Worrying whether the person next to you is pulling their weight professionally is no longer your only concern. For people who want to meet tight targets and deliver great results, your team is likely to include a broad mix of human colleagues and agentic counterparts.

We are entering the age of the autonomous business, where new combinations of technology and data mean some of the roles we take for granted today -- from basic operational tasks up to decision-making responsibilities -- are fulfilled by agents that discover, negotiate, and transact autonomously.

Tech analyst Gartner suggests companies are increasing their investments in agents, with AI agent software spending set to reach $206.5 billion and $376.3 billion in 2027, up from $86.4 billion in 2025.

Some companies already use agents in their operational activities. Three digital leaders at the Snowflake Summit 2026 in San Francisco recently explained how their organizations are putting agents into production.

After the panel session, ZDNET asked the participants what they'd learned about working successfully with their agentic colleagues. They suggested three areas are crucial: benchmarking agents, staying open to new ideas, and focusing on the right areas.

Madeleine Want, VP of data at sports specialist Fanatics, recognized that delivering great results across agentic and human colleagues is a tough ask, so her organization tracks and traces benefits across the data practitioner community.