“I first took on the role of scrum master in a semi-governmental organization. I focused on the prevention and removal of obstacles and contributed to continuous performance improvements for the scrum team within the organization. In the years that followed I started coaching other scrum masters to help them find the best way to deal with personal and organizational challenges. Coaching others also helps me to focus on and continue growing in my own areas of development. If, like me, you have worked at companies that are going through a continuous change process, you have to be able to empathize and adapt, while maintaining your authenticity. I believe that’s where the challenge lies for every employee. The customer is key – so what role do I play as an employee to create the best possible customer experience? This requires a high level of awareness and personal leadership. If employees are in charge of their own growth, they become the most important factor for the success of an organization.”

“I helped shape the innovation process at a large Telco in the Netherlands. We went from a 9-month to a 3-week innovation cycle. This journey was needed in order for us to shorten the time to market and to remain in business. I was responsible for the implementation of the comprehensive CRM application during this major change. We transformed the company in an agile way by working with multiple scrum teams in multiple countries. This new innovation process not only required an organizational change, but also a drastic cultural change. This experience is still relevant for the programmes and projects I am working on now.”

“Over the past few decades I have managed scrum and agility teams in the context of several programs. Whether in corporations, universities or government, I was the link between implementation, through agile working, and the management, which wants to achieve its milestones. But one does not exclude the other! I call this hybrid scrum, because it’s an agile way of working in a non-agile environment. My strength lies in maintaining that connection and gradually creating more room for agile thinking within the organization. Most recently I worked on the design and training of a scrum/devops team within a large ministry, and across three departments. Here too, success was achieved thanks to short lines of communication, the ability to make immediate adjustments and the involvement of several departments.”

“As a product owner/agile coach at Cegeka Consulting, I introduced an agile way of working for the Design Thinking and Agile Services products. Developing an effective agile approach in a consulting organization is a real challenge. You always have to do it together, and in small steps. In the end, Kanban turned out to be the right approach, because the consultants are deployed with clients in all kinds of projects and it is difficult to work with fixed sprints. Developing independence, ownership and trust is the key success factor in these projects. My background as a personal and team coach proved to be of great value in this process. By focusing on people and their development within a team, and connecting this to the vision and objectives of the company, we can achieve the best results together. It goes without saying that I use the Design Thinking approach for this. This people-oriented, iterative approach fits seamlessly with the agile way of working and principles, and it enables teams to develop their approach and products together.”