On October 27, 2025, Fadi Stephan and Stephen Ritchie attended the Agile DC Conference in Washington DC and presented Back to the Future – A look back at Agile Engineering Practices and their Future with AI. Below are some of the resources mentioned in the talk: Presentation slides: Back To The Future - A Look Back…
AI coding tools promise unprecedented speed: prompt for a feature, receive complete implementations in minutes, ship faster than ever. The speed is compelling. Why spend hours writing a feature when AI can draft it in minutes? Because speed without validation creates more problems than it solves. The Hidden Cost of AI-Generated Code You prompt AI to…
Business Model Canvas: A Strategic Framework for Product Managers You're proposing a new product line that requires subscription pricing instead of one-time purchases. The CFO asks how this affects revenue predictability. The CMO wants to know if it changes customer acquisition costs and strategies. The CTO questions whether you need different billing and metering systems. Each…
As a product manager, you've probably heard your engineering team mention "technical debt" during sprint planning or retrospectives. Maybe they've pushed back on a feature request, citing the need to "pay down technical debt first." Or perhaps you've noticed that what used to take two weeks now takes six, and when you ask why, the answer…
Abstract: AI is reshaping how teams build software, but what does it mean for Agile principles? Specifically, "Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility". That was the case in 2001. Is this still true in 2025 and in the age of AI? If AI is generating the code, do we care if the code…
Discover how AI transforms agile engineering practices like TDD, pair programming, and CI/CD in 2025. Learn which practices still matter and how developers adapt to AI-assisted development. In 2001, seventeen software industry leaders gathered at a ski resort in Utah to address their frustrations with software development. This was before smartphones, before cloud computing, and long…
Practical tools for turning discussion into decisions Getting a group to actually make a decision is harder than it looks. You've probably sat through meetings where discussion circles endlessly, a few loud voices dominate, or the team defaults to whatever the senior person suggests just to move on. The problem isn't that people don't care. It's…
Your teams are using AI tools for individual tasks, but your organization hasn't developed coordinated AI capabilities. A fragmented AI implementation limits the business value you get from AI investments, and individual productivity gains don't translate into team-level improvements or organizational competitive advantages. Organizations that struggle with this type of AI coordination challenge often face similar…
Your product team has all the talent needed to build something extraordinary. Yet feature discussions turn into standoffs between engineering and business. Design ideas get shot down before they're fully explored. Cross-functional planning sessions feel more like negotiations than collaborations. These workplace conflicts aren't just personality problems or communication breakdowns. They can be managed strategically with…
The Value Proposition Canvas helps product teams make a critical strategic decision for their products: should you serve multiple customer types with one product, or focus deeply on a single customer profile? This customer segmentation choice often determines whether products achieve remarkable market success or deliver mediocre results across multiple segments. Understanding how to leverage customer…
When organizations get stuck, change initiatives stall, and agile transformations fail to gain traction, the underlying issue often isn't strategy or resources. It's culture. The Competing Values Framework gives you a systematic way to understand the cultural forces at play in your organization and make more informed decisions about where to focus your energy. What Is…
Many new products fail because they solve problems customers don't have or don't care about. The Value Proposition Canvas ensures you build what customers actually need. It is a strategic tool that helps companies transform customer insights into successful products by creating perfect alignment between customer needs and product offerings. What Is the Value Proposition Canvas?…
Many product teams build personas that nobody uses. They spend weeks researching demographics and behaviors, create detailed profiles, then watch them gather dust while teams make decisions based on assumptions anyway. The problem isn't with personas themselves but with how teams build and implement them. Effective personas require specific structure and intentional integration into daily workflows.…
When a fast-food chain wanted to sell more milkshakes, they tried everything. New flavors. Different prices. Better marketing. Nothing worked. Then researchers asked a different question: "What job are people hiring a milkshake to do?" The answer revolutionized how we think about product development. The Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) framework examines why customers "hire" products…
Business agility has become crucial for achieving a competitive advantage. Business agility is about an organization's ability to rapidly adapt to market changes, respond quickly to evolving customer needs, and pivot strategies when circumstances shift. Organizations that master this capability achieve faster time to market, higher customer satisfaction, and stronger financial performance. Yet many agility initiatives…