Food for Agile Thought #475: Natural Agility, Fake Product Transformations, AI Product Management, Fail a Lot!
Also: ICPs, BugsOptional? Agile Losing Steam, Devs Hating Meetings?
Hello everyone!
Welcome to the 475th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 42,812 peers.
This week, Dave Snowden challenges the “Agile Industrial Complex” to move beyond rote behaviors toward fostering natural agility and strategic impact. Charles Lambdin dissects Agile’s waning influence, citing political naïveté and misaligned priorities, while Chris Matts warns of superficial “Product Transformations” in 2025, echoing past Agile missteps. Gene Gendel discusses with Andy Cleff and Jay Hrcsko how HR and finance can either constrain or enable agility. Finally, Gregor Ojstersek and Michał Poczwardowski offer actionable tips for creating meetings engineers won’t hate, emphasizing relevance and purpose.
Next, Aletheia Delivre introduces “Walk the Park” and “Customer Love Sprints,” rituals that help teams tackle UX debt and prioritize customer-focused improvements. John Cutler advocates for nuanced customer segmentation via organizational psychographics, aligning strategy and product with GTM approaches, and Marty Cagan reflects on AI’s evolving role in product management, examining its effects on discovery, creativity, and team satisfaction. Also, Jason Cohen shares actionable strategies for uncovering customer insights before building a product, emphasizing creative outreach and leveraging networks.
Lastly, Nir Eyal reframes failure as a growth opportunity, advocating for resilience through structured reflection and positivity. Benji Weber explores overcoming resistance to Extreme Programming by inviting teams to embrace collaboration and shared ownership. Moreover, Kent Beck contrasts the “Desert” and “Forest” mindsets, showcasing how XP practices lead to near-zero production bugs. Gustavo Razzetti uncovers five hidden team habits that sabotage collaboration, while Van Halen’s “no brown M&Ms” clause offers a metaphor for identifying overlooked details, much like sentinel species signal broader systemic risks.
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The course includes membership in my former professional students’ brand-new Hands-on Agile community.
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Did you miss the previous Food for Agile Thought issue 474?
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🏆 The Tip of the Week: Natural Agility
📺 Dave Snowden: Rewilding Agile — Agile to Agility
Dave Snowden critiques the “Agile Industrial Complex,” urging a shift from prescribed behaviors to fostering processes and interactions that generate agility, self-organization, and strategic value beyond mere code delivery.
Source: Rewilding Agile — Agile to Agility
Author: Dave Snowden
🍋 Lemon of the Week
(via Medium): A Good Faith Critique of Scrum Based on it’s 2020 Guide
The author’s critique of Scrum’s 2020 Guide is a prime lemon of misunderstandings. From calling time-boxing rigid to dismissing cross-functionality as unrealistic, it’s a cocktail of misconceptions. And the irony of labeling Scrum both too rigid and too vague in the same breath? Priceless.
Source: Medium: A Good Faith Critique of Scrum Based on it’s 2020 Guide
➿ Agile & Leadership
Charles Lambdin: Why Agile Is Losing Steam
Charles Lambdin explores why Agile is losing momentum, critiquing its political naïveté, lack of strategic foresight, and organizations’ misaligned priorities favoring control over true agility.
Source: Why Agile Is Losing Steam
Author: Charles Lambdin
Chris Matts: 2025 Predictions — Fake Product Transformations Cross the Chasm.
Chris Matts predicts 2025 will see superficial “Product Transformations” plagued by context-free processes, certification schemes, and costly reorganizations — prioritizing optics over meaningful change, echoing past Agile and DevOps missteps.
Source: 2025 Predictions — Fake Product Transformations cross the Chasm.
Author: Chris Matts
🎙 Gene Gendel (via Agile Uprising): Beyond Agile Theater: Organizational Enablers
Gene Gendel discusses with Andy Cleff and Jay Hrcsko how HR policies and financial structures can enable or constrain agility, sharing strategies for transforming constraints into enablers of organizational change.
Source: Agile Uprising: 🎙 Beyond Agile Theater w Gene Gendel: Organizational Enablers
Author: Gene Gendel
Gregor Ojstersek and Michał Poczwardowski: Why engineers hate meetings and how to fix it
Gregor Ojstersek and Michał Poczwardowski share practical tips to create effective, engineer-friendly meetings by focusing on purpose and relevance, minimizing disruption, and tailoring interactions to attendees’ needs and preferences.
Source: Why engineers hate meetings and how to fix it
Authors: Gregor Ojstersek and Michał Poczwardowski
🖥 🇬🇧 Advanced Professional Scrum Master Training w/ PSM II Certificate — February 12–13, 2025
Discover Scrum’s four success principles in this official Scrum.org Advanced Scrum Master training class, which includes the industry-recognized PSM II certification. The PSM II training class is designed as a live virtual class and will be in English.
Enjoy the benefits of a live virtual immersive class with like-minded agile peers from 09:00–17:30 CET.
Learn more: 🖥 🇬🇧 Advanced Professional Scrum Master Training w/ PSM II Certificate — February 12–13, 2025.
Customer Voice: “Dear Stefan, Thanks a lot for two intense and mindblowing days. Your way of teaching suites me perfectly. I must admit that all the positive feedback you have gotten is spot on! I would any time a day recommand your class to a Scrum Master who wants to add a whole new level to his/her scrum game. To all of you reading this. You have to experience Stefans class to understand how good it is.” (Source.)
🎯 Product
Aletheia Delivre (via UX Collective): Making product quality a team sport
Aletheia Delivre shares two impactful rituals — “Walk the Park” and “Customer Love Sprints” — that unite teams to prioritize product quality, address UX debt, and deliver meaningful, customer-focused improvements collaboratively.
Source: UX Collective: Making product quality a team sport
Author: Aletheia Delivre
John Cutler: Beyond Firmographic-Based ICPs (Ideal Customer Profiles)
John Cutler emphasizes moving beyond simplistic firmographic ICPs to organizational psychographics, advocating for nuanced customer segmentation based on awareness, centralization, change dynamics, and effectiveness to align strategy, product, and GTM approaches.
Source: Beyond Firmographic-Based ICPs (Ideal Customer Profiles)
Author: John Cutler
Marty Cagan (via Silicon Valley Product Group): AI Product Management 2 Years In
Marty Cagan reflects on two years of AI product management, highlighting its nuanced impact on product discovery, creativity, and job satisfaction while urging focus on the evolving questions AI raises for teams.
Source: Silicon Valley Product Group: AI Product Management 2 Years In
Author: Marty Cagan
Jason Cohen: When you have nothing: How to find potential customers to interview
Jason Cohen shares strategies for finding and interviewing potential customers before building a product, emphasizing relationship-building, creative outreach methods, and leveraging networks to validate ideas and uncover insights.
Source: Jason Cohen: When you have nothing: How to find potential customers to interview
Author: Jason Cohen
📯 Is the Era of the Scrum Master Coming to an End?
If you hang out in the “Agile” bubble on LinkedIn, the dice have already been cast: Scrum is out (and the Scrum Master), and the new kid on the block is [insert your preferred successor framework choice here.] I’m not entirely certain about that, but several data points on my side suggest a decline in the role of the Scrum Master.
Read on and learn more about whether the Scrum Master is a role at risk.
Learn more: Is the Era of the Scrum Master Coming to an End?
📅 Hands-on Agile 2025 Is Here — Join 550-plus Peers: From Concept-Based to Context-Based Agility
I am thrilled to announce that Hands-on Agile 2025 is officially on the horizon and will be free to attend from February 4–6, 2025. This time, we will focus on how Agile needs to evolve from concept-based agility to context-based agility.
But before we discuss what that means, let’s take a step back and consider why Hands-on Agile 2025 is going to be a can’t-miss event for everyone in the agile community.
For those unfamiliar, Hands-on Agile isn’t just another conference. It’s an event built around the Barcamp model, meaning it’s a self-organized, community-driven gathering with one goal: Sharing knowledge and experiences.
From February 4 to 6, 2025, we will spend three energizing days engaging in sessions, practicing agile games, sharing war stories, and learning directly from each other. Hands-on Agile is all about creating a space for practitioners, coaches, leaders, and newcomers to connect in a truly hands-on way.
👉 Save Your Seat Now! 👈
There are no tickets; Hands-on Agile 2025 is free.
However, you will need to register nevertheless. Otherwise, you would not receive, for example, the invitation to the HoA2025 community or have access to individual session access credentials:
Please note:
For technical reasons, your sign-up confirmation will be sent from stefan [at] age-of-product.com.
Your registration to Hands-on Agile 2025 will also subscribe you to Stefan’s Food for Agile newsletter, one of the largest independent newsletters on agile practices worldwide.
Your invitation to join the Hands-on Agile 2025 community will be limited to February 28, 2025.
🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring
Nir Eyal: Fail! Fail a Lot! It’s Good for You
Nir Eyal emphasizes failure as a natural part of growth, advocating resilience through self-compassion, positivity, and a structured “I failed” process to turn setbacks into progress.
Source: Fail! Fail a Lot! It’s Good for You
Author: Nir Eyal
Benji Weber: Overcoming Resistance to Extreme Programming
Benji Weber discusses overcoming resistance to Extreme Programming (XP), emphasizing the importance of inviting teams to take control, addressing misconceptions, and fostering collaboration through coaching, shared experiences, and supportive management practices.
Source: Overcoming Resistance to Extreme Programming
Author: Benji Weber
Kent Beck: Bugs Optional?
Kent Beck reflects on software development’s “Desert” versus “Forest” mindset, explaining how Extreme Programming practices enable teams to achieve near-zero production bugs through collaboration, continuous improvement, and proactive design.
Source: Bugs Optional?
Author: Kent Beck
Gustavo Razzetti: Say Goodbye to These Five ‘Harmless’ Team Habits in 2025
Gustavo Razzetti identifies five hidden team habits — overcommitting, silent disagreement, urgency addiction, sugar-coated feedback, and meeting overload — that sabotage collaboration.
Source: Say Goodbye to These Five ‘Harmless’ Team Habits in 2025
Author: Gustavo Razzetti
🎶 Encore
(via Odd Athenaeum): Van Halen and Brown M&Ms
Van Halen’s “no brown M&Ms” clause, often seen as rock excess, was actually a clever safety check, highlighting overlooked contract details — much like sentinel species signal environmental dangers.
Source: Odd Athenaeum: Van Halen and Brown M&Ms
📅 Training Classes, Meetups & Events 2024
Upcoming classes and events:
🖥 🇩🇪 January 28–31 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German)
🖥 💯 🇬🇧 February 4–8 — FREE Live Virtual Conference: Hands-on Agile 2025 (English)
🖥 🇬🇧 February 12–13 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Master Advanced Training (PSM II; English)
🖥 💯 🇬🇧 February 27 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills Class (PSFS; English)
🖥 💯 🇬🇧 March 6-April 3 — Live Virtual Cohort: Align, Discover, Deliver: The Product Backlog Management Cohort Class (English)
🖥 💯 🇩🇪 March 11–12 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German)
🖥 🇬🇧 March 26–27 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Master Advanced Training (PSM II; English)
🖥 🇩🇪 April 10 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Product Discovery & Validation Training (PPDV; German)
👉 See all upcoming classes here
🗞️ Last Week’s Food for Agile Thought Edition
📺 Join 6,000-plus Agile Peers on Youtube
Now available on the Age-of-Product YouTube channel:
Hands-on Agile 64: Mastering Work Intake w/ Jeremy Willets and Tom Cagley
Hands-on Agile 62: From Backlog Manager to Product Manager w/ David Pereira
Hands-on Agile 61: Toyota Kata Coaching for Agile Teams & Transformations with Fortune Buchholtz
Hands-on Agile 59: Tackling Fake Agility w/ Johanna Rothman
Hands-on Agile 57: Humble Planning w/ Maarten Dalmijn
Hands-on Agile Extra: How Elon Musk Would Run YOUR Business mit Joe Justice
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