TL; DR: AI Bubble Guide — Food for Agile Thought #504
Welcome to the 504th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 40,578 peers. This week, Brian Balfour explores how AI is transforming product management by expanding both problem and solution spaces, accelerating decision-making, and introducing new strategic tensions. David Pereira outlines three actionable ways to deliver more value from ideas without becoming a backlog gatekeeper. Dean Peters advocates moving from documents to interactive demos, leveraging AI to let stakeholders feel value early, and Edward Zitron critiques the generative AI bubble as overhyped and underdelivering. Also, Pim de Morree highlights metafinanz’s bold shift to self-managed teams rooted in autonomy and trust.
Next, Aakash Gupta and Ankit Shukla break down what it takes to thrive as an AI Product Manager in 2025, from core skills to architectural fluency. Lenny Rachitsky and Madhavan Ramanujam tackle the common pricing traps that sink AI startups, and Harrison Chase explains why Claude Code-like agents handle complex tasks so well. Then, Kimberly Tan, Joe Schmidt, Marc Andrusko, and Olivia Moore unpack what separates durable AI products from demos, while Steve Denning critiques misguided approaches to psychological safety, resulting in managers not solving important problems.
Lastly, Zvi Mowshowitz reviews the U.S. AI Action Plan as pragmatic yet incomplete on key risks. Joe Foley shares how Penta Technologies embraced Scrum to replace micromanagement with team-led delivery, while Ant Murphy urges teams to remix frameworks like mental models. Christina Wodtke highlights why sketching trumps prompting in early design, and Jason Yip outlines six safe release patterns. Finally, Gergely Orosz and Laura Tacho explore the nuanced reality of AI’s impact on software engineering.
🎓 🇬🇧 🤖 The AI 4 Agile BootCamp Online Course at $129 — September 15, 2025
I developed the self-paced AI 4 Agile Boot Camp Online Course for agile practitioners, including Product Owners, Product Managers, Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches, and delivery professionals who want to integrate artificial intelligence into their workflows with clarity, ethics, and purpose.
You don’t need to become an AI expert. However, you do need to understand how LLMs like ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini can support real agile work and where their limitations lie. Like Jim Highsmith said: AI isn’t just a tool, but a new context for agility.
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- 10+ hours of self-paced video modules
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- All texts, slides, prompts, graphics; you name it
- Access custom GPTs including the “Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide GTP”
- Enjoy community access for peer learning
- Guaranteed: Lifetime access to all course updates and materials; there is a lot more to come
- Certificate of completion.
👉 Please note: The course will only be available for sign-up at $129 until September 22, 2025! 👈
🎓 Join the Waitlist of the AI 4 Agile BootCamp Online Course Now: Master AI Integration for Agile Practitioners—No AI Expertise Required!
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🏆 The Tip of the Week
(via Reforge): How AI Changes Product Management: Same Role, New Possibilities
Brian Balfour explains how AI reshapes product management by expanding the problem and solution space, demanding faster decisions, rethinking prioritization, and creating new risks, opportunities, and competitive pressures across the entire product lifecycle: “AI is the telescope, not the stars.”
🎯 Product
: How Can You Streamline the Unstoppable Thunderstorm of Requests?
David Pereira offers three practical strategies for turning ideas into value: simplify prioritization, standardize idea intake, and stop chasing popularity to avoid becoming a glorified Backlog manager instead of a true value maximizer.
: Show Before Tell, Touch Before Sell
Dean Peters urges product managers to shift from documents to demos, using AI to rapidly prototype, explain, and validate ideas so stakeholders can experience value before committing time, money, or influence.
and : Full Roadmap: Become an AI PM in 2025
Aakash Gupta interviews Ankit Shukla on becoming an AI Product Manager in 2025, unpacking key roles, skills, user understanding, AI product architecture, and how to stand out with proof of work and strategic action.
and : 🎙 Pricing and scaling your AI product: Lessons from 400+ companies and 50 unicorns
Lenny Rachitsky interviews Madhavan Ramanujam on why most AI startups misprice their products, exploring frameworks, negotiation tactics, and outcome-based models to help founders build scalable and profitable AI businesses from day one.
🧠 Artificial Intelligence: AI Bubble Guide
(via LangChain): 📺 What Are Deep Agents?
Harrison Chase explores why Claude Code and similar “deep agents” excel at complex, long-horizon tasks, highlighting four key traits: planning tools, sub-agents, file system access, and highly detailed system prompts that enable consistent, focused execution.
: The Hater's Guide To The AI Bubble
Edward Zitron dismantles the generative AI hype, arguing it’s an unprofitable bubble propped up by unsustainable GPU spending, opaque metrics, misleading language, and tech media complicity while delivering little real value beyond marketing fiction.
(via Andreessen Horowitz): From Demos to Deals: Insights for Building in Enterprise AI
Kimberly Tan, Joe Schmidt, Marc Andrusko, and Olivia Moore explain why flashy AI demos don’t translate into real products, why AI startups scale faster than SaaS, and how durable value requires moats like integration depth and workflow lock-in.
: America’s AI Action Plan Is Pretty Good
Zvi Mowshowitz reviews the new U.S. AI Action Plan, finding it surprisingly competent and pragmatic, with solid proposals on innovation, infrastructure, and diplomacy. However, he flags gaps around state regulation, energy, and existential risk.
🖥 💯 🇬🇧 AI for Agile BootCamp Cohort #2 — September 15 – October 6, 2025
The job market’s shifting. Agile roles are under pressure. AI tools are everywhere. But here’s the truth: the Agile pros who learn how to work with AI, not against it, will be the ones leading the next wave of high-impact teams.
So, become the professional recruiters call first for “AI‑powered Agile.” Be among the first to master practical AI applications for Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches, Product Owners, Product Managers, and Project Managers.
Tickets also include lifetime access to the corresponding online course, once it is published. The class is in English. 🇬🇧
Learn more: 🖥 🇬🇧 AI for Agile BootCamp Cohort #2 — September 15 – October 6, 2025.
Customer Voice: “The AI for Agilists course is an absolute essential for anyone working in the field! If you want to keep up with the organizations and teams you support, this course will equip you with not only knowledge of how to leverage AI for your work as an Agilist but will also give you endless tips & tricks to get better results and outcomes. I thoroughly enjoyed the course content, structure, and activities. Working in teams to apply what we learned was the best part, as it led to great insights for how I could apply what I was learning. After the first day on the course, I already walked away with many things I could apply at work. I highly recommend this course to anyone looking to better understand AI in general, but more specifically, how to leverage AI for Agility.” (Lauren Tuffs, Change Leader | Business Agility.)
➿ Agile & Leadership
(via Corporate Rebels): Inside Metafinanz: How 850 People Run a Consulting Business Without Managers
Pim de Morree shares how metafinanz, a consultancy with 850 people, ditched hierarchy for self-managed teams, building a decentralized, trust-based system focused on autonomy, transparency, and adaptive alignment over top-down control.
(via Forbes): Millions Of Managers Are Becoming Obsolete—By Solving The Wrong Problem
Steve Denning argues that efforts to improve psychological safety have failed because managers are solving the wrong problem: Focusing on team dynamics instead of outdated organizational goals rooted in cost-cutting rather than customer value creation.
(via Agile Alliance): Case Study: How one company replaced micromanagement with team ownership
Joe Foley shares how Penta Technologies replaced micromanagement with team ownership by applying Scrum company-wide, leading to dramatic gains in empowerment, transparency, and delivery within just three months.
📯 The AI 4 Agile BootCamp Online Course: September 15, 2025
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Choose to become a leader. You can start on September 15 at $129.
👉 Please note: The course will only be available for sign-up at $129 until September 22, 2025! 👈
🎓 Join the Waitlist of the AI 4 Agile BootCamp Online Course Now: Master AI Integration for Agile Practitioners—No AI Expertise Required!
🛠 Concepts, Practices, Tools & Measuring
: Sketching With AI: Why Physical Thinking Still Matters in the Age of Generated Everything
Christina Wodtke argues that starting with physical sketching activates deeper cognitive processes than prompting alone, making it essential for uncovering real design problems before bringing AI in to amplify, not replace, your thinking.
: Don’t Follow Frameworks. Break them.
Ant Murphy encourages product teams to treat frameworks like mental models, not rules. He shares real-world examples of breaking, remixing, and adapting tools like OSTs and KPI trees to better fit messy realities.
(via Medium): Never start with 100%. Patterns for progressive delivery of software products
Jason Yip outlines six patterns for releasing software safely by avoiding big bang deployments and emphasizing learning over output: blue-green, parallel, progressive, targeted, and guarded releases all help reduce user impact and downtime.
and : 🎙 Measuring the Impact of AI on Software Engineering
Gergely Orosz interviews Laura Tacho on how AI is really affecting software engineering, revealing that time savings are modest, roadmaps are fading, and measuring developer experience is key to meaningful impact.
📅 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:
| Date | Class and Language | City | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 February 19, 2026 | Guaranteed: Hands-on Agile #72: Become Your Organization's AI Champion: A Crowdsourced Playbook (English; Live Virtual Meetup) | Meetup | FREE |
| 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 March 10-11, 2026 | Guaranteed: Professional Scrum Master—Advanced Training (PSM II; English; Live Virtual Class) | Live Virtual Class | €1,299 incl. 19% VAT |
| 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 March 19 to April 16, 2026 | Guaranteed: AI4Agile BootCamp #6 (English; Live Virtual Cohort) | Live Virtual Cohort | €499 incl. 19% VAT |
| 🖥 🇩🇪 March 24-25, 2026 | Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German; Live Virtual Class) | Live Virtual Class | €1,299 incl. 19% VAT |
| 🖥 🇩🇪 April 22-23, 2026 | Professional Scrum Product Owner – AI Essentials Training (PSPO AIE; German; Live Virtual Class) | Live Virtual Class | €799 incl. 19% VAT |
| 🖥 🇩🇪 May 19-20, 2026 | Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German; Live Virtual Class) | Live Virtual Class | €1,299 incl. 19% VAT |
See all upcoming classes here.
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 the AI Bubble Guide:
- Hands-on Agile #68: How to Analyze Unstructured Team Interview Data with AI.
- Fabrice Bernhard: The Lean Tech Manifesto.
- Maarten Dalmijn: The 5 Obstacles to Empowered Teams.
- Roman Pichler: The Top Reasons Why a Product Strategy Fails.
- Johanna Rothman: How to Instill Agility, not Agile Practices.
- Hands-on Agile EXTRA: How Elon Musk Would Run YOUR Business with Joe Justice.
✋ Do Not Miss Out: Learn more about the AI Bubble Guide — Join the 20,000-plus Strong ‘Hands-on Agile’ Slack Community
I invite you to join the “Hands-on Agile” Slack Community and enjoy the benefits of a fast-growing, vibrant community of agile practitioners from around the world.
If you like to join all you have to do now is provide your credentials via this Google form, and I will sign you up. By the way, it’s free.
Help your team to learn about Automated Companies by pointing them to the free Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide:
