I'm currently working as a team lead / delivery manager, at Triodos Bank, supporting 4 teams.
This site is about Leadership, Agility, Change & Coaching. I will post opinions, experiments and some book/article reviews. Sometimes written in Dutch but most in English.
Just 2 weeks ago, one team I work with, was finally ready to go out and have dinner and drinks. It was after a few weeks of struggles about processes, (a lack of )leadership and (unclear) demanding clients ánd a first successful release. During the night, their name changed from “team 1” into : MaxPinguins. […]
Finally got time for this one!
“Sprint offers a transformative formula for testing ideas that works whether you’re at a startup or a large organization. Within five days, you’ll move from idea to prototype to decision, saving you and your team countless hours and countless dollars. A must read for entrepreneurs of all stripes.” —Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup […]
I’ve been working as a Scrum master since 2014. But during my work at Weeronline, I leaned a bit to Productmanagement. I also got certified as a productowner and discussed a lot of content next to process. When I was contacted to work as a freelance productowner for 5 months during a maternity leave at […]
In this article Simon Powers asks : “What is Agile?” It’s a question that’s been asked (too) many times, but again, it’s in Agile’s nature to keep changing so the question will probably stay around for a while 🙂 The article is about this diagram: The bottom line is: Many organizations think that they’re agile […]
Dan Sloan aks to challenge everyone in our workspace with the (sometimes annoying) WHY-Question. Why is this question important? “Why” do we exist? “Why” are we working on these particular Features? What makes it essential for our Customers? “Why” do we use Scrum to optimize business outcomes? How can we make it better and more focused? “Why” […]
Although the example talk is extensive, the message of this article is clear: You should not expect to be able to greatly influence people if you do not spend any time with them, or if you do not hear what they have to say. If they do not talk by themselves, make them talk by […]
In this article, Simon Kneafsey describes his experience with a scrum master who was educated as an actor. Laurence worked only 2 years as a tester in a scrum team when he volunteered to become a scrum master. The only thing he could do, was learn to ask questions to make the team come up with solutions. Just because […]
Barry Overeem wrote a list of common pitfalls in Scrum, you might recognize (a few) in them. Today, the one resonating with me is this one: Demonstrating the results to the Product Owner, instead to the stakeholders We can definitely improve on that one! The 5 Most Common Pitfalls of the Scrum Events
A video from Atlassian the old days (2013): about how not to do a standup. Just a nice teaser to the team to remind them to do preparation.
Agile or Agility? I saw a nice rant about why the word Agile is often used wrong and we should use agility instead. By Dave Thomas at a GoToConference in Amsterdam In his own words: It’s easy to tack the word “agile” onto just about anything. Agility is harder to misappropriate. And that’s important—you can buy and […]
I stumbled across this article on LinkedIn : “What is means to be an open leader”. It states : Being an open leader means creating the context others need to do their best work. It’s a definition that’s close to agile and it resonates with me. The initiator, the CEO of Red Hat, states that ‘context […]
An inspiring quote, source unknown, I heard today.
It’s striking to read a book that is so focussed on the product of de management: create a TEAM. Although it’s an old book (2002), it’s being considered a standard work for people who’re trying to onderstand the way their team works. I got it from a friend, after explaining an exercise I did with […]
I read this article: Where is the Agile I was promised ? It’s about the soul of agile and it expresses my feelings quite well. It’s message is: Agile is not a list of artifacts, but agile is a mindset. Or call it a Soul, which you, as a person working in a team should follow over it’s […]
If “Agile” means moving with quick, easy grace. “Being Agile” as an IT team might mean: Being able to easily and frequently release useful and quality software. If that definition is true, so is the following: Organizing yourselves in a team so you can easily handle changes Being ready for and responding to changes Maximizing […]
On February 11th I attended the Agile Market+ at the Prowareness NL office in Delft. It was a nice afternoon / evening because I met my former colleague Hanneke again, had interesting conversations about Agile and Scrum and attended several interesting talks. I learned most from Jurgen Appelo’s talk, because the context he gives in his […]
“Yes, always! “ is my initial response. I’d even say: if you discard all of the ceremonials of Scrum and have to choose 1 to re-introduce, it should be the retrospective. Without a doubt. But I have a confession to make. Mike Cohn wrote an article that caught my attention, since I’m currently working with 2 teams […]
Is Scrum just a list with artefacts? A lot is written about Scrum. And Gunther also wrote a good story about signs you may have a wrong idea of it. Basically he states: Scrum is not a list of artefacts, but it’s a state of mind. I totally agree. As a ScrumMaster, I’m not interested […]
Last week, NLScrum, Agile Consortium and ING presented a Meetup in Amsterdam with Bas Vodde about LeSS : Scrum in multiple scrum teams. Or, as Bas mentioned on later: In a productive environment they do “Multiple team Scrum” and not “Multiple Scrum teams”. These are basically my notes, it might not be a very consistent story. Because of […]
I'm currently working as a Scrum Master & team coach at the NPO, the Dutch broadcasting company, to help the teams setting (and getting) their goals.