Daemon launches AI-First Squad to accelerate AI project delivery and adoption
Digital transformation consultancy Daemon has launched ‘AI-First Squad’. The new multidisciplinary offering aims to help clients effectively develop and deploy AI solutions.
Organisations are under pressure to innovate at speed, with AI top of many pick lists. Yet recent ONS data highlights major barriers to AI adoption, such as identifying use cases (39%) and the cost of implementation (21%). Amid this challenging landscape, many organisations struggle to reap the full benefits from their AI investments.
To help its client solve that problem, Daemon has launched its AI-First Squad. The squad delivers three core services: AI transformation strategy in engineering, implementation of AI-first methodologies across the software development lifecycle, and full project delivery by AI-first engineers.
The new offering is the brainchild of Daemon leaders, Kyle Hauptflesich (Chief Growth Officer) and Jimmy Headdon (Head of Delivery Excellence). They believe, based on client discussions and their extensive AI experience, that the consultancy industry needs to think broader when it comes to leveraging AI to accelerate technology delivery, not just apply AI to make iterative gains in velocity.
“We're at a pivotal moment in AI engineering – businesses know there’s value in these tools, yet they often achieve only incremental improvements that get diluted across the delivery cycle,” said Hauptfleisch.
“There is so much out there about what organisations should be doing with AI, but very little practical guidance for how to put that into practice. With our AI-First Squad, we only use AI-first approaches, so clients get qualified expertise that enables them and their teams to deliver more with less.”
According to a statement by Daemon, the AI-First Squad’ covers the entire software development lifecycle, including AI-assisted scheduling, knowledge management, estimation, and prioritisation, to improve time-to-value and resource usage. its toolkit combines best practice digital engineering practices with generative AI tooling and experimental methodologies.
“What matters is the time between the whiteboard and production, not the pace between friction points. Efficiencies can easily be lost in between constraints in a broader development cycle,” noted Hauptfleisch.
Headdon concluded, “Our AI-First Squad is designed to create the space for organisations to understand what's real for them, within their specific environment. Consider this a low-risk, accessible way to understand the practicality of applying transformative AI tools and ways of working, in a specific context.”
