Many Fortune 500 companies have recently undergone extensive layoffs and now find themselves having to achieve more with fewer people—while grappling with how to integrate generative AI into their products. They must build while economizing, streamlining and increasing efficiency in every part of their company. Yet one of the most vital cogs of the machinery has struggled to evolve over the past 20 years.
In fact, until now, managing high-tech engineering teams at the world’s biggest companies has not been all that high-tech.
Back in the 1970s, the “waterfall” model was introduced: An inflexible process in which each phase of software development depended on the previous one’s completion. Then, around the 2000s, companies started moving towards “agile” models that tracked progress in two-week sprints.
Now, a third era of software development management is emerging. It’s not waterfall or agile; it’s data-driven.
Current management systems cannot give managers…
