May 2026
Accelerate speed to market by ReBooting your delivery approach
What we are saying…
If You're Not Doing a Value Stream Re-org..
..What Are You Actually Doing? Blog on what a Value Stream re-org actually involves and how we have been learning by doing this.
Blog by Alex Stokes
What’s happening at ReBoot Co. now…
Like many of our clients we are full of curiosity about AI, and what that will mean for the future of knowledge work. In this edition we have pulled together recent deep dives and articles that provide a few perspectives on AI and what that means to team working.
We are predicting that Value Stream aligned teams are a powerful lever and one that many companies need to be tugging on heavily right now! If you are not aligned to the delivery of value you might inadvertently use AI to speed up the wrong things. AI can be an accelerant as you have probably witnessed, but what we accelerate must be in service of the flow of value. We have a blog below if you are not certain whether your teams really are aligned to the Value Stream of your organisation. Read the Team Topologies case study below to look at the stunning impact of this to a business’ bottom line.
On the client front, I recently wrapped up an engagement with a not-for-profit in the health sector, where we undertook a full Value Stream aligned transformation of their operating model. This was a company-wide initiative, a significant uplift in organisational capability that proved both impactful to how they operate and a tremendous source of learning for me personally. This piece of work was another example of the use of Team Topologies, but one that leaks out of the Product and Engineering function to touch all areas, as I believe is right. Why retain functional hierarchies that slow the flow? No organisation of the future will want that.
There are moments when a client's mission pushes you to achieve what you once thought impossible, and this was one of those moments. The work resonated on a personal level, and that made all the difference, and also explains the lag in our newsletter frequency, as we get better at managing our own WIP limits.
That’s the wrap for now.
If any of these threads spark your interest: Value Stream aligned transformations, Team Topologies and domain driven design, rebooting your ways of working and improving flow — reach out, we’d love to connect.
Cheers,
Alex
We’ve been writing…
The 94% Gap from Strategy to Execution
94% of C-suite executives believe their operating systems are jeopardising growth and performance, yet few take action to modernise them.
Blog by Tony Fifoot
Need AI to deliver faster? Maybe there’s a better way.
We want our teams to be more efficient, faster, and keep them busy. It’s natural to assume this is where we should focus our energy.
But coding is rarely the slowest part of the system.
Blog by Tony Fifoot
Ways of Working with AI…
The Human + AI-Agent Dev Team
This video is a demo of how Henrik Kniberg and his teams use AI agents internally at Abundly. It’s encouraging to early agilists like us as it retains the positive parts of developing working software as a team, sensibly augmented by AI Agents contributing to the process without losing humanity.
Video by Henrik Kniberg
Mobbing with AI
Atlassian have published a useful article combining the strengths of Mobbing, AI and teamwork, demonstrating a team focussed way of working. Article by Atlassian
Mob Programming with AI: Inside a High-Performing Team’s Journey
At Trayton they focus on using AI agents to remove friction, accelerate workflows, and promote collaborative efficiency. Another opportunity to read about team working with AI.
Article By Michael Göthe
AI, proceed with caution..
I suspect like many of you, your feeds are awash with AI cautionary tales and existential dreads, while we can’t predict the future we can remain adaptable and humanistic in our approaches, here are a few articles and a vid we thought worth sharing.
Does AI lead us back to a beautiful document based waterfall approach?
In this Agile meets Architecture panel discussion, some well respected names from agile software development grapple with what team interactions should be like now and how will we teach upcoming generations how to code.
Agile Meets Architecture Berlin 2026
Compressed Cognition: The Cost of Faster Coding
Agentic coding collapses the timeline of software decisions. What we gain in speed, we pay for in decision density and mental energy, and experience the “AI productivity paradox”
Substack article by Adam Tornhill
AI Has Made Me More Creative. It's Also Wearing Me Out
AI makes it easier to do more, but harder to stop. Craig explores what this could mean for burn out in people creating with AI
Article by friend Craig Penfold
Did We Do This to Ourselves?
In Kent’s new-ish podcast he and Angie Jones wrestle with “the impossible bargain AI has handed engineers” where a team that automated everything were then made redundant. She talks of the importance of crystal clear intent with your AI adoption.
Still Burning podcast by Kent Beck
In the Press…
Our Team Topologies Case study with REA group was published! Read it here!
Evolving an empowered, high-performing delivery ecosystem using Team Topologies at REA Group
Conference Program Companion
Agile Australia 19th and 20th May 2026
I’m excited to be attending Agile Australia next week at the mighty Melbourne Cricket Ground and here are some of my picks of talks I will be prioritising, I hope to run into some of our friends from the community there! Registration link is here!
Day 1
Five levels of letting go - Peter Sbarski
Peter Sbarski introduces a five-level AI Maturity Model to help engineers and organisations understand where they sit on the AI adoption journey.
Scaling Up engineering management - Adel Smee
When your company goes from 50 to 200 people, your tools, teams, and processes don’t always scale with you.
AI within Agile: PM to Engineer - Bojan Zivic
When AI stops being a tool for engineers and becomes the common language between engineers and PMs, something shifts.
Humans in the Loop: Designing Human-AI Collaboration That Works - Xharmagne Carandang
Deciding where humans add the most value, where AI can take the lead, and how that collaboration happens. That is deeply human work.
Day 2
Keynote – The Contradictions of Building AI Products and Teams -Sherif Mansour
Distinguished Product Manager and Head of AI, Atlassian
Keynote – Leadership & Management in the AI Era -Nigel Dalton
Social Scientist, ThoughtWorks
Your Brain on AI: The Ethics of Cognitive Automation - Aubrey Blanche
The organizations that will get the most from AI aren’t the ones moving fastest. They’re the ones thinking clearly about which cognitive work to automate, how to preserve the human judgment that makes teams exceptional, and who gets a say in shaping that future.
AI delivers speed, people deliver value - Adam Boas
Delivering value to your customers and business is the confluence of many factors and you ignore those factors at your peril.
Alex’s book “Empowered Agile Transformation - Beyond the Framework“ is discounted for Australian readers while stocks last, or pick it up on amazon here.
ReBoot Co. are proud to be a Team Topologies APAC Advocate