The AI Paradox: Votito Launches to Solve What to Build, Not Just How

LONDON, UK – July 20, 2026 – Today marks the launch of Votito, a product management platform built on a critical new premise for the software industry: as artificial intelligence makes building software exponentially cheaper and faster, the primary constraint is no longer the act of creation, but the wisdom of knowing what to create.

Founded by Gojko Adzic, a respected figure in the software development community, Votito enters a market grappling with the profound side effects of its own success. AI coding assistants have delivered unprecedented productivity, but this efficiency has exposed a deeper, more strategic vulnerability. The new challenge isn't about shipping features faster; it's about ensuring the right features are shipped at all.

The New Bottleneck in an AI-Accelerated World

For years, the holy grail of software development was speed. Now, with AI tools automating everything from code generation to debugging, that goal is largely being met. Industry reports show developers completing tasks up to 55% faster with AI assistance. Yet, this acceleration has created what some analysts call the "spec ceiling"—the point where AI can build almost anything, but only if the specifications are clear, valuable, and user-focused. This shifts the bottleneck from engineering capacity to product discovery.

This paradox is validated by major industry research. Google's 2025 DORA report, cited by Votito, found that while AI adoption delivers significant individual productivity boosts, the gains in actual product performance are often modest. The report identifies a crucial missing link: a user-centric focus. "Without a user-centric focus, AI adoption is unlikely to help teams. It may even harm them," the report explains, highlighting the risk of building technically impressive but commercially irrelevant products at an accelerated pace.

This creates a high-stakes environment where the cost of building the wrong thing isn't just wasted engineering time, but a fundamental strategic failure. In a world where competitors can also build quickly, the competitive advantage lies in superior market and user understanding.

The Restructuring of Software Teams

Compounding this challenge is a seismic shift in how software teams are structured. The traditional 10-15 person Scrum team is giving way to smaller, more agile units. A recent Wall Street Journal report detailed the rise of "pods"—highly autonomous groups of 3-4 people augmented with AI agents, designed for end-to-end ownership and rapid decision-making. These lean structures reduce communication overhead and accelerate releases, making them an ideal fit for an AI-native workflow.

However, this new model creates a resource dilemma. "When teams have 10-15 people, companies can justify assigning a dedicated product person. But with 3-4 people per pod, this is just not feasible," said Gojko Adzic, the founder of Votito. The dedicated product manager, once the lynchpin of user-centricity, is becoming a luxury that these smaller pods cannot afford.

This trend is confirmed by a June 2026 Bain & Company report stating that "the traditional divide between product and software development is breaking down." The responsibility for product decisions is being decentralized, falling onto the shoulders of the team members who remain: developers and business domain experts.

Democratizing Product Discovery

Votito is designed specifically for this new reality. The platform targets the engineers and business users who are increasingly acting as de facto product managers. Research from GitHub in late 2025 already identified a growing need for developers to think on the level of "understanding user needs," a skill set that is now becoming a core job requirement rather than a peripheral competency.

Adzic frames the problem clearly. "People who will own the roadmaps in the future are engineers and domain experts. They know the technology and the business domain, but they've never run a user study, never designed a survey, never had to differentiate between loud demands and actual user needs,” he said. “Our goal with Votito is to help people like that actually succeed."

To achieve this, Votito aims to put proven product research tools into the hands of non-specialists. The platform combines familiar feedback boards with established survey methodologies, but its core value proposition lies in moving beyond simple data collection. It automates the analysis of feedback to identify trends and patterns, helping teams parse through the noise to find actionable signals. Crucially, it guides users in interpreting the results, transforming raw data into strategic insights.

By providing this guided approach, Votito seeks to make sophisticated product research techniques, previously the domain of large enterprises with dedicated teams, accessible and affordable for the small pods that are coming to define modern software development.

A Veteran's Bet on the Future of Product

The vision behind Votito is not an overnight realization. Founder Gojko Adzic has spent his career at the intersection of business needs and technical execution. As the author of influential books like "Specification by Example" and "Impact Mapping," he has long been a proponent of outcome-driven development and improving the clarity of communication between stakeholders and engineers.

His work has consistently focused on ensuring that development efforts are tied to measurable business impact, a philosophy that directly addresses the current AI paradox. Votito can be seen as the logical evolution of his work, productizing the principles he has advocated for years. He is betting that as AI handles the 'how' of building software, the most valuable human contribution will be defining the 'why' and the 'what'.

As organizations continue to embrace AI-driven efficiency, the tools and skills needed for success are changing. The focus is shifting from the speed of delivery to the quality of the decision-making that precedes it. In an industry now capable of building almost anything, Votito is betting its future on helping teams figure out what they should.