AI in the wild: How to lead when everyone’s building

Unleashing Collective Intelligence: How AI Transforms Teams and Product Development

Tom Allen, Founder of The AI Journal, opened the Web Summit Lisbon 2025 discussion on AI’s role in product development and enterprise challenges. He introduced Anu Bharadwaj, President of Atlassian, a collaboration software company known for Jira, Confluence, and Trello. Atlassian serves over 300,000 customers, including 85% of the Fortune 500, with a mission to empower teams for maximum impact.

Ms. Bharadwaj highlighted AI’s profound impact in democratizing software, making low-code and no-code tools a reality. At Atlassian, a 15,000-person company, non-software builders are now creating applications and AI agents. This widespread creation, while innovative, introduces challenges like managing app proliferation and ensuring agents remain effective as underlying data and workflows evolve, alongside critical security and maintainability concerns.

She shared compelling examples of AI’s practical applications. An Atlassian HR team member, without coding experience, developed “Coco,” a Robo agent, to automate performance review compilation and compensation discussions, boosting HR efficiency. Similarly, an Atlassian customer managing a data center used a Robo agent to analyze photos of server racks. The agent instantly identified non-compliant wiring or hardware and automatically generated Jira service management tickets, automating a process that previously consumed many hours.

Discussing “AI-powered teams,” Ms. Bharadwaj explained AI’s evolution from individual co-pilots to autonomous agents. The current focus is on how humans and AI agents collaborate to enhance collective output. She noted that software developers spend only 15-20% of their time coding, with the majority dedicated to coordination and communication. Atlassian aims to build AI that orchestrates these non-coding aspects, improving the entire team’s workflow and connecting diverse organizational processes.

Regarding accountability, Ms. Bharadwaj emphasized that despite agent autonomy, a human operator retains ultimate responsibility for outcomes. She stressed encouraging teams to embrace change and take calculated risks. An Atlassian study showed that the most significant productivity gains from AI came from organizations that *rethought* their workflows, rather than simply automating existing ones.

To foster this adaptive mindset, Ms. Bharadwaj initiated an “AI Week” for Atlassian’s product-building staff, including non-coders. This created a safe environment for experimentation, leading to over 33,000 agents being created using Robo. These successes fostered creativity and helped alleviate concerns about AI’s impact on job roles, encouraging broader organizational adoption.

Finally, Ms. Bharadwaj offered advice for businesses: identify friction points, then strategically rethink workflows with AI, and consistently explore new tools given the rapid pace of technological evolution. Key enterprise concerns include robust permissioning for agents, developing AI-driven “immune systems” to counter prompt injection attacks, and continuous training to leverage AI’s full potential.