---
title: "AI Emptied Our Backlog. Now What?"
speaker: Verena Graber
role: Product Manager
company: medflex
conference: Just Product 2026, Munich, 16 October 2026
track: AI Mindset Shift
slot: 10:30
duration_minutes: 20
video: https://media.product-masterclass.com/just-product-2026/video/03-verena-graber.mp4
slides: https://media.product-masterclass.com/just-product-2026/slides/03/Just Product 2026 - Verena Graber - AI Emptied Our Backlog. Now What.pdf
page: https://www.product-masterclass.com/just-product-2026/recap/talks/03-verena-graber.html
language: en
source: automatic transcript of the livestream, edited summary
---

# AI Emptied Our Backlog. Now What?

**Verena Graber**, Product Manager at medflex. AI Mindset Shift, 10:30, Just Product 2026.

> When AI makes delivery nearly instant, product becomes the bottleneck, and the old methods around it have to go.

## Summary

Verena Graber opened with the image Sebastian had teased: a product manager who feels like an octopus with 800 arms. At medflex, a Medtech company that uses AI to support communication and automate processes for healthcare providers, her work ran from research and design to roadmaps, testing, documentation, client onboarding and sales calls. In spring 2026 she took the Product Masterclass cohort on product management in the AI era, which gave her three blocked hours a week to experiment. Instead of chasing what was missing, she started with what the company already had. Sales and support were transcribing most calls, so she sorted those transcripts into two folders, new clients and existing clients, because the AI kept confusing what existed with what was new.

She had AI read the transcripts for recurring complaints, what new customers needed and the most asked questions, and later added the support ticket pipeline to surface bugs that kept coming back. The process still runs today. Every new transcript lands in a folder, gets scanned, and the resulting list is checked against the backlog with almost no human interaction. Challenging the backlog against those insights changed it fast. It had been about five kilometers long, with tickets from years ago nobody remembered. A two year old ticket turned out to still be relevant and went straight to ready to pick, while a ticket from the week before got deleted. Without hours of interviews, the backlog shrank by almost 50 percent, and everything left had been reviewed recently.

Then the tech team introduced agentic engineering and development cycles sped up roughly four times. A week started on Monday with a full list for the developers. By Friday nothing was left, and her Teams chat filled with "what can I do next?" and "is there anything I can do now?". Product had become the bottleneck. Testing, finalizing releases and keeping the team informed left no room for new ideas, so the team looked at its methods. Sprints went first: no point planning a two week block when tasks finish within minutes. Story points went next, which hurt, because those numbers had been her argument with stakeholders for saying no. Scrum Poker rounds filled with coffee pot cards because developers could no longer estimate effort the agent would do anyway.

Groomings stayed, but changed. Instead of comparing tickets, debating sentences and moving two pixels, the sessions now ask what the goal of an idea is and how design and development together can reach it faster. The bottleneck still sat in the methods, so the CEO, Verena and the two lead developers met over a rough prototype the CEO had sketched in about two hours. It held the big ideas the team had never known how to start. They gave the top three ideas to three developers, one each, with only the sketch and one question: what can you do with this using your agents in two weeks? Work planned to take two years at the start of the year took two weeks and now sits on the testing stages.

Her product role now has four arms. Research and insights, where humans still decide what gets built and when. Exploration and design, the most human part, using Claude Design and Figma with faster prototypes and more variants. Grooming without estimates, asking what would make the team faster or the product more lovable, while an agent writes the tickets. And documentation, which agents draft and she reviews, so she can explain what is live today and train support instead of answering the same question again. Her closing advice: do not be afraid to be the bottleneck. Push to that point, then use it to see what you still need, what you can drop and where to work closer together. No perfect method exists yet, so let the role become fluid.

## Key takeaways

1. Start with data you already have, such as sales and support call transcripts, before recruiting interview partners.
2. Separate transcripts of new and existing customers before analysis, otherwise the AI mixes what exists with what is requested.
3. Check every backlog item against live customer insight; expect old tickets to resurface and fresh ones to die.
4. When agents make delivery near instant, drop sprints and story points instead of keeping rituals that no longer fit.
5. Run groomings on the goal of an idea, with design and development in the room, rather than on ticket wording and pixels.
6. Hand big ideas directly to developers with a rough sketch and a two week agent budget, then review what comes back.
7. Let agents draft tickets and documentation; keep human time for deciding what gets built and when.
8. Collect customer feedback during onboarding, when customers are curious anyway, instead of scheduling separate validation calls.

## Chapters (timestamps in the talk video)

- 0:01 Intro: an octopus with 800 arms
- 5:05 Research pipeline from call transcripts
- 6:23 Cleaning a five kilometer backlog
- 7:40 Agentic engineering empties the backlog
- 9:15 Killing sprints, story points, old groomings
- 12:59 Three ideas, three developers, two weeks
- 16:22 The four arms of the product role
- 18:52 Closing advice: be the bottleneck

## Highlight moments

- 5:05 to 6:23: **Two folders of transcripts, one living research pipeline**. The concrete setup behind the whole talk: existing call transcripts, sorted by new and existing clients, scanned by AI with almost no human interaction.
- 6:23 to 7:40: **A five kilometer backlog cut in half**. A vivid before and after with the two year old ticket that came back and the week old ticket that died.
- 7:40 to 8:59: **By Friday nothing was left**. The turning point: agentic engineering made product the bottleneck, told through her Teams chat.
- 9:54 to 11:21: **Why story points had to go**. An honest account of losing her stakeholder argument, with the coffee pot Scrum Poker story as the punchline.
- 13:58 to 15:16: **Two years of roadmap in two weeks**. The strongest number of the talk and the method behind it: one big idea per developer, a sketch and two weeks with agents.
- 18:52 to 19:49: **Don't be afraid to be the bottleneck**. The closing advice that frames the whole story as a chance to redefine the role.

## Quotes

- "I don't know about your backlog, but ours was about five kilometers long, with tickets from years ago nobody remembered." (6:31)
- "It turned out product kind of is the bottleneck again. AI development outran product." (8:43)
- "What's the point of planning a two week block for development when I'm mostly busy putting in tasks that are getting done within minutes?" (9:27)
- "Our estimations that before looked like pretty little numbers for every task now looked like a café in the middle of a city, because coffee pots kept popping up all the time." (10:54)
- "What we planned on would take us about two years at the beginning of this year took two weeks." (14:58)
- "Don't be afraid to be the bottleneck. Really challenge it to go to this point and then use it as a chance." (18:52)

## Q&A (not in the video, summarised from the stream)

**Q: If you eliminated sprints, what replaced them, and do you still have checkpoints to review and improve?**

The team went back to Kanban, and groomings now also cover when something is needed and how much time a release buys. Releases currently outpace what clients can absorb, so the team builds and waits for the release. Dailies remain, and a ticket that shows up in dailies for more than three weeks is the marker that something is off.

**Q: How did the development team handle the responsibilities you handed over, eagerly or defensively?**

Eagerly. Developers now join ideation and design at the earliest stage, something she admits she had preached but not practiced before. A shared vision of the product helps; the open question is the testing stage, where some of their design choices will be reworked or deleted.

**Q: As product manager, do you still have control over the objective so the team does not spin off into something else?**

Not easy when you can build everything, and focusing on what should actually be built is daily work. Right now the direction is clear, and ongoing contact with sales, support and customers keeps plans honest, with enough fluidity to change course quickly.

**Q: In the design and exploration arm, how did you speed up validation with customers?**

By doing less of it. The team tests against the existing product, uses power users as feedback givers and collects feedback during customer onboarding, when clients are curious and asking questions anyway. That replaces scheduling separate validation appointments.

## Mentioned

- medflex, Medtech company using AI to support communication and automate processes for healthcare providers, where Verena is Product Manager
- Product Masterclass cohort on product management in the AI era, spring 2026, where the experiments started with three blocked hours a week
- Claude Design and Figma, used for design exploration with faster prototypes and more variants
- Scrum Poker, the estimation tool whose coffee pot card took over once agents did the work
- Kanban, what the team returned to after dropping sprints
- Microsoft Teams, the chat that filled with developers asking for new tickets
- Stefan, medflex product designer, present in the audience
- medflex CEO, who sketched the vision prototype in about two hours that seeded the three two week experiments
- Productipus, the internal name for the octopus metaphor at medflex

## About the speaker

Verena Graber is a Product Manager at medflex, a company that automates patient communication for medical practices. Over the past year she rebuilt how her team works with AI: every sales, customer success and support conversation now flows into a research pipeline she can query, and product news is drafted automatically when a ticket closes. She is medflex's internal AI champion.

- medflex: https://www.medflex.de