Caterina Reinker: The technical debt trap, when a Scrum team can no longer talk about value for the customer!

Caterina was working with a team who was really burdened by technical debt. The team talked about technical debt all the time. However, when the Product Owner started to be part of the conversation, the team realized that many of the things they worried about were not really that relevant for the customer. In this episode, we explore how some teams focus on certain aspects so much (like technical debt), that they end up forgetting other, eventually more important, aspects of their work.

Featured Book for the Week: User Story Mapping: Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product by Jeff Patton

In this episode, we explore the book User Story Mapping by Jeff Patton, who has been a guest on the podcast. Caterina shares the key lessons from the book, and describes how she uses this book almost every day because of the powerful, yet simple methods that it shares.

In this segment, we also talk about Distinction by Pierre Bourdieu, a book that helped Caterina understand the importance and impact of people’s backgrounds can have on how they relate to each other and communicate.

How can Angela (the Agile Coach) quickly build healthy relationships with the teams she’s supposed to help? What were the steps she followed to help the Breeze App team fight off the competition? Find out how Angela helped Naomi and the team go from “behind” to being ahead of Intuition Bank, by focusing on the people! Download the first 4 chapters of the BOOK for FREE while it is in Beta!

About Caterina Reinker

Caterina is a social anthropologist and passionate Scrum Master. She regards organizations like villages – or cities – with their own language, institutions, and explicit and many implicit rules. Caterina works and lives in Germany and helps groups of people, big and small, in their agile journey.

You can link with Caterina Reinker on LinkedIn.

Get The Booklet!
How to deliver on time and eliminate scope creep By scoping projects around outcomes and impacts, not requirements!
Get the Product Owner Booklet!
Avoid scope creep! And learn to scope projects around impacts and outcomes, not requirements!
Get These Valuable Lessons Today!
Down-to-earth, hard-earned Scrum Masters lessons and the Tips from the Trenches e-book table of contents, delivered by email
Enter e-mail to download a clickable PO Cheat Sheet
This handy Coach Your PO cheat-sheet includes questions to help you define the problem, and links to handy, easy techniques to help you coach your Product Owner
Enter e-mail to download a clickable PO Cheat Sheet
This handy Coach Your PO cheat-sheet includes questions to help you define the problem, and links to handy, easy techniques to help you coach your Product Owner
Enter e-mail to download a checklist to help your PO manage their time
This simple checklist and calendar handout, with a coaching article will help you define the minimum enagement your PO must have with the team
Enter e-mail to download a checklist to help your PO manage their time
This simple checklist and calendar handout, with a coaching article will help you define the minimum enagement your PO must have with the team
Internal Conference
Checklist
Internal Conference
Checklist
Download a detailed How-To to help measure success for your team
Motivate your team with the right metrics, and the right way to visualize and track them. Marcus presents a detailed How-To document based on his experience at The Bungsu Hospital
Download a detailed How-To to help measure success for your team
Read about Visualization and TRANSFORM The way your team works
A moving story of how work at the Bungsu Hospital was transformed by a simple tool that you can use to help your team.
Read about Visualization and TRANSFORM The way your team works
A Quick & Practical Guide to Agile Projects for BI
No Spam. Only your book. And you can unsubscribe any time.
Start Reading Now