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Other big tech companies including Amazon, Apple, and Nvidia have continued their annual disclosures this year even as the Trump administration cracks down on DEI.
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Sr. Content Developer at Microsoft, working remotely in PA, TechBash conference organizer, former Microsoft MVP, Husband, Dad and Geek.
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Pennsylvania, USA
Ryan welcomes Nic Benders to discuss the complexity and abstraction crisis in software development, the importance of going beyond observability into understandability, and demystifying AI's opacity for understanding and control.
Pennsylvania, USA
In this thoughtful guest post, Jeremy Rosselot-Merritt, an assistant professor at James Madison University, wrestles with generative AI and its impact on the technical writing profession. Jeremy examines risks such as decisions being made by leaders who don't understand the variety and complexity of the tech writer role, or the perceived slow out from human writers compared to the scale out of output from LLMs. Overall, Jeremy argues that Gen AI is another point on a long tech writer timeline of adapting to evolving tools and strategies (posssibly now context engineering), and he's confident tech writers will also adapt and continue on as a profession.
Pennsylvania, USA
In this video, I share a story that changed the way I communicate — and honestly, shaped my entire career.
Early in my journey as a developer, I learned a lesson from a friend and mentor named Christian. It wasn’t about code or technology, but about presence, confidence, and how you deliver your answers.
Sometimes, it’s not what you say — it’s how you say it.
This short story is one I still think about to this day, and I hope it helps you slow down, breathe, and respond with confidence the next time someone turns to you for an answer.
👉 If this resonates, share your own “early career lesson” in the comments.
🎯 Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and hit the bell for more stories and lessons from the world of tech, mentorship, and personal growth.
Pennsylvania, USA
Karim Harbott: From Requirements Documents to Customer Obsession—Redefining the PO Role
Read the full Show Notes and search through the world's largest audio library on Agile and Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes.
The Great Product Owner: Strategic, Customer-Obsessed, and Vision-Driven
"The PO role in the team is strategic. These POs focus on the customer, outcomes, and strategy. They're customer-obsessed and focus on the purpose and the why of the product." - Karim Harbott
Karim believes the industry fundamentally misunderstands what a Product Owner should be. The great Product Owners he's seen are strategic thinkers who are obsessed with the customer. They don't just manage a backlog—they paint a vision for the product and help the entire team become customer-obsessed alongside them.
These POs focus relentlessly on outcomes rather than outputs, asking "why are we building this?" before diving into "what should we build?" They understand the purpose of the product and communicate it compellingly.
Karim references Amazon's "working backwards" approach, where Product Owners start with the customer experience they want to create and work backwards to figure out what needs to be built. Great POs also embrace the framework of Desirability (what customers want), Viability (what makes business sense), Feasibility (what's technically possible), and Usability (what's easy to use). While the PO owns desirability and viability, they collaborate closely with designers on usability and technical teams on feasibility.
This is critical: software is a team sport, and great POs recognize that multiple roles share responsibility for delivery. Like David Marquet teaches, they empower the team to own decisions rather than dictating every detail. The result? Teams that understand the "why" and can innovate toward it autonomously.
Self-reflection Question: Does your Product Owner paint a compelling vision that inspires the team, or do they primarily manage a list of tasks?
The Bad Product Owner: The User Story Writer
"The user story writer PO thinks it's their job to write full, long requirements documents, put it in JIRA, and assign it to the team. This is far away from what the PO role should be." - Karim Harbott
The anti-pattern Karim sees most often is the "User Story Writer" Product Owner. These POs believe their job is to write detailed requirements documents, load them into JIRA, and assign them to the team. It's essentially waterfall disguised as Agile—treating user stories like mini-specifications rather than conversation starters. This approach completely misses the collaborative nature of product development.
Instead of engaging the team in understanding customer needs and co-creating solutions, these POs hand down fully-formed requirements and expect the team to execute without question. The problem is that this removes the team's ownership and creativity. When POs act as the sole source of product knowledge, they become bottlenecks.
The team can't make smart tradeoffs or innovate because they don't understand the underlying customer problems or business context. Using the Desirability-Viability-Feasibility-Usability framework, bad POs try to own all four dimensions themselves instead of recognizing that designers, developers, and other roles bring essential perspectives. The result is disengaged teams, slow delivery, and products that miss the mark because they were built to specifications rather than shaped by collaborative discovery. Software is a team sport—but the User Story Writer PO forgets to put the team on the field.
Self-reflection Question: Is your Product Owner engaging the team in collaborative discovery, or just handing down requirements to be implemented?
[The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends]
🔥In the ruthless world of fintech, success isn't just about innovation—it's about coaching!🔥
Angela thought she was just there to coach a team. But now, she's caught in the middle of a corporate espionage drama that could make or break the future of digital banking. Can she help the team regain their mojo and outwit their rivals, or will the competition crush their ambitions? As alliances shift and the pressure builds, one thing becomes clear: this isn't just about the product—it's about the people.
🚨 Will Angela's coaching be enough? Find out in Shift: From Product to People—the gripping story of high-stakes innovation and corporate intrigue.
[The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends]
About Karim Harbott
Karim is a consultant, trainer, and non-executive director. He bridges the gap between strategy, business agility, digital transformation, innovation, AI, and board governance. He is a Certified Scrum Trainer, and is the author of The 6 Enablers of Business Agility.
You can link with Karim Harbott on LinkedIn.
Download audio: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/scrummastertoolbox/20251107_Karim_Harbott_F.mp3?dest-id=246429
Pennsylvania, USA
In this special episode of IoT Coffee Talk, Leonard and Marc tour the IoT Stars event which took place at The House of Blues in Anaheim, CA against the backdrop of Embedded World North America 2025.
Pennsylvania, USA
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