A company-wide AI question needed room for different answers.

At Telos Alliance, Howard Pearlmutter prepared a custom AI-for-product-development seminar with leadership, including the CTO, VP of Engineering, and division leadership.

About twenty people were expected. Forty-seven attended across software and hardware development, product and project leadership, executives, and skeptics.

That breadth was relevant to a company developing combined hardware and software products for broadcast infrastructure and operations. The opportunity did not belong to one role alone.

Three pieces of the engagement are useful to examine together.

The question was shaped around the organization. Foundational knowledge and mental models were connected with the practical use of AI coding tools, including opportunities in prototyping, coding, testing, and interface work.

Skeptical concerns had a place in the discussion. John Schur recognized Howard's attention to those concerns and a careful path forward. The group's experience could help examine the opportunity.

Practical prototypes supplied another form of proof. Howard's work included Apple Silicon CPU/GPU execution, MPSGraph, Java native integration, Netty, Vert.x, Quarkus, and Jakarta EE CDI. Media-related prototypes connected enterprise software, high-performance computing, graphics, and simulation.

The contribution therefore reached beyond a presentation about tools. It connected requirements discovery, learning, thought partnership, and technical delivery.

Schur wrote: “I felt that Telos received multiple times the value of our investment.”

For another organization, the relevant lesson may be the combination. A useful outside perspective can understand the subject deeply enough to question it, explain it across roles, and make a practical possibility inspectable.

The appropriate format follows the need. A briefing can establish a frame. A working session can expose different interpretations. A review can investigate an assumption. A prototype can test a specific relationship.

Your organization does not need to reproduce the whole engagement to gain value from one contribution.

Explore what has become default, what to test, a briefing, or a working session.

Begin with the question your people need to understand together and the practical consequence that makes it worth examining.