Impact Engineering, Finding Agile's Lost North Star |Tom Gilb and Simon Holzapfel

"Everybody seems to start from a position of fuzzy b*s*. Nice-sounding words. Management does it, professors do it, politicians do it. And they don't even feel very guilty about it."

Tom Gilb doesn't mince words when describing how most organizations define their objectives. The fundamental problem isn't a lack of ambition—it's a lack of clarity. When leaders are asked about their critical values like "extremely high security" or "employee happiness," they typically respond with circular definitions that provide no actionable direction. Tom's approach starts by exposing this gap and then demonstrating that any value—no matter how "soft" or intangible it seems—can be quantified. Using AI tools, he's shown clients over 1,400 different ways to measure human happiness alone.

"Agile's lost its North Star because the economic problems it was trying to solve within the organization are now mismatched with the digital world."

Simon Holzapfel offers a structural analysis: Agile developed primarily to allay the concerns of pre-digital capital—investors who needed reassurance that their money wouldn't disappear into failed projects. But today's digital economy operates differently. Capital now moves like a service (SaaS model), and innovation is fundamentally stochastic—you can't predict when breakthroughs will happen. Organizations using flow-focused tools when the real problem is value creation are applying yesterday's solutions to today's challenges.

"If you ask AI to quantify employee happiness a hundred different ways, it will do it in one minute for free. So you can no longer be in denial."

The path forward starts with brutal honesty about what your organization actually cares about. Tom's approach involves:

• Identifying the top 10 critical stakeholder values

• Defining clear scales of measure for each

• Establishing where you are now (status)

• Setting where you need to be to survive (tolerable level)

• Defining what success looks like (target/goal level)

This isn't about adding bureaucracy—it's about creating shared clarity that enables everyone to row in the same direction.

About Tom Gilb and Simon Holzapfel

Tom Gilb, born in the US, lived in London, and then moved to Norway in 1958. An independent teacher, consultant, and writer, he has worked in software engineering, corporate top management, and large-scale systems engineering. As the saying goes, Tom was writing about Agile before Agile was named. In 1976, Tom introduced the term "evolutionary" in his book Software Metrics, advocating for development in small, measurable steps. Today, we talk about Evo, the name Tom uses to describe his approach. Tom has worked with Dr. Deming and holds a certificate personally signed by him.

You can listen to Tom Gilb's previous episodes here.

You can link with Tom Gilb on LinkedIn

Simon Holzapfel is an educator, coach, and learning innovator who helps teams work with greater clarity, speed, and purpose. He specializes in separating strategy from tactics, enabling short-cycle decision-making and higher-value workflows. Simon has spent his career coaching individuals and teams to achieve performance with deeper meaning and joy. Simon is also the author of the Equonomist newsletter on Substack.

And you can listen to Simon's previous episodes on the podcast here.

You can link with Simon Holzapfel on LinkedIn.