Here's the thing about agile transformations: they almost never work the way they're supposed to. Teams end up more siloed than before, chasing tickets instead of solving actual problems. Klaus Breyer has seen this pattern everywhere, and he's figured out some ways to break it.

Klaus runs product and technology at Edding—yeah, the pen company—but his background is anything but traditional. He learned team coordination by managing 40-person World of Warcraft raids, ran a few startups, and now applies those lessons to building software at a 150-year-old German manufacturer. It's an unusual path that gives him a different perspective on how teams actually work together.

We talked about Shape Up methodology, but honestly, the more interesting stuff was about changing how teams think about their work. Klaus has some pretty specific ideas about when teams are ready to ditch ticket systems entirely, how to spot the early warning signs of assembly-line thinking, and why most agile implementations fail at the mindset level.

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Also, Edding is doing some wild stuff with technology—like building a driver license verification system using invisible conductive ink that smartphones can read. Who knew pen companies were this technical?

What we covered:

[00:51] Klaus's background and how Edding ended up doing serious tech

Quotes worth remembering:

"Almost all teams out there have silos. You can have silos in the smallest teams. You can have silos with three or four people if they are thinking about the work in the wrong way." [11:15]

"One of the biggest signs is when you need to do tradeoffs because the time is running out. And then if you do tradeoffs because the time is running out, most of the times the tradeoffs are then done or led by the engineers because we don't have time to complete this feature." [13:22]