The board approved the AI-assisted development with the hope of seeing tangible results in faster delivery times. director of corporate directorAccording to the survey, the reason for winning the award was not for novelty, but for productivity and operational efficiency.
However, many organizations still feel that delivery is delayed. Routine changes take too much time. A commitment to reliability replaces a commitment to growth. “Delivery friction” continues to consume expensive capacity without a clean budget line emerging.
Expediting drafts is not the same as expediting delivery.
Two signals for the second half of 2025 explain where the dividend will go. On December 8, 2025, DORA updated its Platform Engineering Guidance to address “downstream failures,” which are the bottlenecks between code being written and being safely released. A week later, State of Platform Engineering Vol 4 drew insights from 518 platform engineers and pointed to the same lever: a stronger platform foundation that reduces friction between organizations.
There is a broader pattern behind this. Cloud adoption is now commonplace, but practices vary and many organizations still don't consistently use modern approaches across their teams. State of Cloud Native Development Q3 2025 The same gap is emerging within the enterprise. The functionality exists, but implementation has been slow.
The board's policy is not to discuss tools. It's about managing the delivery system that turns changes into safe releases.
Platform engineering sounds technical, but from a board perspective it's simple. An internal delivery system makes routine changes secure and reproducible. Reduce variance and maintain consistency of control with standard routes, guardrails, and self-service steps.
The risk for boards is not whether a platform exists or not. The risk is whether someone will use it.
Adoption is a missing link
In many organizations, leaders can honestly say, “We have a platform.” We can show you a roadmap. They could point to new tools. But delivery still happens through side channels like bespoke scripts, special approvals, one-off pipelines, and unofficial exceptions that exist in inboxes and tribal knowledge.
Over time, those side streets become real systems. The official route will be the route used in the presentation. Side routes are routes used under pressure.
That's how we arrive at the paradox. You have invested in the platform, but the outcome depends on heroic actions. We've invested in faster drafts, but we're still waiting for release.
This is not a failure of intent. That is a failure of governance. If the default route is slower than the shortcut, teams will continue using the shortcut. If exceptions aren't retired, you'll have uneven control, unpredictable throughput, and you'll end up paying for two systems forever.
Boards do not need to be designed platforms. However, the board can manage deployment and retirement, two levers that determine whether a platform is capacity infrastructure or shelfware.
Treat your internal platform like a product the company depends on. Products are defined by their usage, reliability, and user experience, not their existence. The board can apply its discipline here without slipping into action.
Quarterly Platform Implementation Review
At the next board meeting, ask the CEO to designate a responsible executive for the internal delivery platform (usually the CTO or CIO) and submit a quarterly one-page platform implementation pack. The purpose is simple. It is to prove whether standard routes are used and whether side roads are abolished.
The pack must report 5 signals.
Using default route. Routine shares are modified using the standard end-to-end route. Low means they are funding shadow operations.
Time to first safe release. It's time for teams to ship new services using standard routes. Slow means teams get away with it.
Scope of automation. Sharing of routine workflows, such as standard checks and evidence collection, that are performed without manual handoffs. Uneven coverage hides risks to key personnel.
Exception rate and age. Number of open exceptions and how long they are open. Older exceptions are side paths that were never deprecated.
Release stability. How often changes cause customer-impacting issues and rework. Decreased stability is both a risk signal and a throughput signal.
Then use the pack to make two decisions in the room. Approve one bottleneck to be removed within the next 90 days with owner and date. Approve a unilateral resignation within the next 90 days and specify your replacement and deadline. If these two decisions are made quarterly, adoption will increase, variance will decrease, and the speed of creation of AI can become the speed of delivery.
The moment the truth is revealed
Use security patches when you want a single scenario that quickly exposes deployment issues.
An important patch arrives. The expectations are simple. Apply quickly, prove correct application, and minimize disruption.
In organizations that follow many standard routes, patches travel along one familiar path. Checks are performed in the same way. Evidence is collected consistently. Exceptions will be logged and reviewed.
In organizations with low adoption rates, patches become like a treasure hunt. Each team takes a different route. One will be shipped immediately. The other one is waiting for approval. The other is to collect evidence from your inbox and screenshots, since the evidence is not captured within the flow.
The board instantly recognizes the symptoms of uneven speed and uneven control when disciplined speed is most important.
A healthy delivery system produces reproducible evidence. Not because everyone acted perfectly, but because the workflow made the right thing the easiest thing to do.
Therefore, adoption is not a developer's preference. It is a governing condition.
90-day board movement
To start a new program without launching it, set a period of 90 days on the named output.
Within two weeks, ask executives to choose one critical routine workflow, a standard patch, a common configuration change, or a low-risk update, and create an end-to-end map that shows where time is being lost and where human resources are still needed.
Within 30 days, request a plan to eliminate the largest cause of wait time in that workflow, along with owner and date.
Within 90 days, we demand that the one side road that currently circumvents the standard route be abolished and that a clear alternative be created so that teams are not forced to perform heroic acts again.
For your next meeting, ask for a one-page pack with five signals and two decisions you expect to make. You're not looking for perfection. You want a system that improves one bottleneck and one sidetrack at a time.
The board question in 2026 is not whether teams will use AI tools. Does your organization have enough standard routes to production to use? If a default route is truly easier than a shortcut, the drafting speed of AI can become the speed of business.
