Remember my article from six months ago about reinventing Hands-on Agile to counter the great agile reset? (Just kidding; of course, you don’t.) Back then, I reflected on how to adapt my business model best, given the massive changes in the marketplace for “Agile.” (See the link below.)
Well, it’s time for an honest update, and it is not pretty.
Why might leaders turn to the Product Operating Model (POM) after a previous Agile transformation, for example, based on SAFe, failed?
This article uncovers the psychological, organizational, and strategic reasons behind this seeming contradiction, exploring what motivates leaders to believe that a new approach will succeed where others have not.
We’re thrilled to announce that the virtual Hands-on Agile 2025 is officially on the horizon and will be free to attend from February 4-6, 2025. This time, we will focus on how Agile needs to evolve from concept-based agility to context-based agility.
But before we discuss what that means, let’s take a step back and consider why Hands-on Agile 2025 is going to be a can’t-miss event for everyone in the agile community.
For those unfamiliar, Hands-on Agile isn’t just another conference. It’s an event built around the Barcamp model, meaning it’s a self-organized, community-driven gathering with one goal: Sharing knowledge and experiences.
From February 4 to 6, 2025, we will spend three energizing days engaging in sessions, practicing agile games, sharing war stories, and learning directly from each other. Hands-on Agile is all about creating a space for practitioners, coaches, leaders, and newcomers to connect in a truly hands-on way.
Are you facing challenges in aligning vision, stakeholders, and your team and delivering real value? Then, prepare to transform your career with my comprehensive, self-paced online class: The Advanced Product Backlog Management Course.
Dive deep into professional Product Backlog management techniques supported by videos, exercises, and an engaging online community of like-minded peers supporting each other:
👉 Transform Your Skills, Transform Your Career — all for an Introductory Price of $99!
Please note:
Are you considering a new Scrum Master or Agile Coach job? However, you are not sure that it is the right organization? Don’t worry; there are four steps of proactive research to identify suitable employers or clients for getting hired as a Scrum Master and avoid disappointment later.
I have used those four steps for years to identify organizations I would like to work with, and they never failed me. Read on and learn how to employ search engines, LinkedIn’s people search, reach out to peers in the agile community, and analyze the event markets in the quest for your next Scrum Master job.
ChatGPT can be an excellent tool for those who know how to create prompts. The simplest form of prompting ChatGPT is to feed it the task and ask for results. However, this approach is unlikely to trigger the best response from the model.
Instead, invest more time in prompt engineering, and provide ChatGPT with a better context of the situation, desired outcomes, data, constraints, etc. The following article offers a primer to creating ChatGPT prompts for Scrum practitioners to get you started running. You will learn:
In this comprehensive Scrum Master Interview guide, we delve into 83 critical questions that can help distinguish genuine Scrum Masters from pretenders during interviews. We designed this selection to evaluate the candidates’ theoretical knowledge, practical experience, and ability to apply general Scrum and “Agile “principles effectively in real-world scenarios—as outlined in the Scrum Guide or the Agile Manifesto. Ideal for hiring managers, HR professionals, and future Scrum teammates, this guide provides a toolkit to ensure that your next Scrum Master hire is truly qualified, enhancing your team’s agility and productivity.
If you are a Scrum Master currently looking for a new position, please check out the “Preparing for Your Scrum Master Interview as a Candidate” section below.
So far, this Scrum Master interview guide has been downloaded more than 25,000 times.
If you are looking to fill a position for a Product Owner in your organization, you may find the following 82 interview questions useful to identify the right candidate. They are derived from my sixteen years of practical experience with XP and Scrum, serving both as Product Owner and Scrum Master and interviewing dozens of Product Owner candidates on behalf of my clients.
So far, this Product Owner interview guide has been downloaded more than 10,000 times.
Age-of-Product.com’s parent company — Berlin Product People GmbH — offers Scrum training classes authorized by Scrum.org, Liberating Structures workshops, and hybrid training of Professional Scrum and Liberating Structures. The training classes are offered both in English and German.
Check out the upcoming timetable of training classes, workshops, meetups, and other events below and join your peers.
Welcome to the 478th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 42,750 peers. This week, John Cutler explores the nuances of product operating systems, emphasizing leadership-driven design and enabling constraints. Ben Thompson, Dario Amodei, and Steven Sinofsky analyze DeepSeek ’s impact on AI, from China’s efficiency breakthroughs to the shift from scale-up to scale-out and its implications for global tech leadership. Meanwhile, Dave Arneson counters Marty Cagan’s claim that Agile is solely about delivery, highlighting its influence on modern product practices. Mike Cohn dispels the myth that Scrum has too many meetings, arguing for well-run, efficient collaboration, while Egor Savochkin shares actionable steps to streamline Scrum and enhance team productivity.
Next, Marty Cagan distinguishes “true agility” from process-heavy implementations, stressing its role in strategy and discovery. Paweł Huryn explores AI prototyping, while Aakash Gupta & Sergio Pereira discuss AI-driven product leadership in startups. Rohini Pandhi, in conversation with Lenny Rachitsky, shares lessons on hiring PMs and scaling multi-product strategies effectively.
Lastly, Grant Slatton explores the rise and fall of bureaucracies, proposing “bureaulogy” as a formal study. Mike Fisher highlights the power of cross-disciplinary thinking for innovation. Also, Gustavo Razzetti examines “conversational debt” and strategies for direct, trust-building dialogue. Finally, Ethan Mollick provides an updated guide on selecting the best AI models, which compares ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and others based on reasoning, real-time interaction, and emerging capabilities.
When product teams fail to establish stakeholder alignment and implement rigorous Product Backlog management, they get caught in an endless cycle of competing priorities, reactive delivery, and shipping waste.
The result? Wasted resources, frustrated teams, and missed business opportunities. Success in 2025 requires turning your Product Backlog from a chaotic wish list into a strategic tool that connects vision to value delivery. Learn how to do so.
Welcome to the 477th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 42,791 peers. This week, Aakash Gupta provides an AI playbook for Product Managers to leverage AI effectively, while Martijn Oost critiques oversimplified organizational change, emphasizing context and experimentation. Douglas Squirrel and Jeffrey Fredrick delve into balancing psychological safety with high standards in tech teams. James Shore outlines six pillars for building exceptional product engineering organizations, and Esther Derby and Viktor Cessan share strategies for engaging resistant teams and fostering trust without imposing unwanted help.
Next, Roman Pichler introduces a holistic product strategy system for sustainable success, while Itamar Gilad emphasizes embracing uncertainty through outcome-focused planning and evidence-based decision-making. Ant Murphy highlights the power of a “NOT doing” list to reduce waste and foster simplicity, and Mike Belsito shares empathy-driven strategies to turn stakeholder challenges into innovation opportunities.
Lastly, John Cutler emphasizes nuanced capacity allocation for sustainable growth, David Burkus advocates fostering team accountability through empowerment and honesty, Ash Maurya highlights automated customer feedback loops for continuous learning, and Alex Ewerlöf discusses delivering value, adapting to market shifts, and fostering personal growth to navigate challenges effectively.
Join Sandrine Olivencia on how to escape the Feature Frenzy and build instead products and services that sell. (The recording is in English.)
📺 Watch the video now: Escape the Feature Frenzy, Build to Sell with Sandrine Olivencia – Hands-on Agile #66.
Welcome to the 476th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 42,817 peers. This week, we feature John Cutler on how Lean principles adapt to stabilize scaling challenges, Simon Powers on budgeting strategies for impactful organizational change, and Steven Sinofsky dissecting engineering patterns that fail despite sounding practical. James Hawkins addresses escaping the “deadline doom loop,” while Steve Denning examines the synergy of hierarchies and networks for fostering innovation and competence.
Next, Dan Olsen debunks claims of product management’s demise, highlighting AI’s role in enhancing PM effectiveness. Peter Yang interviews Aman Khan on PM Career-Defining AI Skills in 2025, while Mihika Kapoor shares her playbook for turning bold ideas into viral internal successes. Moreover, David Pereira offers practical guidance on refactoring, bridging technical and business priorities through actionable insights and real-world examples.
Lastly, we explore Stefan Lindegaard’s toolbox for scaling high-performance teams with tools like the Capability Gap Map. Petra Wille highlights trust and generosity as keys to thriving communities, and Melissa Suzuno showcases Vistaly’s role in continuous discovery. Finally, Katelyn Bourgoin shares psychology-driven strategies to shape customer pricing perceptions effectively.
