Today, we’re announcing the next generation of AI product updates across our business applications portfolio, including the launch of the new Microsoft Dynamics 365 Copilot – providing interactive, AI-powered assistance across business functions.

According to our recent survey on business trends, nearly 9 out of 10 workers hope to use AI to reduce repetitive tasks in their jobs. With Dynamics 365 Copilot, organizations empower their workers with AI tools built for sales, service, marketing, operations and supply chain roles. These AI capabilities allow everyone to spend more time on the best parts of their jobs and less time on mundane tasks. Read More

GitHub today announced that Copilot for Business, the company’s $19/month enterprise version of its AI-powered code completion tool, is now generally available, after a short beta phase that started last December. Copilot for Business adds features like license management, organization-wide policy management and additional privacy features. Until now, you had to work with GitHub’s sales organization to sign up for the business version, but now there is a self-serve option as well.

“[This] effectively completes our v1 Copilot story,” GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke told me. “We announced the preview in June 2021 — which feels like ages ago — and then had the general availability last summer. Now we are ready to roll it out to organizations, companies, teams, enterprises — really everybody. In fact, we already have more than 400 organizations that are on Copilot for Business at launch and we see tremendous interest.” Read More

GitHub Next has unveiled a project called Code Brushes which uses machine learning to update code “like painting with Photoshop”.

Using the feature, developers can “brush” over their code to see it update in real-time.

Several different brushes are included to achieve various aims. For example, one brush makes code more readable—especially important when coding as part of a team or contributing to open-source projects.

… Code Brushes also supports the creation of custom brushes. One example is a brush to make a form “more accessible” automatically. Read More

Programmers must be educated about strong coding practices

Forward-looking: Machine learning algorithms are all the rage now, as they are used to generate any kind of “original” content after being trained on enormous pre-existing datasets. Code-generating AIs, however, could pose a real issue for software security in the future.

AI systems like GitHub Copilot promise to make programmers’ lives easier by creating entire chunks of “new” code based on natural-language textual inputs and pre-existing context. But code-generating algorithms can also bring an insecurity factor to the table, as a new study involving several developers has recently found. Read More

Google has a secretive new project that teaches an AI to write code, fix bugs, and make code updates. The project is part of a broader push by Google into generative AI or GANS. The goal is to reduce the need for humans to write and update code, while maintaining code quality. The project started at X, where it was codenamed “Pitchfork,” later moving into Google Labs — a transition that signaled its increased importance to leaders, with Google Labs pursuing long-term bets. Read More

 … I have done a lot of writing recently about these many referents and the Agile 2 Academy, with whom I am currently working.  I’ve stressed the importance of attaining what I have been calling Business Agility and observed the many ways in which Agile and agile as they are currently practiced don’t necessarily contribute to it.

• Big-A Agile (the myriad commercial frameworks, such as Scrum, SAFe, LeSS, XP, Kanban and others) subverts real agility by layering process and ceremonies on development teams, often with little benefit for its costs. 
• Small-a agile is the goal for digital product development, but the OKRs associated with many efforts are not realized.  Why that might be is something worth exploring. 
• Agility is a goal, but it is an intermediate one.   Companies’ goals are to produce products and services that flourish in their markets.  Rapid development and deployment of competitive products and services is the true end goal; agility is a characteristic that successful companies must have to achieve it. 
• Business and Digital Agility are two sides of one coin.  True agility is characterized by rapid recognition of opportunities and threats, formulation of responses and execution at speed.  This cannot happen unless a company’s ability and willingness to transform its Business and Operating Models correlate with the speed at which it can build solutions and products.