November 2023 – Derk-Jan de Grood

This week Jan Jaap Cannegieter and I hosted a nice tutorial on the Agile Testing Days, one of the premiere conferences on quality and Agile.

In this full day hands-on workshop we discussed the basic concepts of Built-in Quality (BIQ) and applied them directly. In small groups we assessed the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) and identified problems that came with it. Using the BIQ step plan analyzed where in the SDLC we could start our improvements. Special in this workshop is that included the agile maturity of the organization to determine what practices will or won’t work. The day was concluded with a pitch by the participant groups of their personal, tailor-made improvement plan that fits the goals and the problems of the organization.
We had great fun and were inspired by the enthusiasm of the participants. Some reactions we got:

” This BiQ workshop definitely was a great start for the 4-day Agile Testing Days Conference.”
” Thanks for that awesome workshop. We got a lot of new ideas to bring back home to our organization.”
” Using the waves of agile was useful. It made me realise that we focus on the wrong improvements.”

Below you’ll find a impression of the workshop:

When I worked as an Agile Coach for ING Bank, I was part of a team of Agile Coaches. Together we experimented with virtual coffees. These are short informal moments that improve the connection and collaboration in your team. We liked it so much that we teamed up to write the book ‘THE VIRTUAL COFFEE EXPERIENCE – 52 formats for meaningful connections in teams’. The book contains a nice collection of working formats that help you to organize your own virtual coffee sessions.

We proudly present the book during the Agile Consortium Annual Conference that will be held on 16 November. Until then the book will be shrouded by mystery, as it is not yet available yet.

But, If you want to know more about the book, you can also read: How virtual coffees help build strong online teams. This article, that I wrote for Bits&Chips, already provides a glimpse of the mystery. Read it on the Bits&Chips website and discover how you can use the working methods from the book to form close-knit teams.