Get alignment early to build AI apps and agents and sell on Marketplace

Frontier firms are pulling ahead. The data is clear why.  

According to Microsoft research of Frontier firms: 

• 71% of leaders say their company is thriving, compared to just 39% of workers globally, 

• 93% are optimistic about future work opportunities, 

• 55% say they’re able to take on more work, versus 25% globally. 

But the difference isn’t experimentation with AI. It’s execution. 

All research from Microsoft, Work Trend Index Annual Report, 2025

How getting business and technical alignment with AI development helps 

Frontier firms are succeeding because they align business intent, technical design, and security expectations before building AI apps and agents.  

They don’t treat alignment as a workshop or a slide deck. They treat it as a prerequisite to building agents that actually work, scale, and earn trust. Microsoft helps you adopt this same approach through structured guidance in App Advisor, AI envisioning resources, and practical checklists designed to keep teams aligned from design through deployment. 

Why alignment separates Frontier firms from the rest 

AI apps and agents increasingly operate inside critical business workflows.  

That raises the bar. When alignment is missing, teams often ship agents that technically function but fail in production due to security gaps, unclear ownership, or mismatched expectations around outcomes. 

Teams that align early are better positioned to: 

• Move faster through build by eliminating ambiguity, 

• Build agents that reliably perform the job they’re designed to do, 

• Embed security, governance, and trust by design, not as an afterthought, 

• Reduce redesign cycles caused by unclear requirements or late-stage constraints. 

This is where guidance-first approach from Microsoft plays a critical role. 

How App Advisor helps teams align before they build 

App Advisor is intentionally designed to help teams put an alignment framework together at the start. To move faster later. 

App Advisor gives you: 

• Tools to help your business get an AI Center of Excellence, 

• Systems, like Azure Essentials and Cloud Adoption Framework,  

• Checklists for every step of the way, so that teams stay informed, 

• Toolkits and services that build in answers to friction that your team can leverage. 

These shared starting points helps ensure what teams build reflects real business needs and can be deployed responsibly. 

Using AI envisioning sessions to align outcomes 

The Microsoft AI envisioning sessions complement App Advisor by helping teams translate strategy into execution. 

The Business–Technical Alignment Checklist for Microsoft Foundry helps teams stay synchronized as they build. It ensures architecture, cost, security, and delivery choices support a clear business outcome—not just technical success. 

This checklist reinforces practices like: 

• Defining shared success metrics and KPIs, 

• Setting joint budget guardrails and cost visibility, 

• Establishing cross-functional cadence and governance, 

• Planning for integration testing and real-world workflows, 

• Using a shared project workspace as a single source of truth. 

This alignment reduces late-stage friction when you’re preparing to publish, co-sell, or scale. This translates into offers that are easier to describe on Marketplace, more likely to attract customers, and better for those customers to deploy.

Moving from aligned design to confident build to sales growth 

After alignment is established, teams can move into build with momentum. App Advisor showcases development toolkits, SDKs, templates, and reference architectures that reflect the decisions already made during design. 

That continuity matters.  

It keeps teams focused on execution instead of re-litigating fundamentals mid-build. Alignment isn’t a meeting. It’s a system. 

Microsoft provides the structure to support it. 

Start aligning today to sell more tomorrow 

Get resources to help your teams align and keep in step in App Advisor.