The CIO's New Mandate: Rearchitecting Enterprise Work
CIO, Tuesday, October 6th, 2026
As agentic AI starts doing the work, CIOs must design 'Enterprise Work Architecture' deciding what humans and agents each perform.
A CIO.com column argues the most disruptive change to enterprise software may be needing fewer humans to operate existing applications, as agentic AI shifts the question from what an app should do to who or what should do the work.
Gartner predicts 40% of enterprise apps will include task-specific agents by the end of 2026, up from under 5% in 2025.
The author proposes Enterprise Work Architecture, the deliberate design of how outcomes move across human judgment and agents, with implications for architecture, economics, security and governance.