Food for Agile Thought #485: Agile Coach Bubble Origins, Outcomes Are Bl**dy Hard, Product Team Anti-Patterns
Also: AI Search Issues, Great Engineering Orgs, Benefits of Bureaucracy
Hello everyone!
Welcome to the 485th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 42,652 peers.
This week, Viktor Cessan explores the origin of the Agile Coach bubble, 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.
🛑 Becoming obsolete is a choice, not inevitable!
👉 Don’t Miss Out — Just 2 Seats Left: AI for Agile Practitioners: Pilot Cohort #2, May 14 to June 11, 2025, at € 199!
Did you miss the previous Food for Agile Thought issue 484?
🎓 Join Stefan in one of his upcoming Professional Scrum training classes!
🏆 The Tip of the Week: Agile Coach Bubble Origins
Viktor Cessan: How Cheap Money Created an Agile Coach Bubble
Viktor Cessan argues the Agile Coach bubble was fueled by cheap money and burst when financial discipline returned — survival now requires proving real business value, not just facilitating team rituals.
Source: How Cheap Money Created an Agile Coach Bubble
Author: Viktor Cessan
🎯 Product
Marty Cagan and Felipe Castro (via Silicon Valley Product Group): Outcomes Are Hard
Marty Cagan and Felipe Castro explain why moving from outputs to outcomes is deceptively hard. Teams struggle to define, measure, and deliver meaningful, problem-solving results without adopting the product model.
Source: Silicon Valley Product Group: Outcomes Are Hard
Authors: Marty Cagan and Felipe Castro
Maarten Dalmijn: The 5 Obstacles to High-Performing Product Teams
Maarten Dalmijn dissects why Product Management feels so broken: it’s not the PMs, but the Kraken — counter-productive organizational systems. He offers CACAO as the antidote to empower truly high-performing product teams.
Source: The 5 Obstacles to High-Performing Product Teams
Author: Maarten Dalmijn
Lenny Rachitsky and Anton Osika: Building Lovable: $10M ARR in 60 Days with 15 People
Lenny Rachitsky interviews Anton Osika on how Lovable reached $10M ARR in 60 days with 15 people by letting users describe apps in plain language — AI handles the rest, code included.
Source: Building Lovable: $10M ARR in 60 days with 15 people | Anton Osika (CEO and co-founder)
Authors: Lenny Rachitsky and Anton Osika
David Pereira: Why Backlog Management Is Dangerous for Most Teams
David Pereira warns that most teams treat their backlog like a Christmas wishlist — bloated, outdated, and distracting. He urges ruthless pruning, outcome-driven thinking, and reframing backlog management as a strategic enabler, not a to-do list.
Source: Why Backlog Management Is Dangerous for Most Teams
Author: David Pereira
🧠 Artificial Intelligence
Ben Thompson (via The Stratechery): An Interview with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman About Building a Consumer Tech Company
Ben Thompson interviews Sam Altman on OpenAI’s unexpected pivot from research lab to consumer tech giant, discussing AGI, ChatGPT’s origin, business model tensions, and what it means to “build the next Facebook.”
Source: The Stratechery: An Interview with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman About Building a Consumer Tech Company
Authors: Ben Thompson and Sam Altman
(via Columbia Journalism Review): AI Search Has A Citation Problem
Klaudia Jaźwińska and Aisvarya Chandrasekar reveal that AI search engines misattribute, fabricate, and confidently cite news content incorrectly — over 60% of the time — undermining trust, transparency, and publisher revenue.
Source: Columbia Journalism Review: AI Search Has A Citation Problem
Peter Yang: 12 Rules to Vibe Code Without Frustration
Peter Yang shares 12 hard-earned rules for “vibe coding” with AI — emphasizing simplicity, planning, ruthless testing, and debugging — to help non-coders build real apps without burning out or getting stuck.
Source: 12 Rules to Vibe Code Without Frustration
Author: Peter Yang
🖥 🇬🇧 Advanced Professional Scrum Master Training w/ PSM II Certificate — March 26–27, 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 — March 26–27, 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.)
➿ Agile & Leadership
Charity Majors (via IEEE Spectrum): Why Great Engineering Orgs Thrive on ‘Normal’ Engineers
Charity Majors argues that great engineering organizations empower “normal” engineers to deliver consistent value — debunking 10x myths and shifting focus from individual brilliance to resilient, inclusive, team-based systems.
Source: IEEE Spectrum: Why Great Engineering Orgs Thrive on ‘Normal’ Engineers
Author: Charity Majors
Andy Cleff: Self-Selection: Start Small, Think Big
Andy Cleff urges leaders to ditch rigid team assignments and try self-selection — backed by a decade of success. Start small, create guardrails, and let teams form around real value streams, not spreadsheets.
Source: Self-Selection: Start Small, Think Big
Author: Andy Cleff
Rita McGrath: The Benefits of Bureaucracy: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Red Tape
Rita McGrath makes the case that bureaucracy, while frustrating, is a historic upgrade from autocratic chaos — offering stability, fairness, and competence — but argues it’s now time to explore permissionless alternatives.
Source: The Benefits of Bureaucracy: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Red Tape
Author: Rita McGrath
📯 The Agile Prompt Engineering Framework
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.
Learn more: The Agile Prompt Engineering Framework.
🛠 Concepts, Practices, Tools & Measuring
Ben Kuhn: How I’ve Run Major Projects
Ben Kuhn shares his crisis-mode project management playbook from Anthropic: focus intensely, update plans constantly, overcommunicate deliberately, delegate smartly, and simplify goals — because execution speed depends on information flow, not just code.
Source: How I’ve run major projects
Author: Ben Kuhn
Ted Neward: Debts, Tech and Otherwise
Ted Neward explores debt beyond tech: from talent to process, culture to support. Not all debt is bad — some is strategic. However, reckless, inadvertent debt silently undermines long-term resilience and viability.
Source: Debts, Tech and Otherwise
Author: Ted Neward
John Cutler: I’m No AI Expert, but I Like My Graphs!
John Cutler shares how he uses LLMs step-by-step to visualize work operating systems post-interview. In a short explanatory video, he simplifies the struggle with unstructured data with a one-click graphing solution.
Source: I’m No AI Expert, but I Like My Graphs!
Author: John Cutler
📅 Training Classes, Meetups & Events 2025
Upcoming classes and events:
🖥 💯 🇬🇧 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)
🖥 🇬🇧 April 24 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills Class (PSFS; English)
🖥 🇩🇪 April 29–30 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German)
🖥 💯 🇬🇧 May 14-June 11 — Live Virtual Cohort: AI for Agile Practitioners (English)
🖥 🇩🇪 June 3–4 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German)
👉 See all upcoming classes here
🗞️ Last Week’s Food for Agile Thought Edition
Read more: Food for Agile Thought 484: Vibe Coding, Product’s Hard Nature, Brittle Product Teams, Pivots & Post-Mortems.
📺 Join 6,000-plus Agile Peers on Youtube
Now available on the Age-of-Product YouTube channel:
Hands-on Agile 2025: How to Overcome Common Mistakes with Product Discovery — David Pereira
Hands-on Agile 2025: Humans Robots Agents: Redesigning Leadership and Organizations in the Age of AI — Jurgen Appelo
Hands-on Agile 2025: Change Questions: The Keys to Implementing Organizational Change that Sustains — Dr. Lynn Kelley
Hands-on Agile 2025: the agile way — Peter Merel
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 Extra: How Elon Musk Would Run YOUR Business mit Joe Justice
🎓 Do You Want to Read more like this?
Also:
📅 Join 6,000-plus peers of the Hands-on Agile Meetup group
🐦 Follow me on Twitter and subscribe to my blog, Age of Product
💬 Alternatively, join 20,000-plus peers of the Slack team “Hands-on Agile” for free.