Workshop 'Get Going with Agile'

You are faced with both the need for high-speed delivery and with business requirements that are rapidly changing as well. Hearing the success stories of the Agile approach, you may wonder whether a more Agile & Lean way of working would be also profitable in your situation. Perhaps you are convinced of the potential benefits of this new paradigm already, but you need to win over doubtful colleagues. Or your development team must grasp the essentials of the Agile body of thought in order to make an effective transition.

If you are looking for a pragmatic introduction to the fundamentals of the Agile approach and the benefits for your own organization, the in-house Workshop 'Get Going with Agile' offered by ImprovemenT is the choice to consider.  In order to have a maximum output, this interactive, one-day workshop is tailored to give the answers you’re looking for, by incorporation of exercises and examples taken directly from your own domain.

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Masterclass Agile Architecting

The Masterclass Agile Architecting is a unique, powerful combination of a training in system and software architecture, transfer of the lean & agile mindset, official Agile Scrum Master certification, establishment of the agile development process in the participant’s organization, and on-site coaching sessions to improve on relevant professional hard & soft skills.

The goal of this highly interactive Masterclass is to provide architects with the knowledge and skills needed to establish a lean and agile product realization process, based on an agile enterprise architecture. Taking part in an intensive program of 8-10 months, participants will learn how to excel in delivery of customer value today and the realization adaptable and lucrative products tomorrow.

It is possible to organize a tailor-made, in-house edition of the Masterclass Agile Architecting, fully adapted to satisfy the needs of your organization, your customers and your workers.

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Project Coaching

Dark clouds are gathering over your project, and you ask yourself whether there is enough knowledge and experience in the development team to manage the job. Since team members are under heavy time pressure, they will easily overlook pitfalls or tempted to take shortcuts. Who will safeguard the integrity of the system architecture, and takes care the product is compliant with the agreed-upon quality requirements? Or perhaps your team faces the challenge to find a feasible solution for burning legacy issues.

It is not an easy task to keep complicated and often multidisciplinary projects on course. With the project coach of ImprovemenT you will bring an ‘experienced hand’ on board, a combination of a pragmatic project leader, a skilled system architect, a certified Agile Scrum master/practitioner and a qualified coach. Utilizing a tailor made set of Tools for Optimimum Performance, the project coach will help your team to cope with the situation – now and in the future. 

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Recommendation

"Erik used a well defined three stage approach to coach us to use the SCRUM method. First we spoke widely about the possibilities, risk etc. with the Teams and the Management. After the formal GO we started with two pilot projects.  After their success we moved all teams to the SCRUM method. Third, a number of evaluations were done to learn and to ensure SCRUM was there to stay.

The overall coaching performance of Erik is very good! He can explain things very clearly without rushing into things. He also can listen very good to his audience.

Erik used a hands-on method. As soon as the background of SCRUM and the basics were shared, we started to work accordingly in the two pilot teams. He made all people very enthusiastic and we rolled into it with no big problems. He always made sure that the teams were doing the work, not him, so we could discover SCRUM ourselves.

In the preparation phase to introduced SCRUM to the entire organisation. Erik joined me in meetings with the CEO, the Sales Director and Department managers to support me to spread the belief that SCRUM would help us to build a better organisation. Erik also worked as referee when conflict arose while implementing this new way of working together in our R&D. And, ery important, he went head-to-head with the R&D Architect who had second thoughts about the SCRUM approach on the R&D department. A great facilitator!

In the first meetings Erik showed us how the SCRUM master should act in the team. This was very important since our Project Leaders were trained in the new role of SCRUM master. A role which has significant different aspects of teamleading. We learned a lot from Erik's example role.

Erik explained that the SCRUM approch might reveil weak points in the organisation. Well, it did! So when this happened he asked very direct questions which helped us to understand where the weakness was and how we could solve this. Not by giving solutions but by letting us thing and give the solutions to ourselves".

Paul Boekhout, R&D Manager JVH Gaming Products BV
20 april 2009

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