Upgrade the Humans!

Last week, we focused on how organizations aim to be agile (deliver the highest business value to end customers as early as possible, with the least amount of cost friction). Many are stalled at the beginning of the transition simply due to their organizational design.  

To practice Scrum, you must organize teams and backlogs to minimize dependencies and bottlenecks (i.e., cross-functional teams). You also need to ensure the product backlog we build for them is not merely a list of features but a list of user problems and assumptions to validate. The backlog must support iterative and incremental (usable) elements each Sprint.  

There are significant consequences to operating as an agile-Scrum team, but most organizations do not put in the effort needed to be ready for those consequences. 

This week, however, I want to focus on another aspect of successful teams that seems to be generating all the buzz lately (good or bad): AI and humans. 

Skills, roles, and mindsets for the AI-powered product era. 

I don’t believe AI is a silver bullet; I think it is a force multiplier. That means the real competitive edge in 2025 is not the tool; the human learns how to pair with it faster than the market pivots. 

Last week, we tackled culture and team health; this week, we focused on individual growth. Below is your cheat sheet to catch up, apply the lessons, and decide which next skill to invest in right now. The organization is nothing without its humans; never forget that. This week, let’s focus on us! 

Are Agile Roles Disappearing? 

Spoiler: the numbers say no. We have to tackle this myth first because I think it’s clouding a lot of people’s beliefs. 

Contrary to the LinkedIn noise that “Agile is dead” and coaching jobs are fading, recent labor-market data points the other way: 

• Agile Methodologies ranks in the Top-25 fastest-growing skills for 2025 on LinkedIn’s global “In-Demand Skills” list.
• Dice.com projects a 37.9% increase in demand for Agile Coaches and Scrum Masters over the next decade.
• LinkedIn’s April 2025 “Skills on the Rise” update places program and project management (including stakeholder engagement and technical leadership) in its growth cluster, reinforcing that organizations still need human orchestrators even as they double down on AI.

The tolerance for certificate collectors who can’t show outcomes is shrinking. Companies still want Agile roles but now expect coaches, POs, and Scrum Masters to speak fluent AI, flow metrics, and outcome portfolios. Agile is not dead...:)

That’s precisely why this week is laser-focused on the upgrade of humans 2.0- pairing classic Agile craft with the new AI skill set that executive teams are currently budgeting for. We obviously want to help meet that demand. It's our passion!

(Ready to leap? Skip to the bottom for details on our AI-for-PD, AI-for-PO, and AI-for-SM micro-courses).

This Week’s Menu of Topics

We’re running a daily theme format for a straightforward reason: learning sticks when it lands in small, focused increments you can use immediately. Instead of a single long webinar (which half the mailing list will never watch), you’ll get one sharp idea every day, each tied to a real-world trend and a specific role:

Sunday, Myth-buster

• Topic: Will AI replace the Scrum Master
• Takeaway: Bots draft stand-up notes, humans read body language
• Do this: Let GPT transcribe tomorrow’s retro, spend your attention on emotional cues, and log one insight that a bot would miss

Monday, Soft-skill surge

• Topic: Adaptability beats raw tech chops
• Takeaway: The best prompt engineers start with empathy
• Do this: Capture an exact customer quote, feed it into your following AI prompt, and measure whether story clarity improves

Tuesday, Career Math

• Topic: AI-enabled POs already out-earn classic PMs
• Takeaway: Proof of value moves salary bands faster than titles
• Do this: Track one AI assist metric per Sprint, add the stat to your demo deck, start building your raise dossier

Wednesday, Certs vs skills

• Topic: Stackable learning beats badge collecting
• Takeaway: CSM or CSPO is the passport, an AI micro-course is the visa that gets you through the next border
• Do this: Identify the gap that blocks your current role, and pick a course that closes it rather than chasing alphabet soup.

Thursday, Metric fluency

• Topic: Velocity tells history, DORA predicts futures
• Takeaway: Execs care about lead time, deploy frequency, and flow efficiency, not points per Sprint
• Do this: Add one DORA metric to your wall, review it in the next leadership sync

Friday, Portfolio skills

• Topic: Roadmaps are bets, outcomes are receipts
• Takeaway: Shipping every backlog item without moving a metric builds feature museums, not customer value
• Do this: Rewrite one backlog item using the sentence, “We will know we are right when …” and attach a measurable signal.

Saturday, Action Challenge

• Topic: Consolidate and commit
• Do this: Select one habit to keep, one to drop, and one new AI practice to start Monday morning.
• Practical next steps
  • Run a personal learning burndown.
    • Track books read, prompts mastered, experiments run, and watch your learning velocity curve against story-point velocity.
  • Pair with AI once per day
    • Use a bot for meeting notes, test generation, or drafting user stories, then audit the result and iterate.
  • Show proof, not buzzwords
    • Leaders invest in measurable efficiency gains. Log your AI assist numbers and include them in demos, portfolio reviews, and performance talks.
  • Move one metric
    • Pick a single DORA or outcome metric, align one backlog item to improve it, and inspect the result at the next retrospective.

Choose the right micro-course

• AI for Product Development (good for all roles) teaches concepts of AI and how they can apply to Product Development activities in general.
• AI for Product Owner (credentialed by the Scrum Alliance) turns messy user data into high-value backlog items and outcome hypotheses.
• AI for Scrum Master (credentialed by the Scrum Alliance) automates the admin grind so you can coach on flow, safety, and facilitation.

Parting thought

Chasing higher point velocity without boosting learning velocity is like improving the speedometer on a car still stuck in first gear. Pair with AI, prove the value, and keep your skills ahead of the curve; your future self (and your CFO) will thank you.