The idea of autonomous teams has become something close to doctrine in software development. We treat it as a given that more agency leads to better outcomes. But Ben Linders' piece on moving from product focus to value center thinking suggests we have been optimizing the wrong variable. The question is not how independent a team should be, but what shape of value we are actually trying to create. That distinction matters because it changes the trade-offs we are willing to accept. Agency without a clear sense of the value being produced is just motion. Coherence without agency is control. Neither works well on its own.
This is where the conversation connects to broader tensions in how we build software today. We see the same dynamic playing out in the rise of AI-assisted development. A recent piece on how AI Made Me 5x Faster. It Also Made Me 5x Worse at My Job. highlights what happens when speed is decoupled from understanding. Teams move faster, but they lose the ability to verify intent. Similarly, another article on Verify Your AI Code: Ensuring Intent Without Reading a Single Line pushes back on the idea that we can outsource judgment. Both stories point to the same underlying issue Linders is raising: agency is not the goal. The goal is to create conditions where agency is aligned with a coherent understanding of value. That is a much harder problem than simply granting teams autonomy.
Our take is that value center thinking is not a rebranding exercise. It is a practical shift in how we measure success. Product teams often optimize for shipping features. Value centers optimize for outcomes that matter to the user and the business. That means we need to ask harder questions about what we are building and why. It also means we need to be willing to dissolve teams when the value they create no longer justifies their existence. That is uncomfortable, but it is more honest than clinging to structures because they feel modern. If you are a leader, this is not about giving your teams more freedom. It is about giving them a clearer sense of what value means in your specific context, and then holding them accountable to that. The teams that figure this out will not just be faster. They will be more intentional.
The one thing we would tell a reader who asks us about this directly: start by mapping your current product teams to the value streams they actually serve. You will likely find mismatches. Some teams are too broad, some too narrow, and some are solving problems that no longer exist. Ben Linders, along with the related pieces on AI's impact on performance, suggests we are at a point where the old assumptions no longer hold. The shape of value is not a philosophical abstraction. It is a design constraint. Get it wrong, and no amount of autonomy will save you. Get it right, and you will have a clear answer to the question of why your teams exist in the first place. That is the detail to watch: not how much agency teams have, but how well that agency is pointed at something worth building.