI is going to wipe out their workforce. Yeah. As in I see so many new, you know, Chris in the last um episode we recordedbought up the salary survey that's been done recently and prompt engineers are getting higher incomes than than umdata scientists. Yeah. Yeah. Which, you know, blew my mind. But data science has been aroundquite a some time and it was there and was very prominent like in the machine learning age of AI and things like that.But the thing is is that I I do see us the ability to converse and so not we what we call a oneshot prompt but have an ongoing conversation with AI is definitely a skill that everybody can develop but you actually got to proactively do it and develop it because you'll soon see the nuances and the gotchas and the and like in any human communication the things that you need to correct for or compensate for but you won't get that if you have it one conversation and you're one and done and you don't have that dialogue. 
 
Ana Welch
But that takes us to a totally different conversation which is how are people built? How are people uh expecting to carry out a job and and and and what do they want from it as well, right? It is uh and I've bumped into that a lot. A few weeks ago, we're trying to sus out, you know, where pro code development is going and what the job market is and, you know, we we talked about this and what sort of skills you have to have to, be a really really really good software developer or uh architect or you or or you know, whatever. And it in my mind it came back to being an autonomous player or like um somebody who is able to own a piece of work and to do everything in their power to make it work. That's why I was saying that this uh uh labs concept is working really well. But it's working really well because you have like a SWAT team man like people who are able to perform a task autonomously and own the uh on the result and move towards a goal rather than the procedures of of delivering something. So I guess with with with that in mind um um I read this article on the economist um just this week or last week I can't remember because I cannot remember anything thank god with AI to to remind me of stuff where uh people were were where were where where a a a British analyst actually was saying that the UK market is moving towards a servicing market or a file building exercise. Yes, you can do that file. You can take that concept of a file and uh you know put it on top of everything, right? A program, a program of work, uh um I don't know delivering something. Yes. But the American market is going to towards um this idea of autonomy. And uh they were talking about these top tier programmers cuz it was all about technology you know where's program programming going and about how these top tier programmers actually move uh from the top tier companies anthropic open AI meta and there was even anam there was an example of this um you know highly secluded top tier programmer who moved from Anthropic to Meta and he fel to announce publicly that now he was not paid uh $10 million for that job. So that's the so this is the expectation right that's the expectation but the the this um economist analyst was also saying that these top tier programmers they know how to imagine a product develop the product you know bringing into bringing it into the market quickly have their exact speech on point do that pricing create the propose do everything right. And for that you're no longer doing a task by task uh a task by task um um thing. you are the skill that you are building is something that we've all been dreading if if we are a programmer uh like I am and that is in soft skill talking to other people trying to build something and understanding what other people think um so yeah that's the reality are you one of those people you will make probably 10 million
 
Mark Smith
Yeah, hey Will.
 
William Dorrington
Oh, I wanna make sure I’ve joined the right podcast. Tell me what's going on. 
 
Ana Welch
Well, there's this article in the economies. Well, I'll give you a link. I think honestly you should apply. You're you're totally out there.
 
William Dorrington
I'm I'm I'm down. I don't know what it is, but my confidence and arrogance just says I'm in. And I love it. I love it. What a way to join. Yes.
 
Mark Smith 
I was on a call this morning at the Wii hours and um and Andrew was on the call as well and talking about one of the top five law firms in the world that he met at um what was that AI conference recently? AI for good.
 
Ana Welch
AI for good. 
 
Mark Smith
And what was interesting right is if you look at the legal profession I've known for years I think they bill in threeinut increments. Yeah. that that's their kind of model and they were talking and this is an uh a a law firm I think based in the US that is definitely leaning in and going in that they're advising their clients on AI but one of the the examples they have in house and how they're having to reinvent how they price talking before Anna about pricing is that one of their things let's say they get a an item or a matter that they have to review it was typically taking them $25,000 and worth of time to review that matter because it was like, let's say it took $1,000 an hour and it was um 25 hours to do the work. They have now with on their internal systems been able to take that and reduce it down to two hours. And of course, what do you think the executives in the company think of that? 
 
William Dorrington
Uh they're not happy. They're not happy. 
 
Mark Smith
Not happy. Right. 

William Dorrington
It's a pro company. You time time is literally money, but the the the longer way round. 
 
Mark Smith
So, do you know what they've done? They h haveved the price of that. That used to be a set package price, 25 grand to do that type of review process. They h haveved it because they now have the tooling to do it. And that same lawyer can do two, three, four of them in the same amount of time. So, they're making way more money, but the client's getting something at half the cost they used to be charging. Beautiful. Or get be charged. So, there are new models, right? 
 
Ana Welch
Is it Beautiful? is it is that is that what we should start creating for ourselves? More work. 
 
Mark Smith
Well, but but know what I'm saying? The person didn't create more work, right? They were able to get through more work for the same amount of time, but the revenue generation was exponential, but at the same time, the customer got a cheaper um or a more cost-effective option.
 
Ana Welch 
Okay, I I so I understand that. However, I do believe that is not the same. 
 
William Dorrington
Is Mark drinking a margarita there? 
 
Ana Welch
It's night for him. It's 
 
Mark Smith
It's a paloma. Oh, nice. Sorry. This This one has grapefruit in it. 
 
William Dorrington 
It's healthy. Sorry. 
 
Mark Smith
It's from my garden as well. Not the tequila, but the grapefruit. 
 
William Dorrington 
I just saw the salt rib. No, it's that's more than just a nice lemonade. That's Yeah, lemonade smile. Yeah, it's great. It's evening my time. It's evening. 
 
Ana Welch
Yeah, it's night time and it's totally allowed and I'm so jealous. I wish I could have one of those tonight.
 
William Dorrington 
Actually, pouring water.

Ana Welch 
I'm always quite inspired when um uh Donna Sar goes on a productivity panel. Um, not just because it's amusing as hell to see her cuz she's very expressive, right? And it's like all of these other people who are I don't know pitching in their ideas and Donna's like a superstar in Microsoft and then she has like seven other businesses that are all successful and the idea of anybody trying to teach her how to be more productive is just hilarious. But she's always talking about how we should absolutely not try to create more work for ourselves. We should go on a holiday with that time honestly because um and I and I think she's right because when you when you do that review and you you create three reviews instead of instead of two. Uh it's not like exactly like Mark and I were were talking about before. It's not like you give the AI, oh, made me a review for this as well. You're actually switching context.
 
Mark Smith 
There's cognitive load, right? 

Ana Welch 
You need to read all of it. You need to modify. And the cognitive load arguably is much higher in turning out three than in doing just one because there's no routine elements in there. So like do we want our heads to explode so that our customers have a cheaper product? 
 
William Dorrington 
There's a few things there isn't I think we will I mean those in in in senior and except roles like like yourself and and and Mark and you know your your context switching ability is obviously going to be much more tuned than those that are more you know just focusing on one project at a time. I do think you do get the ability to switch contexts uh in in a much more efficient way depending on your job and your focus. I also think when it come it's an interesting point because I do agree. I mean I'm going to champion holidays over work any day of the week. But tools have always been there to increase our ability to do more performance. So let's ignore tech. We talk about tech on this podcast for obvious reasons. But if I was a carpenter and I made chairs and tables and furniture and I did that only with hand tools,  the moment I saw a drill was invented, I could probably make a lot more and I can sew a lot more and I can be a lot more efficient and yeah, I have to switch context between a chair and a table and you know whatever. I can't think of any other object made of wood at the moment. That's very weird. uh but you know but I can do more of that time generate more more income to a to point and uh also make my clients more happy by by reducing reducing amount of time spending on it and increase my productivity probably giving me a certain amount of dopamine. So I do think there is a balance between the two. I think we must take on the benefits but also give back some benefits to the employees i.e. you've worked hard for this let's let's maybe reduce to four days a week rather than five.
 
Mark Smith
Yeah. And and I see that I see that becoming a possibility. I was I was in a session at MVP summit um and this this whole thing or discussion came up on productivity and this lady um and I'm not sure who it was to give her credit but she was like I am hyperproductive I don't need AI to make me pro productive I just want to go home and be with my family at a reasonable time and finish work and feel like I have achieved something without still having a pile left at the office to go home to and and she goes so I'm not interested in productivity I'm interested in a bit of of my get just getting my time back. That's what she saw the goal of AI, you know, should be. And Meg did an interesting post about a month ago. She said be very careful where you start using AI to replace roles inside an organization because one you lose that tacet that organization knowledge that could be built up over time and you would have had a budget for the headcount for that role from your your CFO. The minute that budget has been clawed back by the CFO and you've let that person go, it's done. Good luck to trying to get the budget for to spend on something else in your group. It's gone. Yeah. So, be very careful on how you how you think about these things.
 
William Dorrington
Yeah. No, I I I I absolutely agree with that. And I think it's it's understanding what the cut off point is, isn't it? I think if to me just get getting those normal, you know, and a bit like all of us just that 9 to5 that would be rather lovely and then cutting back to a 4 day a week. I think you you see that as a future direction. But the problem is we live in a very capitalistic world, don't we? We do. You know, the invis the invisible hand is always there. Adam Smith is twerking away in the background. Don't know why I said twerking, but I'm going to go with it. That is a horrible image.
 
Ana Welch
I'm I'm curious actually, will cuz you you obviously you are you are an exec um leading many many many teams and a bunch of individuals and you you're involved in many projects. How do you feel like your work or work life balance or how did we call it? Um 
 
William Dorrington
integration 
 
Ana Welch
integration is is is working now after so many months of AI like is it because I can imagine if all of these people are now using AI to create output and therefore the the outcomes are even more generous, even more intense. How how do you feel? 
 
William Dorrington
It's a really interesting question. For me, I'm I'm I'm I'm an insecure overachiever personally. So, if I'm already quite hyperproductive in a very messy, chaotic way. Uh and uh I just see it as my ability to do even more, do more, impress even more, help even more, work even more, you know, and that's I think that's that's not a that's not a work thing. That's that's a me thing. And I think a lot of us actually share elements of that. And I think this is why we all get on so well because we just we're just always insatiably curious. And I think I'm powered by just professional anxiety constantly is what's enabled me to to to to to to sort of move forward. I think from a wider team perspective that is that that that is the key focus at moment which is how can can I make the teams more efficient using sort of intelligent ideides using the ability to write out user stories a lot quicker taking uh you know notes in teams etc. So I think all that has enabled them to get rid of a lot of the boring stuff that they don't enjoy and you know steer the projects that they're on to to to a to a sharper quality of success and quality is key there for me. I think that quality word is what it's driving more and more of. We're seeing less issues in projects now because people have more time to to get those documentations done to get the writeups done and to get their their coding standards to a to a good place. And I think that's that's where I'm personally seeing improvement. I'm not saying it's absolutely shaped our world and I'm not saying we've rolled it out to absolutely everybody. We're still in a process of doing that. The thing about AI is it does come with a price tag and you know what budgets are. They're every 12 months. So you know let's have some realism and I won't just say it's all shiny you know but we are slowly slowly getting there. So I mean Anna you you left a um you know what's it a year or so ago and we've you know we've we've increased the roll out since then you know onwards and onwards. So I think in another year's time I'll be able to give you an even better answer.
 
Ana Welch
Right. Right. Right. No, no, no. That's brilliant. And it's that's that's exactly that's exactly what I thought complete with the overachiever anxiety thing too. Insecure overachiever. Yeah. Right. And that's I guess that's what I was trying to to to to get at. We will it's a real danger that we will all kind of do that more and more and more. And of course, everybody in the in this world of in this capitalist world, everybody will will get more and more outcomes, cheaper products. Yeah. I I don't know. But like where's the balance? 
 
William Dorrington
We could become productive exhaustion, couldn't we? It could get to that point. 
 
Mark Smith 
Yeah.

Ana Welch 
Right. Right.
 
Mark Smith 
Yeah. I I I hope it doesn't. 
 
Ana Welch
I hope so.
 
William Dorrington
Well, It’s just Greg and Paloma having a chat. I mean, I’m you’ll say, man you’re good. 
 
Mark Smith
Exa, exactly. Exactly. Um, we we need to wrap this up. Um, Will, we haven't chatted for a while. Did you renew your MVP?
 
William Dorrington 
I I did. Yeah. Yeah, I was. Uh, what categories? Um, mine. So, I obviously maybe a bit personal. I I've had an issue for the for the last year with my uh with with a family member. So, I haven't been able to contribute to the categories I'd prefer to. So, uh, they've they've kept me with, uh, CRM and Power Platform for now, but I'm hoping next year that will that will move more to an AI category where a lot of my focus has been for the last couple of years. But I've, yeah, I' I'd have a bit of a chat and uh, and and stay on on those categories for now.

Mark Smith 
Yeah. Nice. Well, after 13 years, I have got been relieved of being a Bizaps MVP and I'm no longer I'm now a an AI platform MVP. 
 
William Dorrington
Mate, I love that. Congrats. awesome.
 
Ana Welch
That's amazing Congratulations.
 
Mark Smith 
I was pretty happy about the the the switch over. Um and uh it's just a whole new world, right? It's a whole whole new world. And of course, you don't leave all your Biz Apps experience, you know, for the last in my case 22 years. But I just feel like it's the next thing to build on with all that heritage in place. Um, but there's just so much scope and there's so much to learn. I'm just finding I am now just Yeah, there's no way you can switch off learning these days. 

William Dorrington  
You're not wrong. 
 
Ana Welch 
True. 
 
Mark Smith
With that, with that 41 minutes in, we should wrap this up and uh I've got another meeting to go to. I know you do, Anna. Will, it's been great chatting to you. Thanks for uh Great to see you, Will. Going to go make 10 million. Go make go make your10 million pounds. Cheers guys. Good talking to you all. Bye bye.
 
Mark Smith
Thanks for tuning into the ecosystem show. We hope you found today's discussion insightful and thought provoking and maybe you had a laugh or two. Remember your feedback and challenges help us all grow, so don't hesitate to share your perspective. Stay connected with us for more innovative ideas. And strategies to enhance your sufferer state and until next time, keep pushing the boundaries and creating value. See you on the next episode.

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Chris Huntingford

Chris Huntingford is a geek and is proud to admit it! He is also a rather large, talkative South African who plays the drums, wears horrendous Hawaiian shirts, and has an affinity for engaging in as many social gatherings as humanly possible because, well… Chris wants to experience as much as possible and connect with as many different people as he can! He is, unapologetically, himself! His zest for interaction and collaboration has led to a fixation on community and an understanding that ANYTHING can be achieved by bringing people together in the right environment.

William Dorrington Profile Photo

William Dorrington

William Dorrington is the Chief Technology Officer at Kerv Digital. He has been part of the Power Platform community since the platform's release and has evangelized it ever since – through doing this he has also earned the title of Microsoft MVP.

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Andrew Welch

Andrew Welch is a Microsoft MVP for Business Applications serving as Vice President and Director, Cloud Application Platform practice at HSO. His technical focus is on cloud technology in large global organizations and on adoption, management, governance, and scaled development with Power Platform. He’s the published author of the novel “Field Blends” and the forthcoming novel “Flickan”, co-author of the “Power Platform Adoption Framework”, and writer on topics such as “Power Platform in a Modern Data Platform Architecture”.

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Ana Welch

Partner CTO and Senior Cloud Architect with Microsoft, Ana Demeny guide partners in creating their digital and app innovation, data, AI, and automation practices. In this role, she has built technical capabilities around Azure, Power Platform, Dynamics 365, and—most recently—Fabric, which have resulted in multi-million wins for partners in new practice areas. She applies this experience as a frequent speaker at technical conferences across Europe and the United States and as a collaborator with other cloud technology leaders on market-making topics such as enterprise architecture for cloud ecosystems, strategies to integrate business applications and the Azure data platform, and future-ready AI strategies. Most recently, she launched the “Ecosystems” podcast alongside Will Dorrington (CTO @ Kerv Digital), Andrew Welch (CTO @ HSO), Chris Huntingford (Low Code Lead @ ANS), and Mark Smith (Cloud Strategist @ IBM). Before joining Microsoft, she served as the Engineering Lead for strategic programs at Vanquis Bank in London where she led teams driving technical transformation and navigating regulatory challenges across affordability, loans, and open banking domains. Her prior experience includes service as a senior technical consultant and engineer at Hitachi, FelineSoft, and Ipsos, among others.