TL; DR: Token Bills — Food for Agile Thought #561
Welcome to the 561st edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 35,328 peers. This week, James Shore wants leaders to justify $21,000 monthly token bills per heavy user by measuring approaches, never people. Julie Zhuo adds that fear-driven mandates produce transformation theater, and Kate Leto argues AI exposes old leadership gaps that Petra Wille and Teresa Torres say individuals cannot fix. Brooke Weddle, Deepak Mahadevan, Richard Steele, and Tom Welchman tie AI value to operating-model redesign, while Brett Queener sees jobs collapsing into one application.
Next, Afonso Franco argues AI agents, your product’s second user, bypass the UI and break seat pricing, and Kyle Poyar shows how Notion, Rippling, and Profound survive almost weekly launches by separating shipping from announcing. Nigel Thurlow sees agents running bureaucracy at machine speed, and Richard Kasperowski remains the bottleneck of his Scrum team of six agents. David Pereira watches AI make unchecked assumptions comfortable, while OpenAI’s ChatGPT Work guide keeps decisions with humans.
Lastly, Ara Kharazian finds AI spend per employee at top firms fell nearly 10% in August as token prices dropped 41%, and Gergely Orosz reports Uber, Pinterest, and AT&T cut bills with open models. Attackers enjoy the same discount: Anthropic’s threat report shows agent swarms letting lone operators match state hackers, raising the stakes for Meta’s Muse agent booking travel and negotiating for you. Finally, Paul Iusztin warns weak plans make cheap models expensive.
Disclaimer: I am among those who read Charniak/McDermott’s book on “Artificial Intelligence” decades ago; of course, I use AI for research, translations, proofreading, challenging story arcs and article structures, and summarization. It is a production tool, not a substitute for thinking.
🎓 🇬🇧 $199 — Making Sense of AI: The A3 Delegation System Founding Workshop: September 28-29, 2026
Your team already delegates work to AI: reports, research, customer feedback analysis, stakeholder communication, or parts of operational workflows.
But can you answer these questions without improvising?
- What may AI decide, and what must remain a human decision?
- What does “good enough” mean for this particular work?
- Who verifies the result before somebody acts on it?
- Who checks whether the delegation still works after the model or workflow changes?
If those answers live in one person’s head, or nowhere, your problem is no longer prompting. You have a delegation problem.
The A3 Delegation System gives you a practical way to decide what AI may do, hand over the work clearly, define acceptable results, and inspect the delegation over time.
During two hands-on sessions, you will apply the system to a workflow. You will leave with a clear understanding of how to apply the A3 Delegation System to your workflows so that team members or stakeholders can understand, challenge, and continue your AI delegation work. Everything you learn is directly applicable to your situation the next day. The class is in English.
👉 Join the Workshop Now — $199: The A3 Delegation System Founding Workshop — September 28-29, 2026
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🏆 The Tip of the Week: Token Bills
: Are You Getting Your Money’s Worth from AI?
James Shore suggests that token bills of $21,000 per heavy user per month demand ROI evidence, yet lines of code and pull requests mislead; leaders should measure approaches, not people.
🎯 Product
and : 🎙️ 📺 Organizational Change Is Exhausting: All Things Product with Teresa and Petra
Petra Wille and Teresa Torres suggest that individuals cannot fix organizations lacking leadership pain, urgency, and awareness; changing yourself, layering discovery habits into rigid processes, and showing results publicly work better.
: The Harness, the Horse, or the Hay
Brett Queener suggests jobs are collapsing into one application, leaving three positions: model (horse), role-owning application (harness), or infrastructure (hay); founders pick correctly, then often die running the wrong playbook.
: Half-user-centric: Your product has a new user now
Afonso Franco believes AI agents are your product's second user: they bypass the UI, expose years of hidden technical debt, turn engagement metrics into inefficiency signals, and break seat-based pricing.
: Nobody cares about your new product (sorry)
Kyle Poyar shows how Notion, Rippling, and Profound survive near-weekly product launches: build in public, decouple shipping from announcing, and make creative either polished or raw. The mediocre middle dies.
: 7 Weak Product Management Signs
David Pereira revisits his 2021 weak product management signs and finds them more present than ever, as AI makes solution-first thinking, immortal features, and unchecked assumptions feel fast and comfortable.
🧠 Artificial Intelligence
(via Ramp Builders): Cracks in the AI Thesis: Anthropic widens its lead, but overall business AI adoption slows
Ara Kharazian finds per-employee AI spend at top firms fell nearly 10% in August, as token prices dropped 41% and usage shifted toward cheaper standard models. Vacations explain only part.
: Tech companies move to open AI models
Gergely Orosz reports Uber, Pinterest, AT&T, and others are slashing AI bills by swapping frontier models for open ones and routing requests smartly. Anthropic's premium pricing looks like a liability.
: Automating a Broken System: The Hidden Risk of Agentic AI
Nigel Thurlow suggests that agentic AI has dropped into existing silos and handoffs. KPIs run bureaucracy at machine speed, piling up WIP and moving constraints, so leaders should improve flow before automating.
(via McKinsey & Company): The key to AI value is hiding in plain sight: Your operating model
Brooke Weddle, Deepak Mahadevan, Richard Steele, and Tom Welchman find that AI "reinventors" capture more value by redesigning their operating model around cross-functional teams, adaptive governance, and skills-based talent, a pattern agile practitioners should recognize.
(via Anthropic): Countering misuse of AI: September 2026
Anthropic's threat report shows AI erasing the gap between state hackers and lone operators, as agent swarms automate reconnaissance, exploitation, and data theft. Familiar attacks just got a lot cheaper.
🖥 💯 🇬🇧 AI4Agile BootCamp #9, October 15 – November 5, 2026
The job market’s shifting. Agile roles are under pressure. AI tools are everywhere. But here’s the truth: the Agile professionals who learn how to work with AI, not against it, will be the ones leading the next wave of high-impact teams. Therefore, Stefan created the AI4Agile BootCamp.
So, become the professional recruiters‘ first call 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 AI4Agile BootCamp is in English.
Learn more: 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 AI4Agile BootCamp #9, October 15 – November 5, 2026.
Customer Voice: “Last week, I finished the 𝗔𝗜 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗔𝗴𝗶𝗹𝗲 𝗣𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗲𝗿𝘀 course. And I’m mutating… It started on the train. I was scrolling through my messages, half-distracted, when a newsletter from Stefan Wolpers popped up. Stefan, a deep thinker with a hands-on attitude, was launching a new course. A pilot cohort. The mission: explore how AI can actually support us as agile practitioners. I couldn’t resist. I tapped: “𝘚𝘪𝘨𝘯 𝘶𝘱”. What followed were four bi-weekly sessions. Four intense afternoons. Full of exploration, experimentation, and practice. […] At the beginning, Stefan said that 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘴𝘪𝘨𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘶𝘱 𝘢𝘭𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘺 𝘱𝘶𝘵𝘴 𝘶𝘴 𝘢𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘥 𝘰𝘧 𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘺 𝘱𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘳𝘴. That sounded like a big statement. But somewhere along the way, I noticed a shift… an emerging superpower in how I approach my tasks with AI.⚡And now, as my AI-mutation continues, I catch myself wondering: 💭 𝘏𝘰𝘸 𝘥𝘰 𝘐 𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘈𝘐 𝘵𝘰 𝘴𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘢𝘨𝘪𝘭𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥?” (Ilya Zaytsev, Leading Agility at HUGO BOSS.)
➿ Agile & Leadership
: You Cannot Mandate an AI Transformation
Julie Zhuo suggests fear-driven AI mandates produce transformation theater, while automating hated chores, scoring small team wins, earning trust through evals, and redesigning around the new bottlenecks deliver real change.
: AI doesn't create leadership problems – it exposes them
Kate Leto suggests AI exposes old leadership gaps: adoption spreads through trusted peers; ambition ends where leaders' curiosity does; resistance defends identity; people conceal usage; and "saved" work lands elsewhere.
: I Gave Six AI Agents a Scrum Board (And Measured What Happened)
Richard Kasperowski runs six AI agents as a pair-programming Scrum team, producing forty times his solo lines of code, while he remains Product Owner, push gate, and the actual bottleneck.
📯 AI Transformations And Agile Transformations Rhyme
AI adoption seems to be scaling: 37% of respondents in McKinsey’s 2026 survey report an EBIT effect from AI, and Gartner finds that 22% of organizations have scaled it across business units. Now, Agile practitioners have seen this combination before, as AI transformations and Agile transformations rhyme. There are five classic failure patterns from the Agile transformation adventures that are back under new names: from mandates from above to licenses mistaken for training to greenfield showcases to parachuted consultants to promised payroll savings dressed up as strategy. They share one condition: organizations make AI decisions at organizational scale without leaving inspectable evidence at the workflow level in the trenches. And for good measure, let us throw in ignoring culture and excluding most of the organization’s people in the process.
The A3 Delegation System is not an AI-transformation method. It is a deliberately low-tech, paper-level discipline that lets a team produce that evidence in hours, and this article spends as much time on where the system stops as on what it does. If you are a Scrum Master, Product Owner or Manager, an Agile Coach, or a Project Manager who has to argue upward about AI, the last section gives you one thing to do this week.
👉 Learn more: AI Transformations And Agile Transformations Rhyme.
🛠 Concepts, Practices, Tools & Measuring
: A practical guide to using ChatGPT Work on desktop: One home base for all your work
OpenAI's ChatGPT Work guide proposes a method: do real tasks, correct drafts, turn tested methods into Skills, automate carefully, and leave decisions with humans. Swap the logo; it works anywhere.
(via Meta Newsroom): Introducing Muse: The World’s First Personal AI Agent Built for Everyone
Meta launches Muse, an almost "free" personal AI agent for non-techies you just message, which then books travel, fills out forms, and negotiates for you from its own secure cloud VM. The question is: Would you trust Meta with that access?
(via O’Reilly Media): Inside a Software Factory: Go from vibe coding to generating clean, maintainable code
Paul Iusztin suggests that in a software factory, humans own brainstorming, planning, and final review while agents build; that weak plans make cheap models expensive; and that overbuilding one backfires.
📅 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Sep 28-29, 2026 | GUARANTEED: A3 Delegation System Founding Workshop (English; Live Virtual Class) | Live Virtual Class | $199 incl. 19% VAT (If applicable.) |
| 🖥 💯 🇩🇪 Sep 30-Oct 1, 2026 | GARANTIERT: Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German; Live Virtual Class) | Live Virtual Class | €999 incl. 19% VAT (If applicable.) |
| 🖥 🇬🇧 October 15-November 5, 2026 | AI4Agile BootCamp #9 (English; Live Virtual Cohort) | Live Virtual Cohort | €499 incl. 19% VAT (If applicable.) |
| 🖥 🇩🇪 November 3-4, 2026 | Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German; Live Virtual Class) | Live Virtual Class | €1189 incl. 19% VAT (If applicable.) |
| 🖥 🇩🇪 December 8-9, 2026 | Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German; Live Virtual Class) | Live Virtual Class | €1189 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 Token Bills:
- 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 Token Bills — 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:
