The AI Revolution Is Changing How Expert Teams Interact

As AI reshapes the way expert teams collaborate, the days of large, layered management structures may be coming to an end. With AI as a powerful multiplier, small, specialized teams are the future of innovation.

In the past, large teams with layers of management were necessary to implement any non-trivial product or service. This is about to change, and perhaps it will change sooner than we anticipated. The new wave of knowledge multipliers allows skilled experts to lead themselves. The latest and most powerful collaboration tools, collectively known as “artificial intelligence,” become a multiplier for the best of the best. They no longer need the middle layers of “lieutenants”—they can drive innovation independently. Small, powerful teams are the future. Large outsourced groups are becoming less relevant as AI enables individuals to work faster and smarter.

A smartly deployed expertise is the new currency of success. With AI amplifying what skilled engineers can do, the real magic happens when a team is small but packed with experts who are passionate about their craft, and with the new AI tools, they are about to become nearly supernatural. Tedious, pesky work like creating formal documents, risk assessments, traceability between work products, creation of customer handbooks and process descriptions, and even detailed requirements specifications—all those outcomes can soon be fully or largely automated and “internally outsourced,” if you will.

Software is becoming a key driver in industries such as automotive. The cool thing about software is the flexibility of structured concepts such as architecture. Structured work is a euphemism for “knowing how to make it happen effectively.” Some 20 years ago, “architecture-driven development” was in vogue. Unfortunately, those early approaches to systems development still needed extensive, manually created, formal content, such as well-structured requirements at the detailed level of the engineering workflow or manually created source code.

That “unsexy” work can soon be mainly automated, or the creation of such formal aspects can be more easily achieved. While those once fully manually written content implied a larger “infantry” of engineers, the “generals” are now increasingly empowered to achieve the outcome for which dozens of “infantry” were indispensable.

 A top-notch, small expert team can replace an army of often “best-cost” engineers.

AI isn’t a replacement for people—it’s an accelerator for the talented. The work often denounced as “boring” or downright “stupid” will soon disappear in our industry.

The silly knee-jerk reaction of “we need more people” when a project gets in trouble may also finally be experiencing its day of reckoning. It is no longer about the number of “FTE” (full-time equivalents). Increasingly, the effectiveness, not the sheer efficiency, becomes more decisive.

The occasionally expressed opinion that “small is beautiful”—meaning that smaller teams are more effective—often remained a watercooler phrase because expert teams are rarely scalable. Now, with the help of better AI-powered software, this vision may become more viable. AI will likely vastly improve team scalability.  

“Small is beautiful” is about to experience a considerable comeback. And that’s a good thing.