Keynote on Testnet Spring-event: BIQ!

Proud to announce that I will be doing the opening keynote on tomorrows TestNet Event. In tomorrows presentation I will be talking about Built-in Quality (BIQ), BIQ maturity and how you build quality in. See the full schedule on the testnet website.

Launching my new book: The waves of Agile

On 5 July I will be presenting my new book: The waves of agile, Value delivery in medium and large organizations. In a free webinar we will celebrate that the book is finished. Join me in this event and I’ll explain what the book is about and we’ll have nice contributions from Nils van Schaik and Wilco Dona.

We’ll have the following program:

How to deal with change? – Nils van Schaik (Director at Squerist)

The customer in the driver seat – An interview by Vincent Verloop (Agile Consultant at Squerist) with Wilco Dona (Head of products at RTL)

Introduction to ‘The Waves of Agile’ – Derk-Jan de Grood (Agile Coach at Squerist )

More information about the book can be found in the book session on this blog.
Please join us on Monday July 5 between 16:00 and 17:00. You can reserve your seat by registering on the event page

The changing role of the agile coach

For the Agile Alliance I wrote an experience report about the changing role of the agile coach. In the report I share my thoughts on how the agile coach role develops and discuss how we can continue to deliver value to the organisation we work for. This report is part of the experience story I will tell on the XP2021 conference which is held 14-18 June.

Check out the program of the conference and see what marvellous topics will be addressed and maybe visit my session on 17 June. If you can’t make it, no worries, you can read the report at any time:

Read the “Changing role of the agile coach” on the agile alliance website.

New Book Coming Soon !

My new book is coming soon ! Please find below a sneak preview, it shows you a few pages. I think it looks really nice.

Agile Thoughts Magazine

Agile thoughts is a free online magazine that aims to disclose experiences and enable meaning-full connections. The editors collect treasures from bold agile thinkers and share them with their readers. The May Issue is the third edition of Agile Thoughts and takes a look at some issues and misunderstandings around Agile.  Read it to discover the story behind the following statements:

“To increase impact, refinement should be seen as a process, not just as a meeting.”
“An Agile framework is a structure into which different Agile development practices are inserted.”
“Getting a team to have an open and constructive conversation about future risks and challenges is hard.”
“Talking to your younger self is always beneficial.”
“With bad leadership, no framework, methodology, or process will succeed.”
“As a manager, facilitator, coach or trainer it is important to be aware of Zoom fatigue.”

I am pleased to share my thoughts on refinement and encourage you to read my ideas and those of Raj Nagappan, Steven Gruyters, Michaele Gardner, Philippa Fewell and John Chen.

The magazine is free, but you’ll need to register. See the Agile Thoughts Website.

New Book – Manuscript sent to the publisher

Behind the scenes I am working hard on completing my next book. In 2016 I published a book called “Agile in the real world” which was all about how to get started with Scrum. Since then I learned a lot about agile coaching and transformations in medium and large organisations. Things that I like to share with you. The topic of my new book deals with value delivery in those complex settings and explains the role of the agile coach and leadership in the agile transformation. The book will be in English, so it reaches a wide audience.

Today I am pleased to share that the manuscript has been send to the publisher who will check my English and polish the story. A great milestone and flipping through the manuscript I am really proud.

To be continued…

Talking about the changing role of the Agile Coach on XP2021

I am proud to announce that I will share my story about the changing role of the agile coach on this years XP2021. XP2021 is organised by the agile alliance and enables conversations and the exchange of ideas between academics and industry practitioners. The conference will be online for a second year, which gives the conference a globale reach.

In June I’ll will be sharing my experience with the developing role of the agile coach. In my experience report I will talk about the three waves of agile, the shifting coaching needs of the organisation and how we can anticipate that. Check the XP2021 speaker overview for a more detailed description. More info will follow.

Did you read the ‘state of testing’ report

The State of Testing report is a valuable benchmark report that provides a culminated reflection of testing trends, challenges, and characteristics. The State of Testing report is based on the largest and most diverse survey in the testing community. This year’s report provides powerful insights into the current status of the testing community as well as a number of interesting insights on the trends affecting the testing and development ecosystem.

You can download the 8th edition of the report on the practitest website

To get into the report, join us in a panel discussion. Join Joel Montvelisky, Chief Solution Architect at PractiTest; Lalitkumar Bhamare, Co-Founder and Chief Editor of TeaTime with Testers; Lena Weiberg, Engineering Manager at Mentimeter; Chris Kenst, Automation Engineer at BloomNation; and Derk-Jan de Grood, Agile Transition Coach at Squerist; while they review the main findings of the 2021 State of Testing and analyse what this can mean to the present and the future of the Testing Community.

Sign up for the panel discussion on April 28th, 2021, 11:00 EDT / 17:00 CE

Agile Deep Dive week- A webinar on Built-in Quality

Last week EuroSTAR organized the Agile Deep Dive week. We had great sessions from Experts in Agile like Bob Galen, Lisa Crispin, Gitte Ottoson, Selena Delesie, Hanna Dernbran. I was asked to close the week with my Friday session on built-in quality. I enjoyed doing it and was impressed by the good questions and discussion we had afterwards.

In the top of this post, you see an impression of the talk. But the full experience can be obtained on the EuroSTAR Huddle. You need to register but can access the full recording for free. I hope you enjoy it and find it use-full. I was really pleased with the reactions and the enthusiasm of some participant to apply it directly in their organization.

Built-In Quality

How Agile Coaches can Contribute to Built-in Quality

Built-in Quality is key when you want to achieve Business Agility. Yesterday I spoke at the AgiNext Conference in London. In my presentation I explained the importance of Built-in Quality, what it actually is and I introduced an approach to implement it. The presentation shows how we can take a validated learning approach to eliminate waste and learn how to improve our development life cycle. I share the suggestions that SAFe makes and give a prioritised overview of quality measures. Throughout the presentation I share my thought on how Agile Coaches can contribute to built quality in. I really enjoyed contributing to the AgiNext Conference and loved the response by one the participants:”…Considering implementing already !!!”

AgiNext Conference London

When I heard that the AgiNext Conference was in London, I already saw my self standing on Trafalgar square, Piccadilly circus, etc. But this year it’s a virtual conference, we can’t go there… But we still can exchange ideas and get inspired.

Today I will be talking about Built-In Quality and how agile coaches can play a role in achieving it… Check out the program for details and some of the other nice sessions….

Built in Quality – A multi-level challenge

Agile Deep-dive

This month EuroSTAR organises their very first deep dive week on Agile. From 22nd – 26th March we will be exploring many facets of Agile including QA, Quality and more. For the first time we will be hosting two AMAs (Ask Me Anythings) with two experts in Agile, Bob Galen and Lisa Crispin. See the full details below. Additionally we have some great webinars to catch up on. I’ll be closing the week with my Friday session on built-in quality.

You can register to any of the sessions at the conference site: Register for the agile deep dive week

Agile Approaches for Building in Quality

Next month I’ll be giving a talk at the Aginext Conference.

In this presentation I will talk about Built-in Quality. Ben Linders did a nice interview with me on the topic. In the interview I explain that Quality awareness needs to be increased at multiple layers of the organisation. Agile coaches can help by boosting quality thinking in the agile way of working. I also talk about how we can incorporate quality in every step of the development cycle.

Want to know more? You can read it on the InfoQ site: Agile Approaches for Building in Quality

EuroSTAR program Committee 2021

Today the EuroSTAR program Committee has been announced. Fran O’ Hara, was already appointed as chair of this years conference and he has selected a nice group of people around him. Meet Janet, Sowmya and Szilárd. I am honoured to be part of the committee and looking forward to the task of making this edition of the EuroSTAR conference an interesting one that is worthwhile, covers all the right topics and trends and is memorable. We are still looking for your story to make it happen, see the call for paper

A challenging task. Meet the program committee members on the conference website.

16 Tips to Keep you focused on your Agile Journey

In december I shared a lot of tips with you. For my latest publication on the Agile Alliance blog I made a subset of these tips. E.g. to let the team decide what and how they want to improve, to focus on the customer journey or balance your distributed teams. You can take each of these tips as individual tips, but you can also look at them holistically.

As a whole they serve as a checklist that can be used to keep your agile journey on course. When I reviewed them myself, it triggered some critical thoughts. I had to conclude that, although I wrote the tips myself, I did not give some of them that much attention lately. I probably got distracted, while trying to make an impact. I will use these tips to stay on course and hope they will benefit you in the same way.

You can read the article on the Agile Alliance website.