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Food for Agile Thought #485: Agile Coach Bubble Origins, Outcomes Are Bl**dy Hard, Product Team Anti-Patterns, Running Major Projects

by Stefan Wolpers | 2025-03-21 News

TL; DR: Agile Coach Bubble Origins — Food for Agile Thought #485

Welcome to the 485th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 42,652 peers. This week, Viktor Cessan explores the Agile Coach bubble origin, which was inflated by cheap capital. Marty Cagan and Felipe Castro stress that outcomes over outputs remain elusive without adopting the product model. Maarten Dalmijn identifies systemic dysfunction—not poor PMs—as the real challenge and proposes CACAO as a remedy. David Pereira urges teams to treat the backlog as a strategic tool, not a dumping ground. Also, Lenny Rachitsky interviews Anton Osika on how Lovable hit $10M ARR in 60 days by letting users describe apps in plain language—AI handles the rest.

Next, Ben Thompson interviews Sam Altman on OpenAI’s evolution from research lab to consumer tech giant, unpacking ChatGPT, AGI, and pursuing “the next Facebook.” Klaudia Jaźwińska and Aisvarya Chandrasekar expose how AI search engines misattribute and fabricate news content, damaging trust, and publisher economics. Peter Yang offers 12 grounded rules for building real apps with AI—especially for non-coders, while Charity Majors dismantles the 10x engineer myth, advocating for resilient, inclusive teams where “normal” engineers thrive. And Andy Cleff makes a case for self-selection: empowered teams deliver better outcomes than top-down assignments ever could.

Lastly, Rita McGrath defends bureaucracy’s stabilizing role but calls for permissionless systems. Ben Kuhn shares his Anthropic crisis project management lessons, and John Cutler uses LLMs to visualize individual interactions, which are documented during interviews. Finally, Ted Neward reframes organizational “debt” as strategic or destructive—urging awareness.

Food for Agile Thought #485: Agile Coach Bubble Origins, Outcomes Are Bl**dy Hard, Product Team Anti-Patterns — Age-of-Product.com.

Food for Agile Thought #484: Vibe Coding, Product’s Hard Nature, Brittle Product Teams, Pivots & Post-Mortems

by Stefan Wolpers | 2025-03-14 News

TL; DR: Vibe Coding — Food for Agile Thought #484

Welcome to the 484th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 42,673 peers. This week, Ethan Mollick examines vibe coding, where AI-native teams blend human expertise and AI to iterate and collaborate rapidly. Maarten Dalmijn critiques rigid planning, advocating for elastic teams that thrive in complexity. In anticipating engineering’s shift toward AI management roles, Jasper Gilley quit his FAANG job, seeing automation redefine technical careers. Michael Küsters likens middle management to Rock-Paper-Scissors, where unpredictability is key to success. At the same time, Fred Hebert dissects AI integration, emphasizing thoughtful human-in-the-loop design to avoid automation pitfalls.

Next, Itamar Gilad argues that product success is rare due to underestimated complexity and misaligned forces, advocating for strategic clarity and intentional culture-building. Then, David Pereira highlights how pilot testing helps PMs validate assumptions, reduce risks, and iterate faster, and Brian Balfour predicts AI will redefine product teams—transforming methodologies, roles, monetization, and distribution—urging AI-native strategies. In an interview with Peter Yang, Anthropic’s Scott White details how Claude 3.7 Sonnet accelerates product development through AI-generated PRDs, evals, and agentic coding tools.

Lastly, we critique overly blameless post-mortems, advocating for balanced accountability to prevent mediocrity, and Johanna Rothman champions rolling-wave planning to reduce pressure and improve adaptability. Ash Maurya stresses that successful pivots require rapid business model testing and external accountability. Additionally, Zvi Mowshowitz dissects Manus, a Chinese AI agent hyped as groundbreaking but revealed as a Claude wrapper, and, finally, Andrew Chen explores “vibe coding,” where AI reshapes software creation, predicting a shift toward intuitive, GUI-driven design, fragmented UX, and adaptive, self-improving applications.

Food for Agile Thought #484: Vibe Coding, Product’s Hard Nature, Brittle Product Teams, Pivots & Post-Mortems — Age-of-Product.com

Food for Agile Thought #483: Leadership Blindspots, Tyranny of Incrementalism, AI Prototyping & User Research, Who Does Strategy?

by Stefan Wolpers | 2025-03-07 News

TL; DR: Leadership Blindspots, AI Prototyping — Food for Agile Thought #483

Welcome to the 483rd edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 42,689 peers. This week, Luona Lin and Kim Parker reveal U.S. workers’ anxiety around AI’s workplace impacts, while Lennart Meincke, Ethan Mollick, Lilach Mollick, and Dan Shapiro stress context-dependent complexities in prompt engineering. Charlie Guo sees AI hallucinations becoming manageable, Claire Lew identifies overlooked leadership blindspots, Joost Minnaar showcases Haier’s entrepreneurial employee model, and Arjun Shah champions ambitious “maximum thinking” over incrementalism.

Next, Will Larson explains how anyone, including engineers, can meaningfully shape organizational strategy through practical influence, while Ian Vanagas shares PostHog’s lessons on team autonomy, rapid iteration, and customer-driven development. Scott Sehlhorst highlights the power of clear problem statements, and Roman Pichler emphasizes intentional team design as key to sustained product success.

Lastly, Dan Shipper highlights Michael Taylor’s AI tool, Rally, which transforms customer research through risk-free audience simulations, while Aakash Gupta and Colin Matthews showcase rapid, code-free AI prototyping with Bolt, Lovable, v0, Replit, and Cursor. Johanna Rothman clarifies ranking versus prioritization for limiting WIP, and Jeff Gothelf outlines effective OKR retrospectives emphasizing preparation and evidence-based adjustments.

Food for Agile Thought #483: Leadership Blindspots, Incrementalism, AI Prototyping & User Research, Who Does Strategy? Age-of-Product.com.

Food for Agile Thought #482: No Place to Hide from AI, Cagan’s Vision For Product Teams, Distrust Breeds Distrust, Market Research Agent

by Stefan Wolpers | 2025-02-28 News

TL; DR: No Place to Hide from AI — Food for Agile Thought #482

Welcome to the 482nd edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 42,693 peers. This week, with no place to hide from AI, Ethan Mollick explores the rapid rise of Claude 3.7 and Grok 3, urging leaders to rethink AI’s role beyond simple automation, while Dan Shipper and Alex Duffy assess GPT-4.5’s improved emotional intelligence but persistent hallucinations. Maarten Dalmijn warns against distrust’s bureaucratic cycle, advocating for trust-driven leadership, while Swizec Teller critiques failed rewrites, emphasizing iterative refactoring over disruptive rebuilds. Moreover, Eduardo Baptista, Julie Zhu, and Fanny Potkin highlight DeepSeek’s AI ambitions, raising regulatory concerns, and Ben Thompson examines AI’s evolution, semiconductor risks, and U.S. policy shifts.

Next, Marty Cagan envisions AI-driven product teams shrinking to three key roles—PM, designer, and engineer—as automation reshapes discovery and delivery. Leah Tharin and Tal Raviv discuss AI’s evolving role in product management, urging PMs to experiment with contextual AI tools. Des Traynor outlines essential product review questions, emphasizing AI reliability, impact assessment, and iteration. Jenny Wenger shares lessons from building the Product Culture Blueprint Drafter, highlighting AI automation, prompt engineering, and product operations’ evolving role.

Lastly, Zvi Mowshowitz analyzes Grok 3’s strengths, including speed and Twitter integration, while addressing its hallucinations, biases, and xAI’s struggle to patch its vulnerabilities. Paweł Huryn introduces Deep Market Researcher, an AI agent streamlining product managers’ market research and strategic planning, while Avantika Gomes advocates adaptability in product roadmaps, highlighting Figma’s iterative approach. Finally, Ash Maurya challenges the obsession with experimentation, arguing that strong explanations and thought experiments are essential for validating business models before costly testing.

Food for Agile Thought #482: No Place to Hide from AI, Cagan’s Vision For Product Teams, Distrust Breeds Distrust — Age-of-Product.com

Food for Agile Thought #481: Reimagining Agile, AI Brain Fog, How to Become an AI PM, Successful Product Orgs

by Stefan Wolpers | 2025-02-21 News

TL; DR: Reimagining Agile, AI Brain Fog — Food for Agile Thought #481

Welcome to the 481st edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 42,718 peers. This week, Jim Highsmith, Jon Kern, Heidi Musser, and Sanjiv Augustine reflect on Reimagining Agile, advocating for a return to core values while pushing agility forward. David Pereira interviews Mike Cohn, emphasizing adaptability over rigid frameworks and AI’s growing role in product development. Meanwhile, Ravi Gupta warns that AI-native companies will disrupt industries, urging leaders to embrace AI-first thinking. M.G. Siegler analyzes the AI arms race, predicting a shift toward consumer-driven consolidation, with ChatGPT currently leading. Maarten Dalmijn critiques Institutionalized Competing Interests (ICI), where departmental silos obstruct collaboration, while John Cutler explores the hidden ego toll that prevents obvious improvements from taking root.

Next, Aakash Gupta interviews Marily Nika about excelling in AI product management, emphasizing key roles and essential skills, and avoiding hype-driven AI. Petra Wille underscores that successful product organizations thrive on disciplined habits rather than flashy frameworks, while Willem-Jan Ageling examines the evolving Product Owner role, warning against proxy POs and fragmented ownership. Meanwhile, Lewis C. Lin explores AI Brain Fog, where over-reliance on AI weakens critical thinking, offering the CLEAR framework to restore independent decision-making.

Lastly, Chandra Gnanasambandam, Martin Harrysson, and Rikki Singh explore AI’s transformative impact on the software product development life cycle, from accelerating innovation to redefining roles. Zeno Rocha shares how Friction Logs at Resend help new hires rapidly spot and fix UX issues, reinforcing a culture of continuous improvement. Also, Simone Cicero critiques traditional design tools for failing to capture B2B ecosystem complexity, introducing new mapping techniques to align customer needs with strategic decision-making. Finally, Sebastian Raschka breaks down four key approaches to improving LLM reasoning models, offering insights from DeepSeek R1’s development and AI’s evolving landscape.

Reimagining Agile, AI Brain Fog, How to Become an AI PM, Successful Product Orgs — Food for Agile Thought #481, Age-of-Product.com.

Hands-on Agile 2025: Embracing the Shift to Context-Based Agility — The Slides

by Stefan Wolpers | 2025-02-16 Agile and ScrumNews

TL; DR: The Slides of Hands-on Agile 2025

If you weren’t at the virtual Hands-on Agile 2025 conference earlier this month, you missed an incredible opportunity to explore the shift from concept-based to context-based agility with nearly 800 fellow agilists. But don’t worry – I’m here to share some of the key takeaways and insights!

Check out the slides from the Live Stream speakers below; I will keep you posted on the availability of the recordings.

Hands-on Agile 2025: Embracing the Shift to Context-Based Agility — The Slides — Age-of-Product.com