TL; DR: InfoQ Culture Trends 2025 — Food for Agile Thought #492
Welcome to the 492nd edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 42,631 peers. This week, Shane Hastie and Charity Majors spotlight InfoQ culture trends 2025, including AI’s dual impact on speed and collaboration, while reaffirming the importance of psychological safety and Agile-DevOps maturity. John Cutler introduces team “modes” like Questing and Spellcasting, reframing burnout beyond WIP. David Pereira shares leadership lessons for new product leads, Liam Ottley demystifies AI agents, and Zvi Mowshowitz critiques Zuckerberg’s dystopian AI ambitions.
Next, Melissa Perri tells Leah Tharin why AI fails at product strategy without real problem-solving, while Rich Mironov urges PMs to speak the language of money in a pod with Jason Knight. Gary Marcus warns of GenAI’s corrosive impact on academia, and John Pavlus captures NLP’s identity crisis. Meanwhile, Joost Minnaar explores how Haier’s RenDanHeYi model reinvents corporate structure through radical decentralization and entrepreneurial accountability.
Lastly, Jerry Colonna tells Lenny Rachitsky how self-inquiry fuels resilient leadership, while Maarten Dalmijn calls time on the Scrum Master role. Milan Milanović details how Google tackles tech debt at scale, and Vitaly Friedman reframes UX design as risk management. Finally, Jake Bowen-Bate borrows from military strategy to rethink how we communicate product requirements with clarity and intent.
🎓 🖥 🇬🇧 The AI-Enhanced Advanced Product Backlog Management Course Version 2—June 23, 2025
Are you facing problems aligning vision, stakeholders, your team, and delivering real value?
Is your contribution as a product leader questioned?
Then, prepare to transform your career with my AI-enhanced, comprehensive, self-paced online class. Dive deep into professional Product Backlog management techniques supported by videos, exercises, and the latest AI models.
👉 Please note: The course will only be available for sign-up until June 30, 2025!
🎓 Join the Launch of the AI-Enhanced Version 2 on June 23: Learn How to Master the Most Important Artifact for any Successful Agile Practitioner!
<!–
This week, the most popular discussion on LinkedIn was: Scrum Masters, are you working too much?
–>
Did you miss the previous Food for Agile Thought issue 491?
🗞 Shall I notify you about articles like this one? Awesome! You can sign up here for the ‘Food for Agile Thought’ newsletter and join 42,000-plus subscribers.
🎓 Join Stefan in one of his upcoming Professional Scrum training classes!
🏆 The Tip of the Week: InfoQ Culture Trends 2025
and (via InfoQ): InfoQ Culture and Methods Trends Report – 2025
Shane Hastie and Charity Majors highlight 2025 trends in software development, from AI’s impact on speed and collaboration to the enduring need for psychological safety, observability, and evolving Agile and DevOps practices.
🎯 Product
: Product Party Modes
John Cutler explores how product teams operate in varied “modes” like Questing, Spellcasting, and Chipping, arguing that work drains capacity differently and mismatched modes, not WIP alone, often cause overwhelm.
: How to Lead with Impact: 5 Mistakes Great Product Leaders Don’t Make
David Pereira reflects on five common mistakes new product leaders make, from over-nicing and neglecting feedback to misunderstanding their proper role, urging leaders to adapt, stay humble, and grow beyond their PM roots.
and : 🎙 Why ‘AI’ is a terrible strategist
In her podcast with Leah Tharin, Melissa Perri unpacks why AI often falls short as a strategic tool. She critiques hype-driven innovation, urging a focus on real customer pain, and reveals how legacy companies sabotage themselves by clinging to outdated models and resisting true disruption.
and : Rich Mironov — Product Managers Need to Understand the Language of Money
In conversation with Jason Knight, Rich Mironov stresses that product managers must understand financial levers, tell compelling money stories, and align with leadership priorities to drive real business impact.
🧠 Artificial Intelligence
: 📺 How to Build & Sell AI Agents: Ultimate Beginner’s Guide
Liam Ottley offers a beginner-friendly, hands-on guide to building and monetizing AI agents. He covers foundational concepts, no-code tools, real-world applications, and practical strategies for turning AI skills into income.
: Zuckerberg’s Dystopian AI Vision
Zvi Mowshowitz dissects Mark Zuckerberg’s candid AI vision, warning it prioritizes profit over well-being, pushing algorithmic manipulation, AI “friends,” and attention predation under a veneer of personalization and connection, with dystopian consequences.
: ‘Everyone is cheating their way through college’ with GenAI. Who should bear the costs?
Gary Marcus critiques the rise of GenAI-fueled academic cheating, arguing that universities will collapse under the weight without systemic reform and funding. At the same time, tech leaders profit, and society pays the price.
(via Quanta Magazine): When ChatGPT Broke an Entire Field: An Oral History
John Pavlus chronicles the seismic transformation of NLP from an academic discipline to an LLM-dominated battleground, capturing researchers’ awe, anxiety, and ambivalence as corporate scale, existential debates, and paradigm shifts reshape the field.
🖥 💯 🇬🇧 AI for Agile BootCamp Cohort #1 — September 4-25, 2025
The job market’s shifting. Agile roles are under pressure. AI tools are everywhere. But here’s the truth: the Agile pros who learn how to work with AI, not against it, will be the ones leading the next wave of high-impact teams.
So, become the professional recruiters call first for “AI‑powered Agile.” Be among the first to master practical AI applications for Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches, Product Owners, Product Managers, and Project Managers.
Tickets also include lifetime access to the corresponding online course, once it is published. The class is in English. 🇬🇧
Learn more: 🖥 🇬🇧 AI for Agile BootCamp Cohort #1 — September 4-25, 2025.
Customer Voice: “The AI for Agilists course is an absolute essential for anyone working in the field! If you want to keep up with the organizations and teams you support, this course will equip you with not only knowledge of how to leverage AI for your work as an Agilist but will also give you endless tips & tricks to get better results and outcomes. I thoroughly enjoyed the course content, structure, and activities. Working in teams to apply what we learned was the best part, as it led to great insights for how I could apply what I was learning. After the first day on the course, I already walked away with many things I could apply at work. I highly recommend this course to anyone looking to better understand AI in general, but more specifically, how to leverage AI for Agility.” (Lauren Tuffs, Change Leader | Business Agility.)
<!–
👉 From time to time, we can offer last-minute seats for training classes at cost to individuals who do not have access to a corporate training budget. If you would like to be notified about these opportunities, please register here.
–>
➿ Agile & Leadership
and : How have I been complicit in creating the conditions I say I don’t want? | Jerry Colonna (CEO of Reboot, executive coach, former VC)
In conversation with Lenny Rachitsky, Jerry Colonna shares a transformative equation for leadership: practical skills and radical self-inquiry. He challenges leaders to confront how they may enable the very dysfunctions they resent.
(via Corporate Rebels): 10 Questions About Haier’s RenDanHeYi Model—Answered
Joost Minnaar distills Haier’s radical RenDanHeYi model into 10 essential answers, showing how decentralized micro-enterprises, entrepreneurial accountability, and internal market dynamics replace traditional corporate hierarchies at a massive, global scale.
: The Return of the Scrum Master
Maarten Dalmijn challenges the notion of reviving the Scrum Master role, arguing it’s fundamentally flawed and often misused. Instead, he calls for deeper, paradigm-shifting change beyond Scrum and its traditional constructs.
📯 Product Discovery Mistakes, Agile Leadership, Taylorism to Product Mindset — Hands-on Agile 2025
The second batch of videos of Hands-On Agile 2025 is in, and you don’t want to miss them: David Pereira reveals why product discovery often fails—and how teams can avoid common pitfalls to rapidly validate ideas and deliver real value. Also, Cliff Berg shares surprising insights from Agile 2 Academy’s study of highly agile companies like SpaceX, highlighting leadership behaviors rather than traditional Agile practices as key agility drivers, while Jonathan Odo explores timeless engineering principles shaping the future of high-performing, adaptive organizations.
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.
📺 Watch the videos now: Product Discovery Mistakes, Agile Leadership, Taylorism to Product Mindset — Hands-on Agile 2025.
🛠 Concepts, Practices, Tools & Measuring
: How Google Measures and Manages Tech Debt
Dr. Milan Milanović shares how Google tackled the problem of technical debt at scale, defining ten types of debt, measuring their impact through engineering surveys, and managing them with frameworks, maturity models, and cultural change to boost developer productivity.
(via Smashing Magazine): How To Launch Big Complex Projects
Vitaly Friedman shares hard-earned lessons on launching complex UX projects. He urges teams to plan backward, manage risks, tackle unknowns early, and treat design as risk mitigation, not decoration, for smoother, more successful delivery.
(via Mind The Product): Context, intent, change, purpose, constraints – a model for communicating requirements
Jake Bowen-Bate draws lessons from military operations to suggest a structured, purpose-driven model for communicating product requirements, focusing on context, intent, change, purpose, and constraints to empower autonomous, adaptable teams.
<!–
🎶 Encore
–>
📅 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:
| Date | Class and Language | City | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 May 14-June 11, 2025 | SOLD OUT: AI for Agile Practitioners: Pilot Cohort Program (English; Live Virtual Class) | Live Virtual Cohort | €199 incl. 19% VAT |
| 🖥 🇬🇧 May 26-27, 2025 | Professional Scrum Master Advanced Training (PSM II; English; Live Virtual Class) | Live Virtual Class | €1,299 incl. 19% VAT |
| 🖥 🇩🇪 July 8-9, 2025 | Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German; Live Virtual Class) | Live Virtual Class | €1,299 incl. 19% VAT |
| 🖥 🇬🇧 July 10, 2025 | Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills Class (PSFS; English; Live Virtual Class) | Live Virtual Class | €599 incl. 19% VAT |
| 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 September 4-25, 2025 | Guaranteed: AI for Agile BootCamp Cohort #1 (English; Live Virtual Cojort) | Live Virtual Class | €499 incl. 19% VAT |
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 InfoQ Culture Trends 2025:
- Q& A with Product Leader Coach and Product at Heart Organizer Petra Wille.
- Maarten Dalmijn: The 5 Obstacles to Empowered Teams.
- Roman Pichler: The Top Reasons Why a Product Strategy Fails.
- Johanna Rothman: How to Instill Agility, not Agile Practices.
- Cliff Berg: Leadership Behaviors That Lead to Actual Agility.
- Peter Merel: the agile way — Hands-on Agile 2025.
- Dr Lynn Kelley: Change Questions: The Keys to Implementing Organizational Change—Hands-on Agile 2025.
- Hands-on Agile EXTRA: How Elon Musk Would Run YOUR Business with Joe Justice.
✋ Do Not Miss Out — Learn more about InfoQ Culture Trends 2025 — 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 Automated Companies by pointing them to the free Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide:
🗞️ Last Week’s Food for Agile Thought Edition
Read more: Food for Agile Thought #491: Automated Companies, Product Behaviors, Capacity Planning, How to Abandon Scrum.
The post Food for Agile Thought #492: InfoQ Culture Trends 2025, Product Party Modes, Jerry Colonna on Leadership, Product Requirements appeared first on Age-of-Product.com.
