AI moved the bottleneck

I read Atlassian's State of Teams 2026 report recently.

The short version: AI makes individuals faster, but it doesn't automatically make teams faster. Atlassian calls the time lost in between the fragmentation tax -

89% of executives say AI has made work faster, but only 48% say it has improved collaboration.

I guess the biggest issue is that just 6% can point to clear AI returns across their organisation. I guess a good reminder to keep thinking about proving AI ROI and measuring the impact of AI tools.

The fragmentation tax

Atlassian splits work into execution and coordination, and AI is getting much better at the first than the second:

• 87% of knowledge workers say they often lack the time or capacity to coordinate, because everyone is busy executing.
• 84% deal with unclear or conflicting goals and priorities.
• 71% discover other teams working on duplicate projects or initiatives.

Teams and roles will change

The report expects teams to become more horizontal: 77% of executives expect fewer layers, 73% expect more blended roles.

I think that's plausible. When building something yourself gets cheap, it also gets cheaper to be useful outside your official role. A product person can build a rough prototype instead of writing another spec. A designer can test a small mockup on a development stage, etc.

What the best teams do differently

Atlassian found that 14% of teams are getting both speed and better coordination out of AI. They focus on context, workflows and culture.

Write down what good looks like, keep a useful CLAUDE.md, record architecture decisions somewhere people can find them. And make acceptance criteria and ownership clear

So this all makes perfect sense and mirrors what I see: writing code is faster than ever. Since coding is "solved", engineers have to lean even more into other areas like product and design. The time for the like fully-enabled Engineer has come, driving product, design and engineering decisions. Artisan code crafting and simple ticket processors will be a thing of the past.

If only Atlassian could improve their products, collaboration would be easier :).