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Change Questions, The Agile Way, Humans Robots Agents — Hands-on Agile 2025

by Stefan Wolpers | 2025-04-06 Featured Agile and ScrumVideos

TL; DR: Dr. Lynn Kelley, Peter Merel, and Jurgen Appelo speaking at Hands-on Agile 2025

The first videos of Hands-On Agile 2025 sessions are in, and you don’t want to miss them: Dr. Lynn Kelley reveals her “Change Questions” framework with its remarkable 90% success rate for sustainable organizational transformation, while Peter Merel challenges conventional agile thinking with “The Agile Way,” connecting ancient wisdom to modern AI-agile alignment through six essential themes. Also, Jurgen Appelo explores how AI is revolutionizing leadership in “Humans Robots Agents,” offering practical strategies for thriving amid technological disruption.

These industry veterans bring decades of enterprise transformation experience, providing actionable insights you can implement immediately. Watch the session recordings to transform how you approach agility.

Change Questions, The Agile Way, Humans Robots Agents: Dr. Lynn Kelley, Peter Merel, and Jurgen Appelo speaking at Hands-on Agile 2025 — Age-of-Product.com

Generative AI in Agile: A Strategic Career Decision

by Stefan Wolpers | 2025-03-30 Featured Agile and Scrum

TL;DR: A Harvard Study of Procter & Gamble Shows the Way

Recent research shows AI isn’t just another tool—it’s a “cybernetic teammate” that enhances agile work. A Harvard Business School study of 776 professionals found individuals using AI matched the performance of human teams, broke down expertise silos, and experienced more positive emotions during work. For agile practitioners, the choice isn’t between humans or AI but between being AI-augmented or falling behind those who are. The cost of experimentation is low; the potential career advantage, on the other hand, is substantial. A reason to embrace generative AI in Agile?

Generative AI in Agile: A Strategic Career Decision — A Harvard Study of Procter & Gamble Shows the Way — Age-of-Product.com

The Agile Prompt Engineering Framework

by Stefan Wolpers | 2025-03-17 Featured Agile and Scrum

TL; DR: Bridging Agile and AI with Proper Prompt Engineering

Agile teams have always sought ways to work smarter without compromising their principles. Many have begun experimenting with new technologies, frameworks, or practices to enhance their way of working. Still, they often struggle to get relevant, actionable results that address their specific challenges. Regarding generative AI, there is a better way for agile practitioners than reinventing the wheel team by team—the Agile Prompt Engineering Framework.

Learn why it solves the challenge: a structured approach to prompting AI models designed specifically for agile practitioners who want to leverage this technology as a powerful ally in their journey.

The Agile Prompt Engineering Framework: Bridging Agile and AI with Proper Prompt Engineering — Age-of-Product.com

Join the AI for Agile Practitioners Survey — Why We Need Your Insights

by Stefan Wolpers | 2025-02-23 Featured Agile and Scrum

TL; DR: Join the AI for Agile Practitioners Survey

As AI tools become increasingly integrated into our work, agile practitioners face the million-dollar question:

Will AI make my career obsolete? 🤔

I believe the answer is a resounding no—if we choose to understand and adapt to AI’s real impact on our field today and in the coming months.

👉 So, please invest 10 minutes and join the AI for Agile Practitioners Survey now!

AI for Agile Practitioners Survey: Join the poll and illuminate how artificial intelligence augments Agile - Age-of-Product.com

Getting Hired as a Scrum Master or Agile Coach

by Stefan Wolpers | 2024-02-05 Featured Agile and ScrumAgile Transition

TL; DR: Getting Hired as a Scrum Master or Agile Coach

Are you considering a new Scrum Master or Agile Coach job? However, you are not sure that it is the right organization? Don’t worry; there are four steps of proactive research to identify suitable employers or clients for getting hired as a Scrum Master and avoid disappointment later.

I have used those four steps for years to identify organizations I would like to work with, and they never failed me. Read on and learn how to employ search engines, LinkedIn’s people search, reach out to peers in the agile community, and analyze the event markets in the quest for your next Scrum Master job.

Getting Hired as a Scrum Master or Agile Coach — Age-of-Product.com

60 ChatGPT Prompts Plus Prompt Engineering Guide for Scrum Practitioners

by Stefan Wolpers | 2023-05-15 Featured Agile and Scrum

TL; DR: 60 ChatGPT Prompts for Agile Practitioners

ChatGPT can be an excellent tool for those who know how to create prompts. The simplest form of prompting ChatGPT is to feed it the task and ask for results. However, this approach is unlikely to trigger the best response from the model.

Instead, invest more time in prompt engineering, and provide ChatGPT with a better context of the situation, desired outcomes, data, constraints, etc. The following article offers a primer to creating ChatGPT prompts for Scrum practitioners to get you started running. You will learn:

Prompt engineering basics
Prompt engineering with services like PromptPerfect
Using ChatGPT for prompt engineering. (Yub, that works, too.)

Free Download 60 ChatGPT Prompts for Scrum Masters, Product Owners, Product Managers — Age-of-Product.com

Free Ebook: 83 Scrum Master Interview Questions to Identify Suitable Candidates

by Stefan Wolpers | 2022-06-17 Featured Agile and Scrum

TL; DR: The Scrum Master Interview Guide to Identify Genuine Scrum Masters

In this comprehensive Scrum Master Interview guide, we delve into 83 critical questions that can help distinguish genuine Scrum Masters from pretenders during interviews. We designed this selection to evaluate the candidates’ theoretical knowledge, practical experience, and ability to apply general Scrum and “Agile “principles effectively in real-world scenarios—as outlined in the Scrum Guide or the Agile Manifesto. Ideal for hiring managers, HR professionals, and future Scrum teammates, this guide provides a toolkit to ensure that your next Scrum Master hire is truly qualified, enhancing your team’s agility and productivity.

If you are a Scrum Master currently looking for a new position, please check out the “Preparing for Your Scrum Master Interview as a Candidate” section below.

So far, this Scrum Master interview guide has been downloaded more than 25,000 times.

Scrum Master Interview — How to Prepare Yourself to Stand Out — Age-of-Product.com

Hiring: 82 Scrum Product Owner Interview Questions to Avoid Agile Imposters

by Stefan Wolpers | 2021-09-26 Featured Agile and Scrum

TL; DR: 82 Product Owner Interview Questions to Avoid Imposters

If you are looking to fill a position for a Product Owner in your organization, you may find the following 82 interview questions useful to identify the right candidate. They are derived from my sixteen years of practical experience with XP and Scrum, serving both as Product Owner and Scrum Master and interviewing dozens of Product Owner candidates on behalf of my clients.

So far, this Product Owner interview guide has been downloaded more than 10,000 times.

82 Product Owner Interview Questions to Avoid Imposters — Age-of-Product.com

📅 Upcoming Scrum Training Classes, Liberating Structures Workshops, and Events

by Stefan Wolpers | 2020-10-10 Featured Workshops

TL; DR: Scrum Training Classes, Liberating Structures Workshops, and Events

Age-of-Product.com’s parent company — Berlin Product People GmbH — offers Scrum training classes authorized by Scrum.org, Liberating Structures workshops, and hybrid training of Professional Scrum and Liberating Structures. The training classes are offered both in English and German.

Check out the upcoming timetable of training classes, workshops, meetups, and other events below and join your peers.

Upcoming Scrum and Liberating Stuctures training classes and workshops — Berlin Product People GmbH

Food for Agile Thought #487: Navigating Politics, Gemini Now State-of-the-Art, Product Strategy Playbook, Embracing ‘I Don’t Know’

by Stefan Wolpers | 2025-04-04 News

TL; DR: Navigating Politics — Food for Agile Thought #487

Welcome to the 487th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 42,663 peers. This week, Murray Robinson speaks with Charles Lambdin about why real organizational change hinges on navigating politics, not just process. Mike Goitein, channeling Roger L. Martin, cautions against data obsession that stifles innovation. Janna Bastow shares a curated list of must-read PM books for 2025. Meanwhile, Zvi Mowshowitz reviews Gemini 2.5 Pro’s impressive reasoning capabilities but critiques Google’s opacity. Lastly, Anthropic’s Alignment Science team exposes troubling gaps in how AIs like Claude 3.7 “think,” revealing alignment risks masked by polished reasoning chains.

Next, Aakash Gupta urges PMs to embrace adaptive, AI-informed strategies over rigid plans. Leah Tharin champions product-led growth through fast discovery and outcome focus, and Colleen McClain reveals a public-expert divide on AI optimism and regulation. Also, Ryan Singer tells Lenny Rachitsky how Shape Up restores clarity to scaling teams. And Ken Norton reframes “I don’t know” as leadership strength, not weakness.

Lastly, Barry O’Reilly calls on leaders to personally engage with AI, not outsource it, fostering curiosity and experimentation. Adam Ard critiques how “DevOps” became a silo, betraying its intent, and Jason Cohen offers a framework for simplifying tough decisions through upside-first thinking. Finally, Kim Scott reaffirms that Radical Candor means clarity with care, not cruelty, and trust at its core.

Food for Agile Thought #487: Navigating Politics, Gemini Now State-of-the-Art, Product Strategy Playbook,, ‘I Don’t Know’ — Age-of-Product.com

Food for Agile Thought #486: Reshaping Teamwork, Product’s Code-first Future, Unintentional Micromanagement, OKR’s Hidden Costs

by Stefan Wolpers | 2025-03-28 News

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.

Food for Agile Thought #486: Reshaping Teamwork, Product’s Code-first Future, Unintentional Micromanagement, OKR’s Hidden Costs - Age-of-Product.com

Is Vibe Coding Agile or Merely a Hype?

by Stefan Wolpers | 2025-03-23 Agile and Scrum

TL; DR: Vibe Coding

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.

Vibe Coding: Learn how it can enhance agile practices and empower non-technical entrepreneurs but beware of its issues — Age-of-Product.com

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.