Summary: As AI becomes deeply embedded in enterprise operations, leaders are rethinking how work gets done. At Broadcom’s Annual Value Stream Management Virtual Summit, industry experts shared practical insights into the evolving relationship between AI, workflows, and business value. This article unpacks the key themes—collaboration between humans and AI, the shift to product-centric delivery, and the rising importance of governance in a hybrid operating model.
As artificial intelligence moves from isolated pilots to integral components of enterprise operations, the conversation has shifted. The question is no longer whether AI will reshape the way we work - it’s how organizations can harness that transformation to deliver meaningful value. At Broadcom’s 5th Annual Value Stream Management (VSM) Virtual Summit, three sessions shed light on that shift, each offering a unique but complementary lens on the evolving relationship between AI, work, and value delivery.
Key takeaway: Realizing AI’s potential goes beyond deploying models or tools. It demands a fundamental rethinking of how work is organized, governed, and continuously aligned with value.
Rewiring Work: Where AI and Humans Co-Create
In the opening keynote, Ted Schadler, VP and Principal Analyst at Forrester, presented a framework for understanding AI’s role in modern work processes. He mapped it across two dimensions: the degree of automation and the level of human augmentation. This approach reveals four distinct zones of opportunity:
- Standardization: Low automation, low augmentation – systematizing repetitive tasks.
- Efficiency Gains: High automation, low augmentation – automating execution to free up human capacity.
- Expert Enablement: Low automation, high augmentation – supporting complex decision-making and judgment.
- Transformation: High automation, high augmentation – enabling entirely new ways of operating.
While many organizations begin by automating tasks, Schadler emphasized that true, sustainable value comes from orchestrating systems where humans and AI collaborate. Drawing an analogy to industrial automation—where 20% of investment goes into control systems—he argued that similar investments are needed to effectively manage human-agent systems in modern enterprises.
Strategic implication: VSM offers the structural visibility needed to determine where AI should automate, augment, or fundamentally transform workflows. Without this insight, AI investments risk becoming fragmented or misaligned with business goals.
VSM offers the structural visibility needed to determine where AI should automate, augment, or fundamentally transform workflows. Without this insight, AI investments risk becoming fragmented or misaligned with business goals.
Ahold Delhaize USA: Shifting from Projects to Product-Centric Value Delivery
Erin Fleckenstein, VP of Digital Technology at Ahold Delhaize USA, one of the largest grocery retailers in the U.S., shared the company’s multi-year journey toward a product-centric operating model—one enabled by VSM.
Ahold Delhaize transitioned from traditional project management to a product-centric operating model, with VSM serving as the framework that enabled and supported the shift. Three key lessons emerged from this transformation:
- Investment Prioritization: Moving to value-based funding allowed the company to better align resources with outcomes.
- Strategy-to-Execution Alignment: Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) were translated from high-level corporate strategy into specific goals for each value stream, ensuring alignment at every level.
- Operational Visibility: The company gained clearer insight into how time, effort, and budget were being allocated—and where returns were falling short.
This wasn’t just a structural change—it was a cultural one. By making inefficiencies and delays visible, VSM empowered the organization to make more informed, faster decisions at scale.
The AI Playbook: Real Use Cases and the Rise of Governance
Alok Arora, Head of AI/ML Customer Engineering at Google Cloud, brought the discussion down to earth with concrete examples of AI driving value today. His focus was not on speculative futures, but on tangible use cases already delivering returns:
- Developer Productivity: AI-assisted coding tools speed up development and reduce cognitive load.
- Operational Efficiency: Intelligent automation removes repetitive toil and streamlines execution.
But Arora’s most urgent point was about governance. As organizations adopt hybrid human–AI operating models, they face a fundamental challenge: determining who holds responsibility for the output produced by a distributed network of autonomous agents.
To address this, enterprises must develop governance frameworks that cover:
- Attribution: Who owns the output created by AI agents?
- Auditability: Can decisions be traced and understood?
- Compliance: Are actions in line with legal, regulatory, and ethical standards?
Without robust governance, enterprises risk reducing transparency, increasing inconsistency, and exposing themselves to significant risks in their decision processes.
Rethinking Transformation: VSM as the Backbone of AI Integration
The convergence of AI and value stream thinking isn’t simply about deploying new technology—it’s about rearchitecting the enterprise itself.
These sessions highlighted how VSM serves as a critical foundation for AI-enabled operating models— it surfaces friction, aligns investments with outcomes, and creates the structure needed for responsible governance. AI, in turn, becomes a strategic enabler—driving efficiency, enhancing human capability, and unlocking transformational change.
To harness AI’s full potential, leaders must go beyond technology adoption:
- Design workflows where humans and AI collaborate by intent, not accident.
- Invest in control structures that ensure transparency, accountability, and compliance.
- Continuously assess where AI should automate, augment, or be constrained.
AI may provide the spark, but VSM ensures the enterprise not only lights up—it moves in the right direction with clarity and control.
Pavel Azaletskiy
Editor Viktoryia Karalionak