TL; DR: AI Playbook for Product Managers — Food for Agile Thought #477
Welcome to the 477th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 42,791 peers. This week, Aakash Gupta provides as AI playbook for Product Managers to leverage AI effectively, while Martijn Oost critiques oversimplified organizational change, emphasizing context and experimentation. Douglas Squirrel and Jeffrey Fredrick delve into balancing psychological safety with high standards in tech teams. James Shore outlines six pillars for building exceptional product engineering organizations, and Esther Derby and Viktor Cessan share strategies for engaging resistant teams and fostering trust without imposing unwanted help.
Next, Roman Pichler introduces a holistic product strategy system for sustainable success, while Itamar Gilad emphasizes embracing uncertainty through outcome-focused planning and evidence-based decision-making. Ant Murphy highlights the power of a “NOT doing” list to reduce waste and foster simplicity, and Mike Belsito shares empathy-driven strategies to turn stakeholder challenges into innovation opportunities.
Lastly, John Cutler emphasizes nuanced capacity allocation for sustainable growth, David Burkus advocates fostering team accountability through empowerment and honesty, Ash Maurya highlights automated customer feedback loops for continuous learning, and Alex Ewerlöf discusses delivering value, adapting to market shifts, and fostering personal growth to navigate challenges effectively.
🎓 January 27, 2025: The Advanced Product Backlog Management Course for Just $99!
👉 Please note:
- The course includes membership in my former professional students’ brand-new Hands-on Agile community.
- The course will only be available for sign-up until February 3, 2025!
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This week, the most popular discussion on LinkedIn was: Scrum Masters, are you working too much?
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🏆 The Tip of the Week
: The AI PM’s Playbook: How Top Product Managers Are 10x-ing Their Impact in 2025
Aakash Gupta shares a practical guide for Product Managers on harnessing AI effectively. The guide covers key rules, top use cases, and common mistakes, emphasizing thoughtful application over blind reliance on tools.
🍋 Lemon of the Week
➿ Agile & Leadership
and : 🎙 Coaching Teams That Do Not Want to Be Coached
Esther Derby and Viktor Cessan explore how to approach teams resistant to coaching, offering strategies to shift dynamics, build trust, and foster effectiveness without imposing “inflicted help.”
(via Medium): Stop Simplisticism: Start implementing principles instead of other people’s simplistic solutions like Team Topologies
Martijn Oost challenges the tendency to oversimplify organizational change. He advocates applying fundamental principles rather than rigidly adhering to frameworks like Team Topologies. He emphasizes balancing simplicity with complexity, fostering experimentation, and adapting to context rather than copy-pasting solutions.
and : 🎙 Psychologically Safe AND Smashing It
Douglas Squirrel and Jeffrey Fredrick explore balancing psychological safety with high standards in tech teams, debunking myths about perks and productivity in this week’s Troubleshooting Agile episode.
: The Best Product Engineering Org in the World
James Shore shares his keynote insights on creating the best product engineering org, focusing on People, Internal Quality, Lovability, Visibility, Agility, and Profitability, offering actionable ways to improve continuously.
🖥 🇬🇧 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.)
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🎯 Product
: Product Strategy as a System
Roman Pichler presents a holistic product strategy system integrating people, processes, tools, and principles to adapt, collaborate, and align strategies, fostering value creation and sustainable product success.
: Embracing Uncertainty: A Modern Take On Strategy, Goals, and Roadmaps
Itamar Gilad advocates embracing uncertainty in product strategy, goals, and roadmaps, highlighting outcome-focused planning, evidence-based decision-making, and iterative experimentation to navigate complexity and deliver high-impact products.
: Why You Need a ‘NOT Doing’ List, not a Todo List
Ant Murphy advocates for a “NOT doing” list over a traditional to-do list, urging teams to remove wasteful features, reduce work-in-progress, and prioritize simplicity, sustainability, and customer-focused growth.
(via Mind The Product): Mastering Stakeholder Management for Product Leaders
Mike Belsito explains how mastering stakeholder management, embracing healthy conflict, and using empathy-driven strategies like active listening can transform challenges into opportunities for innovation and successful product leadership.
📯 Escape the Feature Frenzy, Build to Sell with Sandrine Olivencia – Hands-on Agile 66
Join Sandrine Olivencia on how to escape the Feature Frenzy and build instead products and services that sell. (The recording is in English.)
📺 Watch the video now: Escape the Feature Frenzy, Build to Sell with Sandrine Olivencia – Hands-on Agile #66.
📅 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
: The Capacity Allocation Illusion
John Cutler challenges oversimplified capacity allocation in software development, emphasizing nuanced investments, adaptability, and aligning time and resources strategically to sustain and grow organizational capacity effectively.
: Building Accountability On Teams
David Burkus explains how to foster team accountability by encouraging direct conversations, facilitating team huddles, modeling honesty, and empowering individuals to resolve conflicts, creating stronger, self-reliant teams.
: How I Learned to Stop Avoiding and Love Talking to Customers
Ash Maurya highlights how building an automated customer feedback loop transforms product growth by uncovering actionable insights, validating ideas quickly, and fostering continuous learning through meaningful, value-driven conversations.
🎶 Encore
: Individual cost vs value
Alex Ewerlöf highlights the importance of delivering value surpassing costs, emphasizing productivity and personal growth strategies, and navigating challenges like quiet firing, quitting, and market shifts to stay relevant.
📅 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:
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 PM Career-Defining AI Skills:
- Hands-on Agile 66: Escape the Feature Frenzy, Build to Sell with Sandrine Olivencia.
- Hands-on Agile 62: From Backlog Manager to Product Manager with David Pereira.
- Hands-on Agile 61: Toyota Kata Coaching for Agile Teams & Transformations with Fortune Buchholtz.
- Hands-on Agile 59: Tackling Fake Agility with Johanna Rothman.
- Hands-on Agile 57: Humble Planning with Maarten Dalmijn.
- Hands-on Agile EXTRA: How Elon Musk Would Run YOUR Business with Joe Justice.
✋ Do Not Miss Out and Learn About AI Playbook for Product Managers — 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 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 Scrum traps by pointing them to the free Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide:
🗞️ Last Week’s Food for Agile Thought Edition
The post Food for Agile Thought #477: AI Playbook for Product Managers, Real Psychological Safety, Systemic Product Strategy, Capacity Allocation appeared first on Age-of-Product.com.
