"The 5 challenges I foresee for digital organizations in 2025."

  • Updated: 15 January 2025
  • 7 minutes
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Digital organizations are continuously changing to adapt to the constraints and contexts they face. 2025 will be no exception. Benjamin Danel, Product expert at Thiga, shares his vision of the challenges ahead for this new year.

Welcome to 2025. As the year begins with bleak economic prospects, digital organizations face strong challenges related to efficiency and innovation in order to remain competitive and sustainable in a constantly evolving digital world. What will their major challenges be? And above all, how can they address them? Here is an overview of the five strategic challenges that will define 2025 for organizations.

#1 Resisting the temptation of “Command and Control”

The economic environment in 2025 is expected to be tense. What seemed to be a crisis limited to pure players in 2024 has now struck the CAC 40 giants —a rare and significant occurrence. The days of abundant budgets and massive investments in technology are over. We are entering an era of austerity, where the value of every euro invested must be justified. 

Of course, the global economic context plays its part. But there is also a much-needed reassessment: the results of digital transformations have not lived up to expectations, especially considering the investments and efforts that have been made.

Organizational inefficiency, endless org charts, overengineering, and cumbersome, restrictive processes no longer have a place in 2025. From now on, it is about delivering with frugality, pragmatism, and above all, impact.

The need is there, but a growing threat looms. As the trust granted to digital organizations to self-organize has eroded, the specter of a return to a “Command & Control” culture resurfaces. More governance, more processes, more interference, leading to less autonomy, less agility, and slower execution speeds.

So how can this be avoided? Teams need to engage in introspection. Are they really having an impact that matches the invested efforts? Do they truly feel responsible for the impact they generate? The issue is not to produce for the sake of producing, but to challenge each decision and action to prove they are valuable.

At the management level, it is in the heart of the storm that we will see who the good leaders are—those capable of helping their teams and offering them the right level of autonomy.

It is only with this dynamic of responsibility and impact, the polar opposite of “founder mode” and project-based culture, that trust can be regained. Teams that embark on this path will sustain their autonomy and impact, even in this austere climate, and will show their resilience. The others risk falling back into an outdated “client-supplier” relationship between Tech/Product and Business, much closer to the old world.

#2 Becoming true business partners

Historically, Product transformations have often been driven by IT—a major paradox when one considers, as I do, that Product Management is inherently a Business function. If IT has pushed these transformations, it is to change its image as a cost center within the organization and to earn a seat at the strategic table. While Agile transformations advocate the same value-oriented principles, they have often stumbled on a highly delivery-focused vision (notably supported by the simple application of Scrum).

So how can Product Management avoid being perceived as Agility 2.0 with the same glass ceiling?

For IT to be seen as a true partner, each of its roles must move beyond its comfort zone and embrace a radically ROI-focused mindset. They must stop thinking in terms of feature prioritization and start thinking in terms of investment prioritization. On the other hand, they must not hesitate to suggest reducing the size of a team or developing fewer features, simply because the product lifecycle requires it. This would be a true sign of change! This is how IT will demonstrate its ability to seize strategic challenges that go beyond the delivery framework.

But to really act as true business partners, IT must show even more interest in the business field and the business model associated with the product. What value does it bring to the company? What can be achieved together to increase that value? What is the market dynamic (for B2B and B2C products)? Do we share the same vision of the product’s current performance and its potential for improvement? These questions will raise the debate and enable interesting discussions with the business, providing more credibility for true collaboration.

By refusing this evolution, IT will remain confined to its role as an executor, and Product Managers risk finding themselves closer to “bullshit jobs” than the essential links in the organization they aspire to be.

The ultimatum has been set: either transform into true Business Partners or risk being replaced one day—sooner or later—by outsourcing. The ball is in their court.

#3 Experimenting with a world without developers

In 2025, AI is no longer a choice but an obligation. Knowing how to prompt has become as basic as the writing of an user story (US) for a Product Manager or using Figma for a Product Designer. The integration of AI into all tools and workflows allows digital teams to save a tremendous amount of time. It’s fantastic, right? well, not really. Or at least, not for everyone. Because this saved time will not be returned to employees as four-day workweeks. The quest for profitability never stops and inevitably reshapes organizations.

Three scenarios are taking shape to ensure survival in this new ecosystem:

  • A reduction in workforce and expanded scopes. No more abundant teams of Product Managers and Product Designers! The number of teams per PM or Product Designer increases.

  • The end of middle management. Fewer layers, more agility. Intermediate levels, frequently linked to bureaucratic burdens, are phased out.

  • The rise of Product Builders, this new hybrid species born from low-code/no-code and boosted by AI. A role merging Product Manager, Product Designer, and Developer skills, able to go directly from idea to production.

I’d put my money on that last scenario, which is more than just a far-fetched hypothesis. In my view, it is a revolution that is only just beginning, and 2025 will mark the beginning of the first experiments. AI simplifies development to such an extent that creating a product becomes accessible to everyone—and therefore to Product Managers and Product Designers. As a result, it becomes a potential solution to drastically reduce development costs, improve Time-To-Market, and bring about a gradual disappearance of large teams of developers. An organization without developers is now indeed a possibility.

Obviously, some developers will still be indispensable. The best ones—those capable of solving complex technological problems or innovating—will remain crucial, with more strategic roles. These developers could be grouped into “studios,” available to others, like Product Designers or Data teams in some organizations. But for the others, the tide is turning. Likewise, Product Owners—already widely criticized—seem bound for extinction.

One fundamental question remains unanswered: what should be done with all these now “useless” talents? First clues will appear in 2025.

#4 Bringing order to chaos

In large organizations, information systems and applications have often been developed opportunistically to address immediate needs, but without a global vision or coherence. This has led to a fragmented digital landscape, marked by technical silos and incoherent experiences. The well-known Conway’s Law, which states that a company’s structure directly influences the architecture of its systems, applies perfectly here.

This lack of structure comes at a cost, one that grows continuously under the pressure of daily urgencies: chronic inefficiency, difficult integrations, and a mediocre user experience—for both customers and employees. In 2025, it is time to restore order, with two clear objectives:

  • Unifying and rationalizing to reduce complexity and costs, simplify the technological landscape, accelerate time-to-market, and share resources.

  • Harmonizing user experience. Fragmented journeys are no longer acceptable in a world where fluidity and coherence are standard expectations.

To achieve this, organizations must rely on two complementary levers. On the Tech side, platformization emerges as an essential response. It enables the construction of modular, scalable, and shared foundations, capable of supporting a variety of products while eliminating redundancies. On the Product and Design side, the customer experience (CX)-focused approach gains momentum, by standardizing journeys to ensure smooth and coherent interactions at all levels.

Some early initiatives are already underway, with the growing popularity of Design Systems, which allow to unify interfaces and reduce development costs. But these efforts are only the tip of the iceberg. The transformation must go much further.

However, beware: as spectacular as these efforts may be, they will not be enough. Quick-fix solutions will not resolve the root problem. Without a deep reorganization of structures and governance, this quest for coherence will remain nothing more than a band-aid solution. Discipline must become systemic, embedded in the DNA of the company.

The real revolution is not just technological but cultural. Because restoring order to chaos first requires having the courage to question processes, revisit past decisions, and implement new ways of collaborating.

#5 Embracing responsibility (at last)

Responsibility is a bit like New Year’s resolutions: every year, organizations aspire to take the topic of responsibility—ethical, social, and environmental—seriously. And every year, there’s disappointment. Apart from progress driven by legislative frameworks (such as accessibility and GDPR) or minor efforts in Green IT, which are undermined by the rise of AI, nothing fundamentally changes in the way values are embedded in digital choices.

But this time, something’s different: the regulatory framework is once again stepping in, but on a larger scale. The CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive) could well be the long-awaited game changer. With its stricter requirements for CSR, accessibility, and ethics, this directive demands a shift for large companies and their ecosystems of suppliers. Although it has been anticipated for years, the enforcement of this law will shake things up. It feels a bit like 2018, when GDPR finally came into force. Tick-tock, tick-tock… Procrastination is over, and the time for action has arrived.

Beyond the regulatory constraints around accessibility, which will become even stricter to advance this crucial topic, the most important sub-topic in 2025 will concern ethical responsibility in AI:  companies will have to improve their control, moderation, and auditing of data generated by these technologies.

Let’s not be naive: if this shift is happening, it’s less out of moral conviction than due to regulatory pressure. It’s unfortunate that directives are required to force companies to act, but this time, they will have no choice. With a bit of luck, they will realize that these constraints also present opportunities: identifying new areas for innovation, evolving products to meet both user needs and societal expectations, while integrating sustainability as a performance lever—these are incredible challenges.

The task is immense, but the promise is clear: 2025 could mark the beginning of a new era, where digital technology stops hiding behind the excuse of innovation at all costs and finally aligns itself with responsible values. Furthermore, given the enthusiasm for the B-Corp label and the number of people looking to work for companies or products with impact, I can easily imagine this topic becoming a strong employer branding element.

The turning point of 2025 leaves no room for inaction or approximation. Between economic pressures, disruptive technological advancements, and growing societal expectations, digital organizations will need to demonstrate their ability to evolve without giving in to shortcuts or reverting to outdated models.

Every challenge we just discussed points to the same demand: rethinking practices with courage, boldness, responsibility, and pragmatism. Companies that choose to question themselves and focus on sustainable impact will write the rules of tomorrow’s game. For the others, the risk is clear: remaining stuck in the past, condemned to react to changes instead of anticipating them. The future, now more than ever, belongs to the bold.
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