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Food for Agile Thought #491: Automated Companies, Product Behaviors, Capacity Planning, How to Abandon Scrum

by Stefan Wolpers | 2025-05-02 News

TL; DR: Automated Companies — Food for Agile Thought #491

Welcome to the 491st edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 42,669 peers. This week, Dwarkesh Patel envisions AI-powered automated companies that replace hiring, learning, and leadership with computing, radically reshaping how economies function. John Cutler curates 270 behaviors and 180 rituals from product leaders at Canva, Stripe, Notion, and more, revealing what makes strong product cultures tick. Ash Maurya rethinks roadmaps with a traction-first, constraint-driven approach. Ethan Mollick highlights how subtle personality tweaks in AI affect trust and influence, while Simon Willison uncovers ChatGPT o3’s eerily precise photo-location guessing, blending vision and reasoning in ways both brilliant and unsettling.

Next, Aakash Gupta shares how Attio builds AI-native products that disappear into workflows, avoiding flashy bolt-ons. Christina Wodtke warns against outsourcing thinking to AI, urging leaders to engage deeply with data, and Sangeet Paul Choudary dismantles shallow AI memes, redirecting focus to system-level change. Meanwhile, Anthropic’s analysis shows that Claude Code is rapidly reshaping front-end development, especially in startup environments.

Lastly, Willem-Jan Ageling outlines when and how to abandon Scrum; Gregor Ojstersek explores fixing “work about work” with more intelligent systems and AI, while McKinsey links decision quality to strategic speed. Moreover, Petra Wille and Teresa Torres reframe capacity planning conflicts, and Brian Feister debunks AI coding hype, pushing for experience-based, question-led practices over blind automation.

Food for Agile Thought #491: Automated Companies, Product Behaviors, Capacity Planning, How to Abandon Scrum — Age-of-Product.com

Contextual AI Integration for Agile Product Teams

by Stefan Wolpers | 2025-04-27 Agile and ScrumAgile Transition

TL; DR: Not Onboarding But Integration

Stop treating AI as a team member to “onboard.” Instead, give it just enough context for specific tasks, connect it to your existing artifacts, and create clear boundaries through team agreements. This lightweight, modular approach of contextual AI integration delivers immediate value without unrealistic expectations, letting AI enhance your team’s capabilities without pretending it’s human.

Contextual AI Integration for Agile Product Teams: Your new AI is not a “team member” but a tool — Age-of-Product.com

Food for Agile Thought #490: Escaping the Feature Factory, Funding Agility, Prioritization Comparison, AI PM Course: RAG, PRD, Agents

by Stefan Wolpers | 2025-04-25 News

TL; DR: A Simplified Scrum Guide — Food for Agile Thought #490

Welcome to the 490th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 42,688 peers. This week, Tobias Mayer reintroduces Scrum as a minimalist, team-empowering practice rooted in empiricism with a simplified Scrum Guide, and David Pereira challenges the feature factory’s enduring grip with seven sharp tactics for reclaiming product purpose. Aakash Gupta and Paweł Huryn offer an AI PM crash course, while Simon Willison finds AI search finally usable. Also, Dwarkesh Patel urges humility over certainty when navigating uncertain AGI trajectories.

Next, Roni Ben Aharon reflects on the power of sunsetting features to sharpen product focus, and Jenny Wanger champions AI for productivity without losing human connection. Ethan Mollick introduces “Jagged AGI,” while Zvi Mowshowitz warns of its risks, testing o3. Moreover, John Cutler reframes team conversations as core infrastructure shaping alignment, performance, and adaptive capacity.

Lastly, Philippe Bonneton and Mike Cottmeyer explain why AI stalls beyond the pilot phase, while Fredrik Delin calls for funding persistent teams over projects. Itamar Gilad critiques outdated prioritization, Scott Sehlhorst warns of diminishing returns, and Johanna Rothman shows how frequent, collaborative deliveries replace blame with trust. Together, they spotlight the structural shifts needed for real agility and sustainable impact.

Food for Agile Thought #490: Escaping the Feature Factory, Funding Agility, Prioritization Comparison, AI PM Course: RAG, PRD, Agents - Age-of-Product.com

How to Use AI to Analyze Interviews from Teammates, Stakeholders, and the Management

by Stefan Wolpers | 2025-04-21 Agile and Scrum

TL, DR: AI Interview Analysis

When you step into a new role as Scrum Master or agile coach for a team under pressure, you’re immediately confronted with a challenging reality: you need to understand the complex dynamics at play, but have limited time to process all the available information. This article explores how AI interview analysis can be a powerful sensemaking tool for agile practitioners who need to synthesize unstructured qualitative data quickly, particularly when joining a team mid-crisis.

AI Interview Analysis: How to Use AI to Analyze Interviews from Teammates, Stakeholders, and the Management — Age-of-Product.com

Food for Agile Thought #489: Wrong Product Development Models, Empowerment by AI, PM Agents, Rebuilding Trust

by Stefan Wolpers | 2025-04-18 News

TL; DR: Wrong Product Development Models — Food for Agile Thought #489

Welcome to the 489th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 42,673 peers. In this week’s edition, John Cutler dissects the fallacy of linear product development models, advocating for messy, fractal approaches that mirror real-world complexity. Marty Cagan sees generative AI as a lever for genuine team autonomy beyond legacy constraints. Dan Shipper champions OpenAI’s o3 for complex, agentic workflows, while Gary Marcus rebuts AGI hype Tyler Cowen advocates. Moreover, Maarten Dalmijn warns against Big Bang rewrite failures, urging incremental progress, better morale, and reduced risk through visible, sustainable change.

Next, John Cutler clarifies the four distinct jobs of prioritization, warning against their conflation, and Hamel Husain shares AI product lessons centered on iteration and domain expertise. Ant Murphy offers a path out of OKR theatre through focused, product-driven goals. Additionally, Tina Huang reveals how AI and fundamentals combine for intuitive, context-aware app development.

Lastly, Aakash Gupta and Anthony Maggio share how they built a no-code AI PM agent in under 90 minutes. David Burkus explains how trust is rebuilt through consistent leadership action. Also, Gregor Ojstersek urges culture-first AI adoption in engineering, avoiding its imposition. Finally, Kevin O’Sullivan demystifies product analytics, while Paweł Huryn shares a no-code guide to building voice agents with n8n and MCP servers.

Food for Agile Thought #489: Wrong Product Development Models, Empowerment by AI, PM Agents, Rebuilding Trust — Age-of-Product.com

The Fantastic Optimus Alpha Approach to Data-Informed Retrospectives

by Stefan Wolpers | 2025-04-13 Agile and ScrumAgile Transition

TL; DR: Optimus Alpha Creates Useful Retrospective Format

In this experiment, OpenAI’s new stealthy LLM Optimus Alpha demonstrated exceptional performance in team data analysis, quickly identifying key patterns in complex agile metrics and synthesizing insights about technical debt, value creation, and team dynamics. The model provided a tailored Retrospective format based on real team data.

Its ability to analyze performance metrics and translate them into solid, actionable Retrospective designs represents a significant advancement for agile practitioners.

Breaking the Feature Factory: The Optimus Alpha Approach to Data-Informed Retrospective Design — Age-of-Product.com