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An Agile operating setup is more than a Jira configuration.
In an earlier independent consulting engagement, I helped a company preparing to sell digital-security SaaS subscriptions establish its project delivery and operational processes.
I worked with technical, business operations and management teams on Agile planning, workflow design, implementation planning and Jira configuration. I also used AI assistance for early planning and workflow analysis.
Many team members were already familiar with Agile. The challenge was making the process work across the business:
• How priorities became development work.
• What information a team needed before starting.
• How progress, risks and dependencies reached management.
• Who was responsible for consequential decisions.
If I approached a similar engagement today, I'd start by examining one handoff before introducing more automation.
I'd use Jira rules for defined checks and progress calculations, AI for preparing information from approved sources, and accountable people for scope, estimates and business decisions.
The modern AI workflow is a proposed improvement, not something I deployed in that earlier engagement.
For those who've helped teams adopt Agile, which operating decision was hardest to make consistent?
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I designed and built the website for The IBT Group, a process transformation consultancy from Australia. 30 years in the field, 37 countries, more than 6,000 people trained, and clients like PepsiCo, Rolls-Royce and HSBC
They came with an AI-generated draft: one long page that took five minutes to read and showed every service at once. For a company that sells clear processes, the site did the opposite
The idea is structure cut out of chaos. The hero runs a film of frosted glass channels carved through rough stone that turn into a top-down process map, and the headline ends on "Purpose. Speed. Integrity." in an italic serif
Before that I tried a dark version with a dotted globe and a light one with a night city photo. Both looked like every other consulting site, and the second left me one thing to keep: the serif accent
On the live site Process Mining is a pinned block whose tabs switch as you scroll, the Lean Six Sigma belts run from White to Diamond, and each solution got its own page instead of a paragraph on the home page
Live site: theibtgroup.com
Vladyslav, this is super clean work! Transforming an AI-generated long page into a proper site for a 30-year consultancy like The IBT Group is no small task. Love the "Purpose. Speed. Integrity." direction - feels very premium and matches clients like PepsiCo and Rolls-Royce....
Experience buys you time.
Good references help a project, but they're not what saves it. What saves it is knowing the tools within your reach and the creative processes you can run.
I'm not an animator. Still, this project, which started recently here at the studio, called for animation: hand-drawn characters, in thin lines, living around 3D pieces from a furniture company, for a set of product Reels.
The client needed it in two days. Done the traditional way, it would have taken far longer, so I turned to AI tools. But using the tool for the tool's sake would never have gotten me here.
What got me here was the process. I spent my time hunting for the right reference, and found it in Vitra's "Mariposa Family" film, an excellent reference for illustration and for bringing 3D and drawing together. From there, the tools and the workflow I've built over the years did the rest. There's still room to improve, I know, but it's a good step forward.
I hear a lot that AI will take some designers' jobs. Maybe it will. But I see it a little differently. AI lets you do things that used to take far more complex processes. An axe in a lumberjack's hands brings a tree down. In a beginner's hands, it rarely gets the same result. AI works the same way: in the hands of someone who knows how to use it, it doesn't take work away. It creates more.
The tools will keep changing. What doesn't change is each designer's sense of aesthetics: knowing what fits, how it fits, and what to do. AI can make almost anything. Deciding what deserves to be made is still up to us.
Has AI taken work from you, or brought you more?
You brought creativity to the table 💪
Northbound🚀: Studio Autopilot
An AI-powered client pipeline for creative studios, wrapped in a hand-built 3D world. A brief comes in, gets scored and routed, becomes a priced proposal, is accepted online and turns into a running project, with no one chasing emails.
Every studio knows the feeling: a new brief lands and the clock starts. Then come hours of reading, qualifying, writing proposals, chasing replies and setting up the project. Northbound turns that whole journey into one automated flow, so a small studio can respond like a big one.
The problem: Creative studios lose their best hours to admin. Strong leads wait days for a proposal, weak ones eat the same time as good ones, and follow-ups slip through the cracks. The work that wins clients is the work nobody has time for.
The solution:
- AI brief scoring and routing. Every brief is read for budget, timeline, goals and fit, then routed one of three ways: fast track, a quick human review, or an honest, helpful decline with pointers.
- Tailored proposals in about a minute. Strong fits get a scoped proposal with workstreams, a realistic timeline and three priced packages.
- Online acceptance and kickoff booking. Clients pick a package, accept online and book their kickoff call on the spot.
- A project that runs itself. Milestones are planned on acceptance, and follow-ups and reminders go out automatically.
- A morning digest. Every day at 08:00 the studio owner gets a summary of new briefs, proposals awaiting review, clients who haven’t replied, and what’s due.
- An owner dashboard showing pipeline, win rate and hours saved, plus a review queue to approve held proposals in one click.
- A live demo console where anyone can send a sample brief through the real pipeline and watch each step happen.
The morning digest is my favorite part here. When inquiries, proposals and deadlines are all in one place, you don't have to start the day searching through conversations. I'd just put the items that need an owner's decision today at the top.