The Agile Manifesto was a genuine revolution. It identified real problems with traditional management and gave us better ways to work. Scrum, Kanban, XP—these methodologies have improved millions of projects.

But here's the uncomfortable truth: Agile didn't eliminate coordination overhead. It redistributed it.

Daily standups. Sprint planning. Retrospectives. Backlog refinement. These are still humans coordinating with humans—just in different patterns. A developer on a Scrum team spends 5-7 hours per week in ceremonies alone—that's 12-18% of their time. We replaced waterfall ceremonies with Agile ceremonies. The coordination tax remained.

In this episode, I explore:→ What Agile got right: why it was necessary and what it solved→ What Agile got wrong: the assumptions that limit its effectiveness→ The ceremony creep problem: how Agile implementations become what they sought to replace→ Why "doing Agile" became more important than "being agile"→ The coordination overhead that Agile never addressed→ What comes after Agile—and why it requires a different foundation entirely

If you're an Agile practitioner, this episode might be uncomfortable. But it's not an attack on Agile. It's an honest assessment of what Agile can and cannot do—and why the next evolution requires us to move beyond it.

🎧 Available now on Spotify and all major platforms.

Humanity has organised work in fundamentally different ways across history. Understanding this arc helps us see where we're headed—and why this moment is different.

In this episode, I trace the evolution of coordination through four distinct ages. Each transition seemed impossible until it happened. Each displaced roles that seemed essential. And each ultimately created more human value than it destroyed.

I explore:→ The Craft Age: when masters coordinated through apprenticeship and guild membership→ The Industrial Age: when hierarchy and scientific management replaced craft knowledge→ The Knowledge Age: when networks and collaboration replaced command-and-control→ The Algorithmic Age: when machines begin coordinating what humans used to coordinate

We're living through the transition from the third age to the fourth. The signs are everywhere—if you know what to look for.

Every previous transition was resisted by those who benefited from the old model. Every previous transition happened anyway. The question isn't whether algorithmic coordination will replace human coordination for routine work. It's whether you'll be ready when it does.

This episode provides the historical context to understand what's coming—and why the post-project world isn't a break from history, but its continuation.

🎧 Available now on Spotify and all major platforms.

Several listeners asked for a recap episode that ties together everything we learned from the case studies. This bonus episode is my response to that request.

We've examined five radically different organizations—Netflix, Spotify, Haier, GitHub, and Tesla/SpaceX. Different industries. Different cultures. Different approaches. But they all point in the same direction.

In this special recap episode, I synthesize what we've learned from each organization and identify the five common patterns that enable coordination without coordinators:

→ Autonomous units: Stable, empowered teams rather than temporary projects→ Transparent information: Widely shared data that eliminates the need for status intermediaries
→ Clear context: Shared understanding of purpose that enables aligned decisions→ Platform-enabled coordination: Technology handling routine coordination tasks→ Trust: Organizations trusting people to make good decisions with proper accountability

These aren't nice-to-have cultural attributes. They're architectural choices—decisions about how to structure work, information, decision-making, and human relationships.

If you've been following along and want a consolidated view before moving into Season 2, this episode is for you. And if you're just discovering the podcast, this recap will bring you up to speed on the evidence that traditional project management is already being replaced.

Thanks to everyone who requested this. Your feedback shapes the show.

🎧 Available now on Spotify and all major platforms.

Elon Musk runs multiple complex organisations with significantly fewer middle managers than traditional competitors. Love him or hate him, there's something worth understanding here.

SpaceX builds rockets with a fraction of the management overhead that NASA contractors require. Tesla scaled faster than any automotive company in history with an organisational structure that defies conventional wisdom.

How do they coordinate without the usual layers of management?

In this episode, I explore how mission-driven alignment can replace hierarchical coordination. When everyone understands the goal with crystal clarity—put humans on Mars, accelerate sustainable energy—you need less management overhead to keep people moving in the same direction.

I examine:→ Why clarity of mission reduces coordination costs→ The first principles thinking that eliminates unnecessary process→ Flat hierarchies and direct communication across levels→ The "work wherever you're needed" culture that replaces rigid role boundaries→ The very real human costs of this approach—and why it's not a model to copy blindly→ What traditional organisations can learn without adopting the extremes

Mission as coordination mechanism isn't about working people to exhaustion. It's about alignment so strong that coordination becomes almost automatic.

The question for your organisation: is your mission clear enough to coordinate?

🎧 Available now on Spotify and all major platforms.

Linux is one of the most complex software systems ever built. Over twenty thousand developers have contributed to it. In a single year, more than four thousand developers submit changes across thousands of companies and every continent.

And there's no project manager. No Gantt charts. No status meetings. No resource allocation spreadsheets.

How is this possible?

In this episode, I explore how GitHub turned coordination into infrastructure. The platform doesn't just store code—it replaces the project manager entirely for routine coordination.

I break down:→ How issues, pull requests, and automated tests eliminate coordination overhead→ The Kubernetes example: bots doing the work of dozens of project managers→ A real case study: a PMO reduced from twelve people to four→ The principle that applies beyond software: work in systems can be coordinated by systems→ What remains for humans when platforms handle the routine

The GitHub model shows us the future. Platform handles the routine. Humans handle the exceptional. Platform provides visibility. Humans provide judgment.

This isn't about making humans obsolete. It's about making humans more valuable.

🎧 Available now on Spotify and all major platforms.

In 2012, Zhang Ruimin fired ten thousand middle managers. Not because Haier was failing—because he saw where the future was heading.

Today, Haier is the world's largest appliance maker. Inside it operate over four thousand micro-enterprises, each functioning like an independent startup. No traditional hierarchy. No central coordination bureaucracy. Just small teams competing and collaborating simultaneously.

This episode tells that remarkable story.

I explore:→ The burning platform: why Zhang dismantled a structure that was already working→ Micro-enterprises: how teams of ten to fifteen people operate with full profit and loss responsibility→ The internal market: how micro-enterprises buy and sell services to each other→ Rendanheyi: the philosophy of zero distance between employees and customers→ What happened to the ten thousand middle managers (it's not what you'd expect)

Haier proves that radical decentralization works at massive scale—eighty thousand employees across multiple continents, coordinating without traditional project management.

If Netflix shows that tech companies can operate differently, Haier shows that manufacturing giants can too. No industry is exempt from this transformation.

The coordination tax isn't inevitable. Haier stopped paying it.

🎧 Available now on Spotify and all major platforms.

Microsoft just revised its AI growth targets by 50%. The Carlyle Group cut their Copilot spending. Gartner predicted 30% of AI projects would fail. The actual rate? 70 to 85%.

In this bonus episode, I confront the question some of you have been asking: was I wrong about the post-project world?

The short answer is no. The longer answer is more interesting.

I break down what actually happened with Microsoft, why enterprise AI is harder than consumer AI, and what the current LLM landscape looks like for practitioners trying to get real work done. Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot. Which one works for what. And why the gap between using AI and getting value from AI is exactly where human professionals need to be.

The post-project world is still coming. We are just in the messy middle.

This episode connects the theoretical future we explored in Parts One through Four with the reality of December 2025.

Find me at sites.rondanini.net or on LinkedIn.

Spotify's Squad Model has been copied by thousands of organisations worldwide. Most implementations miss the point entirely.

In this episode, I examine what Spotify actually did—and what they've learned since publishing their famous engineering culture videos.

The model looks simple on paper: autonomous squads, chapters for functional excellence, guilds for knowledge sharing, tribes for coordination at scale. But the magic isn't in the structure. It's in what the structure enables.

I explore:→ Why squads work: end-to-end ownership and the elimination of handoffs→ The chapter model: how Spotify maintains technical excellence without traditional management→ Guilds: voluntary communities that spread knowledge without coordination overhead→ The problems they don't talk about: what happens when the model scales beyond its original context→ Why copying the structure without understanding the principles usually fails

Spotify didn't eliminate coordination. They redesigned it. The lesson isn't to reorganise your teams into squads tomorrow. It's to understand why autonomous teams with clear missions need less management overhead than traditional hierarchies.

If your organisation is considering "going Spotify," listen to this first.

🎧 Available now on Spotify and all major platforms.