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TL; DR: Reshaping Teamwork — Food for Agile Thought #486
Welcome to the 486th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 42,656 peers. This week, Fabrizio Dell’Acqua et al. reveal how AI can match team performance and boost collaboration in a Procter & Gamble field study. Julie Zhuo dismantles the traditional product development playbook, while Karri Saarinen champions craft and quality over speed. Itamar Gilad calls for transformational AI visions, not just incremental ones. And Paul Roetzer warns AGI may be closer than we think—raising the stakes for how we lead, build, and stay human.
Next, Zvi Mowshowitz critiques Sam Altman’s casual AGI stance, contrasting it with disruption-heavy models like Epoch’s GATE. Aakash Gupta and Tal Raviv demonstrate building an AI-powered product management copilot in under an hour. McKinsey explores how large organizations are restructuring to unlock gen AI value. Plus, Tobias Mayer and Jade Garratt explore Scrum, safety, and leadership at work.
Lastly, Matheus Lima argues that actual psychological safety thrives on respectful conflict, not artificial harmony. Ian Vanagas identifies communication pitfalls engineers face, while Jeff Gothelf exposes the hidden costs of misused OKRs. Finally, Petra Wille shares why AI notetakers don’t belong in coaching—some moments are too human for machines to capture without consequence.
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🏆 The Tip of the Week: Reshaping Teamwork
(via Harvard Business School): The Cybernetic Teammate: A Field Experiment on Generative AI Reshaping Teamwork and Expertise
Fabrizio Dell'Acqua et al. share findings from an academic field experiment with Procter & Gamble, showing how AI rivals team performance, bridges expertise silos, and even fosters emotional engagement in collaborative knowledge work.
🎯 Product
: The Death of Product Development as We Know it
Julie Zhuo declares the old product development playbook dead—mock-heavy, manager-led teams are out; tiny, high-agency teams using AI to prototype, prune, and ship fast are shaping the chaotic, code-first future.
(via Figma): Karri Saarinen: 10 Rules for Crafting Products That Stand Out
Karri Saarinen (Linear CEO) rejects “move fast and break things,” advocating for quality as a startup differentiator—sharing 10 actionable principles for building with craft ahead of his Config 2025 talk.
: 📺 We Built an AI Product Manager in 58 mins (Claude, ChatGPT, Loom + Notion AI)
Aakash Gupta and Tal Raviv walk through how they built an AI-powered product management copilot in under an hour—showcasing real workflows that help PMs boost output, clarity, and decision-making.
🧠 Artificial Intelligence
(via Marketing AI Institute): Road to AGI (and Beyond) #1 — The AI Timeline is Accelerating
Paul Roetzer explores why AGI may arrive sooner than expected, how AI agents could reshape organizations, and why we’re still unprepared for the risks—while urging leaders to confront what remains uniquely human in the age of AI.
: On (Not) Feeling the AGI
Zvi Mowshowitz critiques Sam Altman’s surprisingly casual view of AGI, contrasting it with models like Epoch’s GATE that anticipate massive disruption—arguing that many tech leaders simply don’t feel the AGI coming.
(via McKinsey & Company): The state of AI: How organizations are rewiring to capture value
McKinsey & Company reports that large organizations are redesigning workflows, elevating governance, and reskilling teams to capture value from generative AI, revealing early but meaningful structural shifts and reshaping how businesses operate.
: Developing a Transformational Vision for AI and Beyond
Itamar Gilad urges leaders to go beyond incremental AI thinking by crafting transformational visions that look 5–10 years ahead—pragmatic, value-driven futures that solve real problems and outpace short-term, hype-fueled strategies.
🖥 🇬🇧 Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills Class w/ PSFS Certificate — April 24, 2025
The Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills (PSFS) training by Berlin Product People is a one-day official Scrum.org facilitation class for advanced Scrum practitioners and agile coaches, including the industry-acknowledged PSFS certification. The PSFS training class is designed as a live virtual class and will be in English.
Enjoy the benefits of a live virtual immersive class with like-minded agile peers from 09:00 – 17:30 CEST.
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Learn more: 🖥 🇬🇧 Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills Class w/ PSFS Certificate — April 24, 2025.
Customer Voice: “Great experience - "You reap what you saw." What I really liked about it was the constant usage of facilitation techniques & Liberating Structures to engage all participants & harness the collective knowledge while reaching the goal of the exercises during the workshop. Therefore, my experience was great because I could really leave with some insights from the whole group that I could apply in my daily work starting from the next day. "You reap what you saw" and in this case, it was the collective intelligence of everyone in the training class.” (Source.)
➿ Agile & Leadership
: Scrum Thoughts
Tobias Mayer offers five poetic reflections on Scrum as subversive, human-centered, and hard to digest for command-and-control cultures, followed by a touching tribute to Artful Making co-author and collaborator Lee Devin.
: Psychological Safety and Micromanagement
Jade Garratt unpacks how micromanagement—often unintentional—erodes psychological safety, trust, and team learning, offering practical ways for leaders to shift from control to autonomy without compromising accountability or support.
: Why Your ‘Harmonious’ Team Is Actually Failing
Matheus Lima challenges the myth that quiet, conflict-free teams are healthy—arguing that real psychological safety means embracing friction, encouraging dissent, and building a culture where respectful disagreement leads to better results.
📯 Is Vibe Coding Agile or Merely a Hype?
Vibe coding — using natural language to generate code through AI — represents a significant evolution in software development. It accelerates feedback cycles and democratizes programming but raises concerns about maintainability, security, and technical debt.
Learn why success likely requires a balanced approach: using vibe coding for rapid prototyping while maintaining rigorous standards for production code, with developers evolving from writers to architects and reviewers or auditors.
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Learn more: Is Vibe Coding Agile or Merely a Hype?
🛠 Concepts, Practices, Tools & Measuring
: The Hidden Costs of OKRs: When goal-setting becomes a burden
Jeff Gothelf warns that poorly applied OKRs can burden teams rather than help them—highlighting hidden costs when forced onto routine operational work, rolled out without context, or lack support for meaningful execution.
(via PostHog): What engineers get wrong about communication
Ian Vanagas outlines six communication mistakes engineers often make—from hoarding information to vague messaging—and shows how PostHog builds a culture of clarity, action, and user focus to ship meaningful outcomes faster.
: Why I Don’t Allow AI Notetakers in My Coaching Sessions
Petra Wille explains why she doesn’t allow AI notetakers in coaching: they disrupt trust, presence, and deep reflection—reminding us that not all technologies serve the subtle human moments that drive real transformation.
📅 Scrum Training & Event Schedule
You can secure your seat for Scrum training classes, workshops, and meetups directly by following the corresponding link in the table below:
See all upcoming classes here.
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You can book your seat for the training directly by following the corresponding links to the ticket shop. If the procurement process of your organization requires a different purchasing process, please contact Berlin Product People GmbH directly.
📺 Join 6,000-plus Agile Peers on Youtube
Now available on the Age-of-Product Youtube channel to improve learning, for example, about Reshaping Teamwork:
- Cliff Berg: Leadership Behaviors That Lead to Actual Agility.
- Jurgen Appelo: Humans Robots Agents — Hands-on Agile 2025.
- Peter Merel: the agile way — Hands-on Agile 2025.
- Dr Lynn Kelley: Change Questions: The Keys to Implementing Organizational Change—Hands-on Agile 2025.
- Hands-on Agile EXTRA: How Elon Musk Would Run YOUR Business with Joe Justice.
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Help your team to learn about Leadership Blindspots by pointing them to the free Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide:
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