Sonya Siderova: Can AI Manage Flow Without the Human in the Loop?

Description:
What happens when AI can read your delivery data, analyze your flow, identify problems, and recommend what to do next?

Do we still need a human in the loop?

That’s the question I explored with a group of Kanban practitioners at the Kanban Leadership Retreat in Bilbao.

We looked at what happens when an AI agent is left to manage flow on its own, and compared that with what happens when a person remains part of the system.

The interesting part wasn’t what AI could do. It was where it still needed us.

We found six areas where removing the human created problems.

In this session, I’ll share what we found, where I think AI can genuinely change how we manage flow, and what becomes even more important as AI gets better.

Bio:
Sonya Siderova is the founder and CEO of Nave, a flow analytics platform that helps organizations understand and improve how work moves through their delivery systems. Over the past eight years, she has focused on turning delivery data into evidence teams and leaders can use to make better decisions. Nave was named Atlassian Partner of the Year 2026, Marketplace Rising Star, and provides an MCP server and AI agents that help people make better decisions using reliable flow metrics.

The organiser Silke

Silke is a Flow Expert, Project Consultant, Accredited Kanban Trainer, Kanban Product, Coaching and Management Professional in New Zealand and certified facilitator of all versions of the Okaloa Flowlab. Her public classes "Flow Manager", "Team Kanban Practitioner", "Scrum Better with Kanban", "Kanban System Design", "Kanban Systems Improvement", "Kanban for Design and Innovation" (the Product Manager / Product Owner / Project Manager path of the KMP credential) can be found under her Kanban University profile. https://kanban.university/kuapps/#/user-profile/user/24536. She has trained many people and organisations in public and in-house classes around New Zealand.
As an intercultural trainer, she has written the two only intercultural books about New Zealand in German, one of them translated into English. http://kanbannewzealand.co.nz/. Her new book in German is due at the end of October 2025: https://wahlheimat-neuseeland.de/2025/07/09/fettnaepfchenfuehrer-neuseeland/
She has previously worked in Scrum, SAFe, Nexus, LeSS and waterfall contexts as a Business Analyst, Tester, Scrum Master and Agile Coach. Her original background is (investment) banking / trading.
She loves networking, intercultural topics, kite-surfing, running, gym, sauna, tramping, languages, learning new things, going on roadies with her van, wine, good food, hanging out with friends.