TL; DR: State of Enterprise AI 2025 — Food for Agile Thought #495
Welcome to the 495th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 42,598 peers. This week, Eden Kung explores how early AI adopters gain a strategic edge through agent-based productivity and decision-making, according to Box’s State of Enterprise AI 2025 report. Janna Bastow advocates making product ideation a continuous habit to align with strategy and customer needs, and Afonso Franco interviews Alex Osterwalder on transforming Strategyzer and leading innovation. Grant Harvey analyzes Claude 4’s capabilities and quirks, while Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen highlight Dario Amodei’s warning about AI-driven white-collar job loss.
Next, Paweł Huryn shares a rich AI PM roadmap for building products without coding, and Scott Sehlhorst urges outcome-focused thinking. Also, Mike Cottmeyer and Len Greski explore sustainable agility; Louis Columbus uncovers shadow AI copilots reshaping consulting, and Magnus Hedemark details Duolingo’s AI-first failure, revealing the risks of replacing instead of partnering with human expertise.
Lastly, Mark Levison cautions against using GenAI to automate away Scrum collaboration, urging smarter PO-led enhancement, and David Burkus shares strategies for dealing with bad bosses. Noam Segal and Lenny Rachitsky uncover widespread burnout in tech, while Alex Ewerlöf highlights how generalist teams boost delivery. Finally, Doc Norton urges replacing rigid “best practices” with adaptive, learning-focused “leading practices.”
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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: Enterprise AI in 2025
(via Box): Box’s State of AI in the Enterprise report
Eden Kung shares findings from Box’s State of AI in the Enterprise report, showing how early AI adopters are gaining a strategic edge by using AI agents to boost productivity, enhance decision-making, and drive innovation.
🎯 Product
(via ProdPad): Product Ideation: How to Keep Your Feature Ideas Flowing
Janna Bastow shares how product ideation, when treated as a continuous and transparent habit rather than a quarterly brainstorm, helps teams move beyond reactive feature-building to delivering meaningful value aligned with strategy and customer problems.
and : 🎙 What it takes to continuously reinvent yourself and innovate
Afonso Franco interviews Alex Osterwalder on transforming Strategyzer, balancing innovation with execution, killing ideas fast, and why CEOs must own innovation to future-proof their organizations and enable real team autonomy.
: Reaching Consensus on How
Scott Sehlhorst urges shifting from output-focused delivery to outcome-driven collaboration by prioritizing value, context, and success metrics. He challenges teams to ask why, not just how, before deciding what to build.
: The Ultimate AI PM Learning Roadmap
Paweł Huryn shares an extended AI Product Management learning roadmap packed with curated tools, tutorials, certifications, and frameworks to help PMs build, fine-tune, and evaluate AI products without coding.
🧠 Artificial Intelligence
(via The Neuron): Everything to know about Claude 4 (Sonnet 4, Opus 4), from the Good, to the Bad, and the REAL weird…
Grant Harvey delivers a deep dive into Claude 4, unpacking its coding prowess, tool integration, and quirky emergent behaviors while balancing groundbreaking capabilities with concerns around cost, limitations, and unsettling test findings.
(via Axios): Behind the Curtain: A white-collar bloodbath
Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen reveal Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s stark warning: AI may wipe out millions of white-collar jobs within five years, urging urgent public awareness, regulation, and economic policy shifts.
(via Venturebeat): Security leaders lose visibility as consultants deploy shadow AI copilots to stay employed
Louis Columbus reports that as AI-driven layoffs reshape consulting, high performers build unauthorized shadow AI copilots with Python and APIs to stay relevant, outpacing IT governance and redefining knowledge work delivery.
(via Groktopus): Duolingo’s AI-First Disaster: A Cautionary Tale of What Happens When You Replace Rather Than Partner
Magnus Hedemark’s account of Duolingo’s AI-first collapse reveals the high cost of replacing human expertise with automation: eroded trust, damaged brand, lost talent, and a failure to build partnerships.
🖥 💯 🇬🇧 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.)
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➿ Agile & Leadership
(via Leading Agile): 📺 Creating the Conditions for Sustainable Change
Mike Cottmeyer and Len Greski explore how agility enables sustainable change by addressing root causes, balancing planned and unplanned work, and aligning legacy stability with modernization through system thinking and smart organizational design.
: GenAI and the Feature Factory: Automating Away Collaboration
Mark Levison warns that misusing GenAI risks turning Scrum teams into Feature Factories by automating away collaboration. Instead, he offers practical, nuanced ways Product Owners can use AI to enhance, not replace, discovery, prioritization, and creativity.
: How To Handle A Bad Boss
David Burkus outlines strategies for handling bad bosses: micromanagers, ghosts, and volcanoes. He emphasizes clarity, professionalism, and peer networks while reminding us that, sometimes, the healthiest move is choosing to leave.
📯 The End of “Good Enough Agile”: AI and Product Models Are Your Wake-Up Call
“Good Enough Agile” is ending as AI automates mere ceremonial tasks and Product Operating Models demand outcome-focused teams. Agile professionals must evolve from process facilitators to strategic product thinkers or risk obsolescence as organizations adopt AI-native approaches that embody Agile values without ritual overhead.
Learn more: The End of “Good Enough Agile”: AI and Product Models Are Your Wake-Up Call.
🛠 Concepts, Practices, Tools & Measuring
: How tech workers really feel about work right now
Noam Segal and Lenny Rachitsky share insights from 8,200 tech workers, revealing high burnout, declining optimism, poor leadership ratings, and a mid-career slump. At the same time, founders and small-company employees report the highest satisfaction.
: When a team is too big
Alex Ewerlöf reflects on how large, specialist-heavy teams reduce effectiveness. Transitioning to generalists unlocked better ownership, faster delivery, and resilience, showing that culture and experimentation matter more than static team structures.
: Why ‘Best Practices’ Don’t Exist
Doc Norton challenges the idea of “best practices,” arguing that they often signal that thinking has stopped. He proposes embracing “leading practices” instead: context-aware, evolving approaches prioritizing learning, experimentation, and continuous improvement.
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🎶 Encore
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📅 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🖥 🇩🇪 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 2-3, 2025 | Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German; Live Virtual Class) | Live Virtual Class | €1,299 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 |
| 🖥 🇬🇧 September 23-24, 2025 | Professional Scrum Master Advanced Training (PSM II; English; Live Virtual Class) | Live Virtual Class | €1,299 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 an AI Success Framework for Organizations:
- Sandrine Olivencia: Restoring Agility through Lean Craftsmanship.
- 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 Enterprise AI in 2025 — Join the 20,000-plus Strong ‘Hands-on Agile’ Slack Community
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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:
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The post Food for Agile Thought #495: State of Enterprise AI 2025, Reinventing Yourself, GenAI-Enabled Feature Factory, Good Enough Agile’s End appeared first on Age-of-Product.com.
