Yuval Yeret: Scaling AI from Activity to Impact
by Yuval Yeret
Yuval Yeret hosts Scaling AI: From Activity to Impact, conversations for technology, product, and business leaders asking a hard question: how do we turn all this AI activity theater into real business impact? Yuval and his guests explore what needs to change in how organizations choose, fund, learn, and work with AI — including how native AI capabilities can help scale AI itself. Building on its roots in scaling with agility, the podcast applies adaptive, product-oriented thinking to the biggest operating-model challenge facing organizations today.
Episodes
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Scaling the AI Software Factory from Activity to Impact
In this conversation, Yuval Yeret discusses the challenges and strategies for managing software development in the age of AI. He emphasizes the importance of transitioning from mere activity to impactful outcomes through evidence-based management and spec-driven development. In this conversation,...
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Leading in the Fog (using Agility) w/ Brad Farris
When nobody can predict the next five months, let alone five years, what does it mean for a leader to be agile? Brad Farris coaches owners and CEOs of professional services firms through what he calls a polycrisis: AI reshaping the work, shifting expectations between owners and the people who...
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AI Is Rewriting Professional Services: When Faster Implementation Moves the Bottleneck
AI can significantly compress enterprise software implementation timelines. That does not eliminate the constraint. It moves it. Julie Hodge, AI Strategy & Operations Leader at Zuora, joins me to discuss how AI is changing professional services, customer onboarding, and the relationship between...
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Tiny Teams, Same Dependencies: Can AI Flatten Your Organization?
Consulting firms are telling engineering leaders that coding agents mean you can flatten the org, cut coordination layers, and move to autonomous tiny teams. But in the enterprise trenches, most teams aren't decoupled feature teams—they are system teams with heavy cross-team dependencies. 10x-ing...
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Developers of the System, Not the Code: Inside Next Insurance's Agentic DLC w/ Shay Mandel
"We are now developers, not of the code. We are developers of the system." Most AI coding rollouts end up with faster typing and the same delivery system. Shay Mandel's team at Ergo-Next Insurance went after the system instead. They broke the whole product development lifecycle into skills an…
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Beyond Token Caps w/ Tomer Elias: How Enterprises Actually Measure AI Impact
Most enterprise AI conversations get stuck on the wrong number: how many tokens an employee should be allowed to burn. Tomer Elias argues the cap is the least interesting question in the room. The hard part is attribution, knowing whether any of that spend moved a business metric at all. We…
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Why the Pivot? Tracing the Line from Scaling Agility to AI Impact
In this special episode, host Yuval Yeret flips the script with guest Philip Morgan, an expert on positioning and point of view. They discuss the recent rebranding of the podcast and dive deep into the striking parallels between historical Agile Theater and the emerging risks of AI Theater....
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Claude's /goal Feature Just Exposed A Real Challenge With AI Agents
Claude and Codex have a relatively new feature — `/goal` — that lets you set a completion condition and keep the AI running autonomously until it's met. This capability exposes a real challenge with agentic AI and explains why its shifting the bottleneck to its assymetric capabilities in…
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You can 10x engineering and still not 10x the business
AI coding assistants are genuinely good now — coding, debugging, tests, docs. But faster engineering output doesn't automatically become faster business impact. AI has quietly moved the bottleneck: from building working software to validating whether that software creates value for anyone who...
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AI Activity, Output, or Impact? How to Escape AI Theater
Most AI programs start by measuring activity: licenses, prompts, token usage, and pilots. Some move on to output: more code, content, or analysis. Neither tells you whether the business moved. In this solo episode, I explain the three levels of AI adoption: activity, output, and impact. The…
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26 Days to 3: How Zoetis Is Building an AI-Powered Operating Model
Zoetis is reducing a 26-day infrastructure workflow to 2-3 days with a three-agent pipeline. One agent designs, another produces infrastructure as code, and a third executes. I talk with Kumar Venugopal, CTO of Zoetis, about moving from personal AI productivity to organization-wide impact. We…
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When One Product Needs More Than One Leader: Getting Multi-Team Product Ownership Right
The question isn't how many product owners you need. It's how many genuine product problems your product actually has. In the final episode of this three-part series, Yuval Yeret works through the most complex version of the product ownership question: what happens when a product has grown to...
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Who Actually Owns Your Product? Why the PM/PO Split Often Creates More Confusion Than It Solves
Two titles, one product, and a gap in accountability that's quietly costing you more than you think. In this solo episode, Yuval Yeret tackles one of the most common structural problems in product organizations: the split between product manager and product owner that creates ambiguity instead of...
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Why Your Product Owners/Managers Can't Say No
In hardware-software companies, life sciences, and industrial tech, a familiar pattern emerges: a platform team serving multiple internal customers, one product owner caught between competing roadmaps, and no one with the standing to make the tough calls. In this episode, Yuval unpacks why this...
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In the Spotlight - Building and Operating Your Revenue Machine
Most sales leaders are stuck running the machine. Few stop to ask whether the machine is even working.In this episode of In the Spotlight, Roi Carmel sits down with Yuval to break apart the two hats every revenue leader wears — operating the team and building it — and why most teams only do...
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Tackling the Bureaucracy That Stalls Scale-up Growth using Stewardship and Agility w/ Michelle Holiday and Tyson Bertmaring
Why "Rules Written in Blood" Kill Agency—and How Stewardship Restores FlowWhen companies scale, the default move is to add "boxes and rules" to maintain control. But this functional isolation often creates massive friction, turning G&A into a bottleneck instead of an accelerator. In this episode,...
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Being Agile about Scaling Agile at Aras Software w/ Andrey Knourenko
In this conversation, Yuval and Andrey Knourenko discuss Aras Software's scaling journey. They reflect on the challenges faced during the transition, the impact of COVID-19, and the evolution of planning approaches and team structures. The discussion also touches on the influence of private…
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Value w/o Risk? Wouldn't that be nice...
In this conversation, Yuval explores the intricate relationship between risk and value. He emphasizes the importance of understanding and managing risk to unlock potential value, particularly through de-risking strategies such as agile/iterative discovery-based execution. "Agile is risk-driven...
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How to Upgrade Your Scaling SMBs Operating System Without Losing Agility
At some point on the growth journey, most leaders reach a point at which they upgrade their organization’s operating system. (even if they don’t explicitly call it that) Way too often, this upgrade doesn’t result in immediate acceleration and traction. In many cases, it feels like the…
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How to Upgrade Your Organization's Operating System for the Age of AI
Episode Overview In this crossover episode with the Scrum.org Community Podcast, Yuval Yeret joins Scrum.org CEO Dave West to unpack why 95% of AI initiatives fail—not because of the tech, but because of outdated organizational operating systems. Together they explore how they’ve seen product...
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What's Next On Navigating the Product Operating Model Landscape? Product Transformation Journey?
In this last episode of the initial series, I share where we might go next in future episodes, exploring the product journey on the Scaling w/ Agility podcast. If you have any questions, ideas, or would like to come on the podcast to share your product transformation journey, let me know!…
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Bringing The Elements of a Product Operating Model Together – From Inspiration to Transformation
Let’s talk about how to integrate the Product Operating Model elements we discussed in previous episodes: * Recap of the “flipped pyramid” concept and its importance in POM * Key aspects of a true product-oriented, agile organization * The importance of treating the organizational setup itself as…
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How to Apply Product Thinking to Strategic Bets and Portfolio-Level Work
Did episode 4 get you thinking about how to flip your product topology pyramid and move more work towards empowered product teams and groups? I hope so... The reality is that in a multi-product organization, it’s almost impossible to manage ALL the work in these teams. Some work will still…
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How to Scale Your Product/Tech Organization Without Sacrificing Your Agility
Now that we’ve established our goal - creating empowered product teams- let’s discuss how to scale a product organization using these empowered product teams as a building block and connecting them without sacrificing agility and product orientation. In this episode: * Challenges of maintaining...
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Empowered Product Teams – The Key to Speed, Outcomes and Impact
This episode of the audio series introduces a core pillar of the modern product organization - empowered product teams: * What does a truly empowered product team look like? * Contrast between ideal product professionals and reality in feature factories * Challenges faced by product people in...
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Why are we stuck in the Feature Factory? Agile Theater vs. True Agility
Ok, so we hopefully established the potential of shifting from a feature factory towards a product-oriented organization. To start that shift, let’s explore why so many organizations are stuck in the feature factory (or even struggle to get to it...) In this episode, I explore one of the main...
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Why would you need a Product Operating Model?
In this episode, we explore: * Why organizations need a Product Operating Model * Comparison of POM to traditional agile methodologies * Introduction to the concept of “feature factories” * Discussion on the continuum from activity to outputs to outcomes * The key characteristics of a Product...
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Welcome to the Navigating the Product Operating Model Landscape Audio Series
Do you feel inspired by becoming an empowered product organization, but unsure of the concrete steps to take to initiate the transformation? I created the “Navigating the Product Operating Model Landscape” audio series to help product and technology leaders like you gain clarity on the path from…
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From Feature Factory to Product Lab: Turning Reviews into Strategic Outcome-Driven Conversations
“Show me your reviews, and I’ll tell you whether you’re a process theater, a feature factory, or a product lab.”In this solo episode, Yuval Yeret brings together his SAFe and Scrum expertise and his Sense and Respond Learning focus on Outcomes and Impact to explain how he helps product leaders…
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Breaking Down SAFe: Strengths, Weaknesses, and Controversies
In this special episode of No BS Scaling w/ Agility, Yuval shares an AI-generated highlight of the Breaking the SAFe video series created with Ryan Ripley. As a SAFe Fellow, SPCT, and Professional Scrum Trainer, Yuval brings a unique inside-out perspective—able to both defend and critique SAFe...
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Don't sleep on Portfolio-level Agility
When is the right time to introduce portfolio-level agility? Drawing from more than a decade of experience guiding enterprise transformations, Yuval argues that starting at the portfolio level—early—isn’t just helpful, it’s essential. He walks listeners through a powerful case study involving a...
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Why Do So Many Business Transformations Flop?
In this solo episode of Scaling With Agility, Yuval Yeret pulls back the curtain on why so many agile, digital, and business transformations, more generally, fail. Instead of doubling down on top-down mandates and theater, Yuval explores how to foster meaningful change by treating transformation…
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Mastering Courage and Conviction: Small Acts, Big Impact in Agile Leadership
In this roundtable edition of Mastering Agility/Scaling with Agility Gang, hosts Yuval Yeret, Rich Visotcky, and Jim Sammons unpack the role of courage and conviction in agile leadership. They share real-world stories—from reorganising an Israeli cyber-security scale-up to confronting “invisible...
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Uncomfortable Truths About The Agile Industry's Focus on Vanity vs Outcomes
In this special crossover episode of Mastering Agility and Scaling w/ Agility, Yuval Yeret joins Jim Sammons and Rick Visotcky to confront the uncomfortable truths about the agile industry. Together, they explore why so much agile work has drifted into activity for activity’s sake and how…
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Clemens Adolphs on the Role of Agility in Getting AI Investments Right
In this episode of the Scaling With Agility podcast, host Yuval Yeret welcomes Clemens Adolphs, co-founder of AIce Labs, a company specializing in helping organizations successfully implement AI initiatives. Their conversation dives into the intersection of AI and agility, exploring how to avoid...
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How to Drive Towards Business Agility Without Falling Into Transformation Theater - Fireside Chat with Jesper Boeg
Business Agility Beyond the Theater with Jesper Boeg 🎯 Episode Overview Yuval Yeret sits down with Jesper Boeg, an experienced transformation leader. Jesper has spent nearly two decades guiding organizations from team-level agile adoption to enterprise-wide agility. Together, they explore what...
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Understanding the Agile/Agility Ecosystem
Yuval is a guest on this episode of the Private Equity Funcast focused on Agility in Private Equity: Beyond Agile TheaterSome topics Jim and Yuval cover – - The importance of principle-driven agility over rigid adherence to frameworks. - Leveraging agility in various industries, organizational...
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Accelerate your Delivery by Reducing Dependencies - Descaling for Agility
In this episode of Scaling with Agility, Yuval discusses the challenges organizations face with cross-product work and dependencies, advocating for a strategy of descaling rather than investing in more program management. He explores the concept of empowered product teams, the importance of…
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The Future of Agile Roles: From Discrete Roles to Integrated Accountabilities
Has Agile has reached a phase of disillusionment? What does that mean for the future of agile roles such as Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches? Yuval shares some useful patterns he's seen in the trenches for how organizations are evolving their approach towards enabling and stewarding agility. 00:00...
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From Agile Theater To Real Value with Michael Gerharz
Ever feel like you’re the “agile person” in the room—brought in to run ceremonies, fix Jira boards, or play Scrum cop, but never actually invited to shape real strategy? You’re not alone. In this episode, Yuval sits down with Michael Gerharz—a computer scientist turned communication coach—to dig...
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How To Evade Coordination Tax By Organizing Around Outcomes
Yuval discusses how companies can avoid the hidden costs of coordination tax by organizing around outcomes rather than traditional structures. He provides a case study of how Gillette successfully created a virtual value center for their exfoliating razor project, leading to faster development…
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How to break through the process theater (Using outcome orientation)
Breaking Free from Agile Theater: Using Outcome Mapping to Drive Real Change In this episode of Scaling With Agility, Yuval explores the phenomenon of 'Agile Theater'—where organizations go through the motions of Agile practices without achieving meaningful outcomes. Yuval introduces Outcome...
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Q & A on Product Portfolio Management Part 2: Evolving Portfolio Management for Product Success
Navigating Agile Portfolios: Funding Products, Making Trade-offs, and Aligning Teams This is part two of my conversation with Dave West and Darryl Fernandez from the Scrum.org Community Podcast. If part one was about seeing the portfolio mess, this one’s about wrestling with it: funding models…
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Product Portfolio Management Q&A - Part 1
For this episode, I’m sharing a conversation originally recorded for the Scrum.org Community Podcast. Dave West, Darryl Fernandez, and I discuss the messy realities of product portfolio management. We discuss how most organizations are still managing way too much WIP, why “empowered teams” is…
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Episode 1 - The Status of Agile as a Platform and Navigating Agile Career Pivots
What's the future of Agile? Agility? Agile as a career choice? I recently joined Jonathan Stark on his podcast Ditching Hourly to discuss the current state of Agile as a platform, how it has evolved over the years, and what practitioners should consider as the platform matures. Jonathan primarily...
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The Scaling Paradox: Why Your Success is Now Killing Your Speed (aka why the heck would you need to shift from managing projects to products? )
Ever feel like your product organization is stuck in the mud? You’re not alone. Many teams start strong, laser-focused on delivering value and achieving product-market fit. But as success scales, things get messy. Dependencies pile up, alignment fades, and suddenly, you’re running a feature…
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Expensive Problems >> Principles >> Practices
End-to-end flow of value Continuous Improvement Autonomy and Empowerment Organizing Around Value Sustainable Pace Alignment around Outcome-oriented Goals Energized People Leaders who Serve Speed and Empiricism All worthy Agility Principles (at least I think so…) But why should anyone care? I…
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Breaking the SAFe
Breaking Down SAFe: Strengths, Weaknesses, and Controversies In this episode of Scaling with Agility, Notebook LM hosts provide an audio overview to Yuval Yeret and Ryan Ripley's Breaking the SAFe series. They dive into the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), exploring its strengths, weaknesses, and…
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“OKRs S&%k, but we don’t know anything better”
In this episode, we dive into a brutally honest and all-too-common sentiment from the scaleup world: “OKRs s#Hk, but we don’t know anything better.” This quote from a Chief of Staff at a cybersecurity scaleup sets the tone for a candid discussion about the challenges and surprising potential of...
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Fix Your OKRs – Back to First Principles
Fixing OKRs with First Principles: Aligning Objectives for Success In this episode of Scaling With Agility, Yuval explores how to effectively utilize OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) by applying first principles. He discusses the common pitfalls of OKRs becoming mere 'theater' in organizations…
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About this show
Yuval Yeret hosts Scaling AI: From Activity to Impact, conversations for technology, product, and business leaders asking a hard question: how do we turn all this AI activity theater into real business impact? Yuval and his guests explore what needs to change in how organizations choose, fund, learn, and work with AI — including how native AI capabilities can help scale AI itself. Building on its roots in scaling with agility, the podcast applies adaptive, product-oriented thinking to the biggest operating-model challenge facing organizations today.
Hosted by
Yuval Yeret
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