TL; DR: POM Starter Pack — Food for Agile Thought #536
Welcome to the 536th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 35,661 peers. This week, Anthropic’s 81,000-person study reveals that hope and alarm about AI coexist within the same individual. Alberto Romero channels that tension into eight practical strategies for AI career anxiety, while Allan Kelly warns that today’s AI hype mirrors the 1990s BPR failures. On the product side, Teresa Torres walks teams through measuring real customer impact rather than shipping features, Janna Bastow proposes that fixing bugs and technical debt is the strategy, and the Dotwork team provides a POM starter pack to operationalize Marty Cagan’s Product Operating Model.
Next, David Pereira suggests that product leadership means creating space for product managers to thrive, not being the smartest person in the room. Steve Blank warns that startups older than 2 years are likely running obsolete playbooks in a world reshaped by AI agents and vibe coding. Also, Ruben Dominguez highlights Claude’s 14x revenue jump and proposes that the real productivity gap lies in learning to co-work with AI. Cedric Chin recommends ignoring AI predictions and studying actual field reports instead, while Dave Snowden reminds us that Boyd’s OODA loop was never meant to be a safe iteration cycle.
Then, Jeff Gothelf proposes that storytelling is now the product manager’s key competitive advantage as AI commoditizes standard PM artifacts. Tristan Kromer addresses the lack of memory in AI agents. He proposes building a RAG-based experiment knowledge base to compound learning rather than repeat it. Martin Eriksson adds that AI agents need the same strategic clarity as human teams or organizations will scale confusion at machine speed. Finally, Sharyph explains how Claude Code Skills 2.0 turns Claude into a personalized, testable workflow system, while Deloitte’s 2026 State of AI report finds that only 34% of organizations truly reimagine their business with AI despite rising access.
🎓 🇬🇧 🤖 The Claude Cowork BootCamp — $149
Cowork turns Claude into an autonomous AI agent who works on your tasks independently; no coding required.
In this hands-on founding cohort, you will build your own AI agents from scratch, using your real work challenges:
- Three Wednesday sessions, three hours each, April 15 to 29, 2026, at 3 pm CEST / 9 am ET. Limited spots.
- Prerequisite: Claude Pro subscription and the Claude Desktop app on macOS or Windows.
👉 Start Building Agents: Claude Cowork BootCamp: Build Your Own AI Agent, No Coding Required.
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🏆 The Tip of the Week
(via Anthropic): What 81,000 people want from AI
Anthropic interviewed 81,000 Claude users across 159 countries in what may be the largest qualitative study ever conducted. The top finding: hope and alarm about AI rarely split people into opposing camps. Instead, both coexist within the same person. People want professional excellence, personal transformation, and time freedom, while simultaneously fearing job displacement, cognitive atrophy, and loss of autonomy.
🎯 Product
: Outcomes vs. Outputs: What's the Difference and Why Does It Matter?
Teresa Torres explains why many teams confuse outputs with outcomes, walks through common traps such as traction metrics and sentiment scores, and offers practical steps to measure actual customer impact rather than just shipping features.
(via ProdPad): When Stabilization Becomes Strategy
Janna Bastow proposes that fixing bugs and paying down technical debt is not a detour from product strategy but often is the strategy, since instability compounds costs, erodes team trust, and quietly kills a team's ability to innovate.
(via Medium): No-Nonsense Product Leadership Guide
David Pereira suggests that product leadership is not about being the best product person in the room, but about creating the space for product managers to maximize their impact, shifting the focus from product to people.
: Your Startup Is Probably Dead On Arrival
Steve Blank proposes that most startups older than two years are running obsolete playbooks, as AI agents, vibe coding, and parallel development have fundamentally changed tech stacks, business models, and what constitutes a competitive moat.
: Storytelling: An AI era survival skill for product managers
Jeff Gothelf suggests that as AI enables anyone to produce PM-looking artifacts, storytelling becomes the product manager's key competitive advantage, turning real customer evidence into narratives that earn trust and move rooms.
🧠 Artificial Intelligence
: How to Survive the AI Age: A Concrete Guide
Alberto Romero offers eight concrete strategies for navigating AI-related career anxiety, from solving one annoying task with AI to separating your identity from your job, aiming for competence over mastery, and knowing when to stop.
(via Commonplace): How to Make Sense of AI
Cedric Chin proposes ignoring all AI opinions and predictions, focusing instead on detailed field reports of actual use, and answering four questions about possible outcomes, actions, relative value, and causal relationships for your specific context.
: Everyone Is Talking About AI. The People Actually Winning Are Using Claude
Ruben Dominguez presents Claude's explosive growth numbers (14x revenue jump, 70% Fortune 100 adoption). He proposes that the real productivity gap is not about access to AI but about learning to co-work with it instead of just prompting it.
(via Kromatic): Your AI Agents Have Amnesia. Here's the Fix.
Tristan Kromer suggests that AI agents lack memory between sessions, causing organizations to pay a rediscovery tax at scale, and proposes building a RAG-based experiment knowledge base to make learning compound.
🖥 💯 🇬🇧 AI4Agile BootCamp #7, May 28 to June 25, 2026
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 one who 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.
The class is in English. 🇬🇧
Learn more: 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 AI4Agile BootCamp #7, May 28 to June 25, 2026.
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 The Cynefin Company): A Lamb in Wolves’ Clothing
Dave Snowden suggests that Boyd's OODA loop has been domesticated into a harmless iteration cycle, stripping out its radical core: that orientation shapes perception and sometimes must be destroyed, not just refined.
: Is AI repeating the historic mistakes of BPR?
Allan Kelly suggests that today's AI hype mirrors the 1990s Business Process Reengineering failures: technology-driven, ignoring tacit knowledge, alienating workers, and solving problems that do not exist yet.
: Whether You're Organising Humans or AI Agents, Strategic Clarity is Essential
Martin Eriksson proposes that AI agents need the same strategic clarity as human teams: clear purpose, principles, and constraints. Without that alignment, organizations will only scale their confusion at machine speed.
📯 Three AI Skills to Sharpen Judgment
Most agile practitioners use AI to produce outputs more quickly. Few use it to think better. This free download gives you three AI thinking skills (Socratic Explorer, Brutal Critic, Pre-Mortem) that turn Claude into a partner for diagnosing problems, stress-testing plans, and anticipating failures before they happen.
Learn more: Three AI Skills to Sharpen Judgment.
🛠 Concepts, Practices, Tools & Measuring: POM Starter Pack
(via Dotwork): POM Starter Pack — Launch Your Product Operating Model
The Dotwork team offers a practical starter pack for operationalizing Marty Cagan's Product Operating Model, covering teams, scopes, rituals, artifacts, and funding models that product leaders can adapt to their own context.
: How to Supercharge Claude Code: Skills 2.0 Playbook
Sharyph explains how Claude Code Skills 2.0 lets creators build persistent, testable AI workflows with automated evaluations, trigger tuning, and context engineering, turning Claude from a generic tool into a personalized system.
(via Deloitte Global): The State of AI in the Enterprise 2026
Deloitte's 2026 State of AI report finds that while worker access to AI rose 50%, only 34% of organizations truly reimagine their business with AI, and governance of agentic AI lags far behind adoption.
📅 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 April 15-29, 2026 | Guaranteed: Claude Cowork BootCamp (English; Live Virtual Cohort) | Live Virtual Cohort | $149 incl. 19% VAT (If applicable.) |
| 🖥 💯 🇩🇪 May 19-20, 2026 | Guaranteed: Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German; Live Virtual Class) | Live Virtual Class | €1,299 incl. 19% VAT (If applicable.) |
| 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 May 28 to June 25, 2026 | Guaranteed: AI4Agile BootCamp #7 (English; Live Virtual Cohort) | Live Virtual Cohort | €499 incl. 19% VAT (If applicable.) |
| 🖥 🇩🇪 June 30-July 1, 2026 | Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German; Live Virtual Class) | Live Virtual Class | €1,299 incl. 19% VAT (If applicable.) |
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 POM Starter Pack:
- Stop Writing Prompts. Let AI Do It for You — Hack #01, AI4Agile Online Course v2.
- Socratic Prompting — Hack #10, AI4Agile Online Course v2.
- Check Your AI’s Plan Before — Hack #7, AI4Agile Online Course v2.
- From Product Requirements to Experiments to Learnings — Supported by Generative AI.
- Never Accept an LLM’s First Offer — Improve GenAI’s Usefulness w/ Feedback Loops and Challenges.
✋ Do Not Miss Out: Learn more about the POM Starter Pack — 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 would 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 how AI Intensifies Work by pointing them to the free Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide:
Martin Eriksson’s article about the need for alignment struck a chord – that need was the very inspiration for StreamAlign. StreamAlign is a fully agent-based system, but at its core is an “intention layer” that people use to define objectives and strategies, and elaborate those into implementation roadmaps – so the agents are fully aware of what the organization is trying to do and WHY – spanning all levels and all teams across the entire organization.
Current website: https://www.agile2academy.com/streamline-product-description
New website: https://www.streamalign.ai/