Food for Agile Thought #514: State of AI Report 2025, Stakeholder Management, What Breaks Product Decisions, 25 Years of XP
Stefan Wolpers
🤖 AI 4 Agile Coach | PST Scrum.org | Author “Scrum Anti‑Patterns Guide” | Saving SMs, Coaches, POs, PMs from Busywork: AI 4 Agile BootCamp : Nov’25 Cohort Now Open; see 👇.
Hello everyone!
Welcome to the 514th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 40,403 peers.
This week, Nathan Benaich’s State of AI Report 2025 highlights advancements in reasoning, China’s momentum, massive compute, sharper geopolitics, and a pragmatic shift toward reliability and governance. Jenny Wanger offers a hands-on way to surface implicit strategy through learner-mode interviews, drafting, and iterative feedback, while John Cutler tackles product-centricity in non-digital firms, urging a networked operating model that links funding, intent, collaboration, architecture, and outcomes. Nino Paoli notes Citi’s prompt training push while warning that real impact needs ongoing upskilling and integration. Additionally, Maarten Dalmijn highlights trust as the actual bottleneck that must be addressed before AI can effectively amplify execution.
Next, Roman Pichler sharpens stakeholder management with a power-interest focus, trust building, early involvement, and NVC for real conflict resolution. David Pereira draws out Ryan Singer on keeping six-week bets lean through framing, alignment, and timely founder input, while David Shapiro challenges “AI pilot failure” myths, focusing on integration and governance issues. Then, Sangeet Paul Choudary shifts AI agent talk to coordination and standards, and Dave Rooney marks 25 years of XP, calling for TDD, pairing, CD, and lean flow.
Lastly, Casey Newton probes OpenAI’s platform push, weighing integrations against privacy, incentives, and trust. Teresa Torres urges teams to own interview synthesis, then use AI to spot cross-patterns without losing empathy or skill. Sean Goedecke demonstrates that staff engineers can influence politics by aligning momentum and delivering visible wins, and Shane Hastie and Marcos Arribas share culture-at-scale practices from autonomy to right-sized quality. Finally, Anton Zaides advocates ruthless meeting hygiene to protect deep engineering flow.
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🏆 The Tip of the Week
Nathan Benaich (via Air Street Capital): State of AI Report 2025
Nathan Benaich introduces the State of AI Report 2025, which covers research, industry, politics, safety, surveys, and predictions. Its highlights include reasoning breakthroughs, China’s rise, mainstream adoption, industrial-scale computing, tougher geopolitics, and a pragmatic shift toward safety, focusing on reliability and governance.
Author: Nathan Benaich
🎯 Product
Jenny Wanger: What to Do When Your Manager Doesn’t Have a Strategy
Jenny Wanger outlines a practical playbook to surface implicit product or business strategy from managers: approach as a learner, interview like user research, draft the strategy, flag assumptions, iterate with feedback, and help leaders communicate clearly.
Author: Jenny Wanger
John Cutler: Product-Centricity When You Don’t Sell A Digital Product
John Cutler explains why non-digital enterprises struggle with product-centricity, highlighting funding mismatches, translation layers, dependency-bound flow, and longer feedback loops. He advocates for a networked operating model that integrates team funding, intent, collaboration, architecture, and outcomes to facilitate coherent investment and execution.
Author: John Cutler
Roman Pichler: 5 Tips to Succeed with Stakeholder Management
Roman Pichler outlines five key moves for effective stakeholder management: focus on key players using a power-interest grid, build trust, align on outcome-based goals, involve stakeholders early through regular workshops, and resolve conflicts using Non-Violent Communication to avoid weak compromises.
Author: Roman Pichler
📺 David Pereira and Ryan Singer: The Missing Part That Makes or Breaks Most Product Decisions
David Pereira interviews Ryan Singer on avoiding bloated bets: frame before shaping, secure alignment for impact, delay high fidelity, engage founders at key moments, and pursue ruthless clarity so that six-week projects stay on track and in their timebox.
Authors: David Pereira and Ryan Singer
🧠 Artificial Intelligence
(via Fortune): Citi begins retraining 175,000 employees in working with AI: ‘great prompting versus basic prompting to generate impactful results’
Nino Paoli reports Citi is mandating prompt-writing training for 175,000 employees to boost productivity, framing AI as a co-pilot. Critics note that training alone is insufficient without continuous upskilling, integration, and leadership that empowers purposeful use.
David Shapiro: They are lying to you about AI failures
David Shapiro argues the “95% of AI pilots fail” meme misreads enterprise reality, where pilots are designed to fail. Success hinges on integration, governance, and fit; small, well-embedded wins compound while hype distracts from operational learning.
Author: David Shapiro
Sangeet Paul Choudary: The problem with agentic AI in 2025
Sangeet Paul Choudary argues that agentic AI is less about automating tasks and more about coordination; leaders must redesign workflows, kill unnecessary steps, and build governance standards so that many agents act coherently and compound advantages over time.
Author: Sangeet Paul Choudary
Casey Newton: OpenAI’s platform play
Casey Newton analyzes OpenAI’s push to turn ChatGPT into a platform, enabling in-app integrations and commerce, while raising concerns about data privacy, incentive distortions, and trust, echoing Facebook’s platform era and its eventual retreat.
Source: OpenAI’s platform play
Author: Casey Newton
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➿ Agile & Leadership
Dave Rooney: How Time Flies: A Quarter Century of Extreme Programming
Dave Rooney reflects on 25 years of Extreme Programming, celebrating enduring values like TDD, pairing, and continuous delivery, warning Scrum without XP practices is unsustainable, and urging lean flow, simple forecasting, and renewed focus on technical excellence.
Author: Dave Rooney
🎙 Shane Hastie (via InfoQ): Building Engineering Culture Through Autonomy and Ownership
Shane Hastie interviews Marcos Arribas on scaling engineering culture: empower autonomous teams with ownership, use feature flags for safe speed, keep PRs small, right-size quality to product maturity, apply AI to POCs, and keep hiring juniors to sustain growth.
Author: Shane Hastie
Maarten Dalmijn: Most Organizations Will Never Reap the Benefits of AI
Maarten Dalmijn argues most firms miss AI’s benefits because trust, not technology, is the bottleneck; distrust breeds bureaucracy and weak teams. Build high-performing, empowered teams first, then use AI to amplify real execution.
Author: Maarten Dalmijn
📯 The Agile AI Manifesto
The Agile world is splitting into two camps: Those convinced AI will automate practitioners out of existence, and those dismissing it as another crypto-level fad. Both are wrong. The evidence reveals something far more interesting and urgent: Principles written in 2001, before anyone imagined GPT-Whatever, align remarkably well with the most transformative technology of recent years. This is not a coincidence. I believe it is proof that human-centric values transcend technological disruption; it is the Agile AI Manifesto.
🎓 Learn more: The Agile AI Manifesto: The Agile Manifesto Predicted AI.
🛠 Concepts, Practices, Tools & Measuring
Teresa Torres: Customer Interview Analysis: Where AI Helps and Hurts
Teresa Torres warns against outsourcing customer interview synthesis to AI, urging teams to master story-based interviews, synthesize per interview before having the AI create cross-interview patterns, use AI as a collaborator for notes and perspectives, and protect empathy, context, and skills.
Author: Teresa Torres
Sean Goedecke: How I influence tech company politics as a staff software engineer
Sean Goedecke demonstrates that staff engineers can influence politics without scheming: by riding executive waves, aligning pet projects with current priorities, maintaining ready-made technical programs, and making high-profile efforts succeed to earn capital for future impact.
Author: Sean Goedecke
(via Weave): Distracting software engineers is way more harmful than most managers think
Anton Zaides warns that meeting creep destroys deep work for engineers, even with AI tools. He urges ruthless meeting hygiene, shared focus blocks, lighter PR rituals, and leadership modeling to protect long, uninterrupted flow that drives quality and speed.
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Building High-Performing Product Cultures | Follow for advice on how to build product operations strategy
2wI’ve heard from more than a few folks that my guide on what to do when your manager apparently has no strategy has been helpful. Glad you found the same! http://jennywanger.com/articles/what-to-do-when-your-manager-doesnt-have-a-strategy/
Student at QUT (Queensland University of Technology)
2wIncredible roundup! These insights bridge AI, agile, and organizational strategy, emphasizing trust, governance, and practical integration. Perfect for staying ahead in digital transformation and building effective, high-performing teams.