How should we structure teams working on AI projects?

Engineering & Architecture

Avoid the common anti-pattern of a centralized 'AI team' that serves the whole organization. This creates bottlenecks and disconnects AI development from domain expertise. Instead, embed AI capabilities within product teams — give them access to ML engineers or AI-literate developers who understand the business context.

A small central AI platform team can provide shared infrastructure (model serving, evaluation pipelines, cost monitoring) without owning every AI feature. This follows Team Topologies principles: the platform team enables, the stream-aligned teams deliver. The biggest risk isn't technical — it's organizational.

AI projects fail more often from misaligned incentives and unclear ownership than from model accuracy problems.

This question reflects common advisory themes. It is editorially curated, not sourced from individual conversations.

Spending more than you should?

Let's find where your cloud and AI spend can work harder.

Get Started

or ask our AI agent