#128 - From Tickets to Problems: Klaus Breyer // Head of Product & Technology @ Edding

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
[01:30] The invisible ink technology that got my attention
[05:11] Why building cool tech is easier than building teams that work well together
[06:05] Learning management from World of Warcraft raids (seriously)
[08:40] The realization that most project failures aren't technical
[09:29] The shift from "give me a ticket" to "let me solve the problem"
[10:35] How Shape Up actually works in practice—6 weeks, small teams, single focus
[11:26] Why tiny teams still end up with silos
[13:22] Red flags that your team is in assembly-line mode
[14:16] Late compromises as a symptom of poor collaboration
[15:40] The magic number for team size and why bigger gets messy
[16:28] Matching the right people to the right problems
[18:17] Breaking down specialization barriers
[19:23] How "business" ruined the original agile manifesto
[20:35] Getting clear on what actually matters
[22:28] The art of problem definition (harder than it sounds)
[24:23] Having honest conversations about how much effort problems deserve
[27:17] Building projects that can be cut at any point
[29:41] When senior teams can just… work without tickets
[32:17] What product managers actually do in this model
[35:00] Conway's Law and organizing around what you're building
[38:10] Dealing with matrix organizations and temporary teams
[39:58] First steps for teams stuck in traditional agile
[42:05] The question Klaus asks to cut through confusion
[43:39] Remote collaboration tools and templates
[45:46] Starting solution sessions with blank slates
[48:19] Timeline from problem to working code
[49:02] How you know when it's actually working

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]