Are enterprises ready for the agents they're already deploying?

I spent the first half of this week at Forrester's Technology & Innovation Forum in Austin, TX, and one thread kept popping up: the tech is moving faster than the org around it. Not in a vague "AI is moving fast" way, more like three keynotes each pointed at a specific, fixable gap.

Charlie Betz: governance can't be an afterthought Betz's talk on governing agentic AI systems is the one I keep thinking about. His point was pretty blunt: architecture drift doesn't stop just because your unit tests pass. Agents will happily build the equivalent of a staircase to nowhere if nothing's grounding them in context and nothing's watching for it. His fix included a context graph, an agentic system of record, controlled interfaces, and an actual feedback loop. Expect an announcement from Tempo software next week that will interest you on this front.

Joe Cicman: build, buy, or generate During his keynote, “The Future of Software” Joe Cicman flipped a question I thought was settled. It's not build vs buy anymore; it's build, buy, or generate. Core systems of record aren't going anywhere, but the workflows and integrations wrapped around them could be getting cost efficient enough to just generate on the fly. The winners won't be whoever has the most agents, but whoever's deliberate about what they own versus what they let get composed.

Alla Valente: AI risk is the weakest muscle in the room Governing AI risk is showing up as the weakest capability in most orgs, even though everyone ranks it as a top concern. I believe her point wasn't "do more governance," but that the gap between believing this matters and actually operating it is huge. Honestly, this became a theme of the whole week: belief is everywhere, proof is rare. Who would think we all would be cheering for governance? We need to embrace it.

The room backed this up too. One live poll asked which 2027 prediction people found most likely. The runaway winner (at 41%) was that a quarter of enterprises will start restricting workforce AI because usage costs have outrun any value anyone can point to. Not hypothetical for most of that room, as it’s the budget conversation happening today.

Kudos to the Forrester team for yet another great event. I loved Austin and some great Texas BBQ. And of course, it was so great to see quite a few of my #ARCHAT leaders there; our people always make my work fun.