Find the Ceiling

You are sitting in the Q3 budget review. The VP of agile transformation just got taken apart over the agile coach line. Cloud migration is six quarters late. The chief product officer is presenting another reorg and another offsite. You are up next, and for the first time in three years of these meetings you have real numbers. The winning numbers. The kind that beat expectations. The teams that doubled their month-over-month spend on Gen AI for building software shipped considerably more measurable value than the teams that did not. You are about to ask the room for more money. You are going to call it finding the ceiling.

You are sitting in the boardroom for the Q3 budget review. The VP of agile transformation just spent the last forty-five minutes getting taken apart over the line item for agile coaches. Sixteen coaches, eighteen months, and the slide that was supposed to defend them has six metrics on it that the CFO does not consider metrics. The room knows this is theater. The VP knows this is theater. He pivots before he closes his laptop and offers to embed four of his coaches with the cloud migration team to help unblock the cross-functional collaboration model.