When delivery becomes a commodity, value shifts to product and business

In 2003, Nicholas Carr dropped a bombshell with his article “IT Doesn’t Matter”. He predicted that IT would become a commodity, like electricity. 25 years later, the Cloud proved him right: nobody wins anymore because they have better servers.

Are we at the dawn of an era where we could write “Delivery Doesn’t Matter”?

Today, with AI and agentic development, I feel like history is repeating itself. But this time, for Software Delivery. If an army of autonomous agents can code, test, and deploy at a marginal cost trending toward zero, the “how” becomes trivial. All the value shifts to the “what” (Product) and the “why” (Business).

This leads me to reconsider our org charts. Does the “classic” CTO role, focused on the software factory and managing the development process, still have a future? I’m betting on the emergence of a single role: the CPTO (Chief Product & Technology Officer). A leader with strong product vision, who no longer relies on an army of developers, but on a handful of Product Engineers orchestrating a fleet of agents.

The friction between “those who specify” and “those who build” disappears when AI bridges the gap in real-time. The conclusion seems obvious:

• If you’re a CTO today, you absolutely must grow in your Product dimension.
• If you’re a CPO, you’ll need to grow in your Delivery dimension.
• And for both, you’ll need to master the agentic stack.

The walls between product and technology are dissolving. The leaders who thrive will be those who can navigate both worlds fluently.