2022 XP Days programme Friday

 

 

Europe I

Vianden

Wiltz

Schengen I

Schengen II

 

07:00

Morning workout, swimming pool meeting, lean coffee: the sauna/hammam edition

09:00

Plenary session

9:30

 Find your why

Linda van Sinten
&
Robert van Lieshout

 Does what you do matter?

Geert Van Aken
&
Bastiaan De Brock

   More than 50 tips and Tricks for Facilitation

Per Beining
&
Rikke Thomsen Kornby

Max: 40 
 Slicing the Cake

Koen Vastmans

Max: 40 
 

10:30

Coffee break

11:00

 What does a future-proof organisation look like? Meaning that you only need one last reorganisation to get there

Jan de Vries

Max: 21 
 Let's practice "Big Picture" EventStorming

Cédric Pontet

Max: 30 
 (Slow (code) retreat)

Philippe Bourgau

Computer
Max: 40 
 A Journey to Property-Based Testing

Yoan Thirion

Computer
Max: 30 
 Dreaming of a fully aligned multi-team environment?

Stefan Vanlokeren
&
Jurgen Maus

Max: 32 
 

12:30

Lunch

13:30

Plenary session

14:00

 Agile Coaching Growth Wheel

Frederik Vannieuwenhuyse

 How to solve the mystery of better refinements?

Eddy Bruin
&
jordann@theseriousgamers.com

Max: 20 
 Fifty Shades of TDD

Arnaud Bailly

 Making a tanker turn: Agility in the medical device industry

Erika Schüttfort
&
Joost Zeilstra

 Design and Reality

Mathias Verraes

 

14:30

 ADHDeveloper

Dietrich Moerman

How to solve the mystery of better refinements?

CONTINUED

Fifty Shades of TDD

CONTINUED

 From Zero to Hero

Chris Parker
&
nick.bosmans@dstny.be

Max: 100 
 Agile 4.0, agile at scale: the long learning journey of Telenet’s Agile Way of Working

Philippe Van Negen
&
Evan@ideator.be

 

15:00

Coffee break

15:30

Closing plenary

16:15

Drinks at the bar, sponsored by…

Legend
Technology and Technique
Customer and Planning
Intro's and Cases
Team and Individual
Process and Improvement
Other

Session descriptions

Does what you do matter?

Take 5 steps back so you can take a big jump forward (together)

Geert Van Aken
& Bastiaan De Brock

Have you ever experienced yourself working diligently, filled with passion, to deliver something when suddenly, like a bolt from the blue, you were overcome by a sparkle of doubt? Am I doing the right thing? Are we, as team or as organization, doing the right thing? How do we know what matters? Should we be doing this? And should we be doing it right now?

Goal of the session:Discover what is important for your product in your situation for your clients.
Intended audience:georges, vincent, joke, ellen, marieke, bram, hank
Expected experience:1
Session Type:60 min discovery session

Attend our session when you are intrigued by the questions above!

The goal is to send you home with a seed planted in your head on how to discover what is important for your product in your situation for your clients.

Join as individual or as group of the same team or organization to reflect on some questions that will bring clarity on your mission and strategy.

It will not be a theoretical session and we hope that our practical approach will also help you to:

  • Get cleaning up your technical debt prioritized above yet another feature.
  • Engage the people in your team or organization even more.
  • Build even better products.
  • Get an overview of all that’s needed to succeed.

We strongly advise you to select a 'scope' upfront to which you will apply the content immediately and bring the 'mission statement' of that scope with you (if it exists). The scope can be either product, team, tribe, department or your organization as a whole.

Marieke  is part of a team that delivers product software on a regular basis and has started to use some agile techniques. She feels it doesn't really work in her situation. She hopes she can hear from real people in real teams how they have been practicing these things, and which problems occurred in their situation, and what kind of consequences that had for them.
Marieke

Bram has never missed an XP Days. Bram likes the XP Days because of the friendly and informal atmosphere. Every year he goes back to work from XP Days full of energy, with a bag full of new ideas and techniques.
Bram

Georges is a stressed project manager. He's heard that agile projects are more effective, more fun and rewarding.  He doubts if everything he's heard is true. But what if it is...?
Georges

Vincent is the IT manager of a large company. The CEO has asked him to propose a plan to increase the efficiency of his department by 10%  in the next two years. He comes to the XP Days to get a taste of what "agile" can offer him.
Vincent

Joke is a product manager for a succesful product company. Joke finds it hard to talk to the development team, to make them understand what she needs in the product. Joke hopes to meet some developers and other product managers who can help her and give her some tips.
Joke

Hank is a motivated and experienced software engineer cum system architect who spends his days knee deep in the quagmires of enterprise automation. He comes to the XP Days to share with and learn from like-minded colleagues.
Hank

Ellen is an agile coach. She wants to learn and share new ideas and experience of techniques that work. She comes to XP Days because of its friendly and collaborative atmosphere.
Ellen

Back to program


max
40

More than 50 tips and Tricks for Facilitation

Get a powerfull mindset for preparing, designing and delivering any type of facilitation.

Per Beining
& Rikke Thomsen Kornby

In our humble opinion there are 6 areas any facilitator should master:

Purpose, People, Environment, Process, Method and You.

In this session we will take you on a high-speed journey into these areas. And reveal some of our best details, ninja tricks and must-consider elements to thrive as a new, seasoned or outdated facilitator.

Goal of the session:Getting insight into our approach to facilitation. And be able to facilitate on a higher level.
Intended audience:Jan, Marieke, Leo, Bram, Philippe, Georges, Vincent, Joke and Ellen
Session Type:90 min experiential learning session

3 years ago we Co-created a brunch of ideas for a deck of Facts Cards for Facilitation at XP Days 2019 with the XP Days crowd.

Now the deck of cards is Ready.

In this session you will learn how to use the deck.

And hopefully leave with a powerfull mindset for preparing, designing and delivering any type of facilitation.

We take setoff in the Facilitation Star's 6 elements:

Purpose, People, Environment, Process, Method and You.

And in a fast paced learning style, you take in as much information as your brain can hold in this short amount of time.

You will then use that information in our new Facilitation Star Canvas for planning a facilitation.

We will all – using our Collective Braintrust – share tips and tricks with each other. And get answers to our questions.

Jan is an experienced programmer. He comes to XP Days to get tips and tricks from experts and to learn about the latest trends in continuous integration and automated testing.
Jan

Marieke  is part of a team that delivers product software on a regular basis and has started to use some agile techniques. She feels it doesn't really work in her situation. She hopes she can hear from real people in real teams how they have been practicing these things, and which problems occurred in their situation, and what kind of consequences that had for them.
Marieke

Leo has been around forever. He has seen everything, done everything. He wants to go to XP Days because he thinks it's an excellent opportunity to meet with a lot of young, smart and enthusiastic  people.
Leo

Bram has never missed an XP Days. Bram likes the XP Days because of the friendly and informal atmosphere. Every year he goes back to work from XP Days full of energy, with a bag full of new ideas and techniques.
Bram

Philippe comes to XP Days because his boss told him to go. He doesn't really care, because going to this conference means that he will be away from the hectic chaos in the office for 2 days.
Philippe

Georges is a stressed project manager. He's heard that agile projects are more effective, more fun and rewarding.  He doubts if everything he's heard is true. But what if it is...?
Georges

Vincent is the IT manager of a large company. The CEO has asked him to propose a plan to increase the efficiency of his department by 10%  in the next two years. He comes to the XP Days to get a taste of what "agile" can offer him.
Vincent

Joke is a product manager for a succesful product company. Joke finds it hard to talk to the development team, to make them understand what she needs in the product. Joke hopes to meet some developers and other product managers who can help her and give her some tips.
Joke

Ellen is an agile coach. She wants to learn and share new ideas and experience of techniques that work. She comes to XP Days because of its friendly and collaborative atmosphere.
Ellen

Back to program


max
40

Slicing the Cake

Learn how to apply Richard Lawrence's story slicing patterns

Koen Vastmans

Slicing user stories… Even though there are very good resources with patterns to help you slice user stories, applying these patterns properly does not seem to be that simple…

What if we could turn it upside down and start from the slices and see how they relate to a larger user story? And what if this would also help you better understand story mapping? Curious how this works? Come see for yourself!

Goal of the session:Have a better understanding on how to apply the story slicing patterns of Richard Lawrence and how to get started in your own context.
Intended audience:Marieke Bram Georges Joke Ellen
Expected experience:Understand user stories – understanding the concept of story mapping is a plus, but not necessary
Session Type:60 min experiential learning session

As an agile coach and trainer I always relied on Richard Lawrence's material to teach people how to properly slice user stories to a sprintable size. I know there are several variations (like the SPIDR approach of Mike Cohn), but still, Richard's story splitting patterns and flowchart are my preferred resources. For those who don't know the slicing patterns of Richard Lawrence: Guide to Splitting User Stories

Now, understanding how to slice user stories is 1 thing, being able to do so, is something else. As a coach I experienced many times that people don't really know how to get started with these patterns.

What if we could turn it upside down and start from the slices and see how they relate to a larger user story? That inspired me to come up with a card game about story slicing. The aim of the game is 3-fold:

  • you learn the purpose of slicing user stories and which pattern to apply when
  • you see how slicing patterns can help you to do story mapping
  • you get some good examples you can refer to once you need to get started yourself

Curious how this works? Come see for yourself!

Marieke  is part of a team that delivers product software on a regular basis and has started to use some agile techniques. She feels it doesn't really work in her situation. She hopes she can hear from real people in real teams how they have been practicing these things, and which problems occurred in their situation, and what kind of consequences that had for them.
Marieke

Bram has never missed an XP Days. Bram likes the XP Days because of the friendly and informal atmosphere. Every year he goes back to work from XP Days full of energy, with a bag full of new ideas and techniques.
Bram

Georges is a stressed project manager. He's heard that agile projects are more effective, more fun and rewarding.  He doubts if everything he's heard is true. But what if it is...?
Georges

Joke is a product manager for a succesful product company. Joke finds it hard to talk to the development team, to make them understand what she needs in the product. Joke hopes to meet some developers and other product managers who can help her and give her some tips.
Joke

Ellen is an agile coach. She wants to learn and share new ideas and experience of techniques that work. She comes to XP Days because of its friendly and collaborative atmosphere.
Ellen

Back to program


Find your why

Find the thing that drives you, to help you when times are tough

Linda van Sinten
& Robert van Lieshout

In this interactive workshop participants will search for their values and behaviors that give them purpose and strength. We'll also help you use visualization to create a tangible reminder of those values and behaviors to remind and help you find your way back when you feel lost or without purpose.

Goal of the session:You'll get a better understanding of your core values and behaviors and a way to help you stick to them
Intended audience:Bram, Philippe, Georges, Vincent, Ellen
Expected experience:None
Session Type:60 min experiential learning session

You will explore success moments that serve as a starting point to find the values that give you purpose and strength. You will discover what it feels like to live your values and which signs warn you for not living your values. Finally you will bring this all together in a visualization that will serve as a reminder to help you live into your values.

This will be an interactive workshop.

Bram has never missed an XP Days. Bram likes the XP Days because of the friendly and informal atmosphere. Every year he goes back to work from XP Days full of energy, with a bag full of new ideas and techniques.
Bram

Philippe comes to XP Days because his boss told him to go. He doesn't really care, because going to this conference means that he will be away from the hectic chaos in the office for 2 days.
Philippe

Georges is a stressed project manager. He's heard that agile projects are more effective, more fun and rewarding.  He doubts if everything he's heard is true. But what if it is...?
Georges

Vincent is the IT manager of a large company. The CEO has asked him to propose a plan to increase the efficiency of his department by 10%  in the next two years. He comes to the XP Days to get a taste of what "agile" can offer him.
Vincent

Ellen is an agile coach. She wants to learn and share new ideas and experience of techniques that work. She comes to XP Days because of its friendly and collaborative atmosphere.
Ellen

Back to program


max
21

What does a future-proof organisation look like? Meaning that you only need one last reorganisation to get there

Experiencing the powerful combination of appreciative inquiry and first-principles thinking to make your organisation future-proof

Jan de Vries

Are you also fascinated by the fact that organisations never seem to finish reorganising and that one reorganisation automatically leads to the next?

Together with you we explore elements of organisations that are future-proof and never need to be reorganised again.

Goal of the session:to detach participants from the traditional way of reorganising and to give them an idea of how to reorganise in a future-proof way.
Intended audience:Vincent, Ellen, Georges, Leo
Expected experience:just interested in the way organisations work is enough
Session Type:90 min discovery session

We are fascinated by the fact that organisations never seem to finish reorganising and that one reorganisation automatically leads to the next. We also look with interest at fluctuating 'pork cycles' of centralising and decentralising, of outsourcing and insourcing, of autonomy and alignment..

In this workshop, we explore elements of organisations that are future-proof and never need to be reorganised again. We draw these elements from examples of participants, supplemented with examples from our research. The underlying method we use is appreciative inquiry, a working method in which we successively go through the define, discover and dream phase with the participants.

We no longer talk about a dot on the horizon and a corresponding roadmap, but about a landing platform and the leap towards it. In other words, what does the last reorganisation look like that your organisation needs? To become and remain future-proof?

We have created an image of the structure of that landing platform by means of first-principles thinking* and, together with the participants, we are going to test and supplement that with this same technique.

The final result of this session is a platform structure that participants can translate to their own organisation and that we will use in our follow-up research.

The one-time jump to the platform may seem at odds with an agile approach. But here too, the power of first principle thinking applies. A one-step reorganisation like it has never been done before.

This session is intended for anyone who recognises the fascination with reorganisations described above.

  • First-principles thinking is about breaking a situation down into the core pieces and then putting them all back together in a more effective way. Deconstruct then reconstruct. First-principles reasoning cuts through dogma and removes the blinders. We can see the world as it is and see what is possible. Everything that is not a law of nature is just a shared belief.
Leo has been around forever. He has seen everything, done everything. He wants to go to XP Days because he thinks it's an excellent opportunity to meet with a lot of young, smart and enthusiastic  people.
Leo

Georges is a stressed project manager. He's heard that agile projects are more effective, more fun and rewarding.  He doubts if everything he's heard is true. But what if it is...?
Georges

Vincent is the IT manager of a large company. The CEO has asked him to propose a plan to increase the efficiency of his department by 10%  in the next two years. He comes to the XP Days to get a taste of what "agile" can offer him.
Vincent

Ellen is an agile coach. She wants to learn and share new ideas and experience of techniques that work. She comes to XP Days because of its friendly and collaborative atmosphere.
Ellen

Back to program


max
30

Let's practice "Big Picture" EventStorming

EventStorming with the stars

Cédric Pontet

An infinite modeling surface, a bunch of markers, and loads of colored stickies. Here is EventStorming, a workshop format that allows a group of people to model a complex business domain or a whole business line in just a few hours, with a massive amount of learning and alignment.

Goal of the session:After this session, you will have experienced EventStorming, understood the power of this tool in terms of discovery and alignment, understood what is needed to run an EventStorming session in terms of preparation and materials.
Intended audience:Everyone
Expected experience:No previous experience required
Session Type:90 min experiential learning session

Have you ever had to model a complex business process? Have you ever experienced the pain of organizing meetings after meetings, with many people, without reaching a consensus on what the process should look like, or what are the main pain points?

If your answer is yes, then EventStorming is for you! EventStorming is a workshop technique that allows a group of participants to model complex processes or systems using only markers, stickies, and a lot of brain juice.

Having learned from the best while participating in the first EventStorming summit in 2018, and having used it myself in many different situations with customers in very different fields, I have made it my personal mission to make the most people aware of the power of this technique and its versatility.

In this session, I will facilitate a "Big Picture" EventStorming on a domain that everyone should be familiar with (the subtitle may give you a hint). Our collective goal will be to model this domain in just a few iterations, using incremental notation, and storytelling to validate our assumptions.

Let's make Alberto Brandolini (inventor of EventStorming) proud, by designing the best process we can come up with as a group. Then we will debrief the activity and I will explain different variations of EventStorming (big picture, process modeling, software design, retrospective, as-is vs to-be, …), and also provide tips to get better at facilitating a session.

Learn more about Event Storming

Jan is an experienced programmer. He comes to XP Days to get tips and tricks from experts and to learn about the latest trends in continuous integration and automated testing.
Jan

Marieke  is part of a team that delivers product software on a regular basis and has started to use some agile techniques. She feels it doesn't really work in her situation. She hopes she can hear from real people in real teams how they have been practicing these things, and which problems occurred in their situation, and what kind of consequences that had for them.
Marieke

Leo has been around forever. He has seen everything, done everything. He wants to go to XP Days because he thinks it's an excellent opportunity to meet with a lot of young, smart and enthusiastic  people.
Leo

Bram has never missed an XP Days. Bram likes the XP Days because of the friendly and informal atmosphere. Every year he goes back to work from XP Days full of energy, with a bag full of new ideas and techniques.
Bram

Philippe comes to XP Days because his boss told him to go. He doesn't really care, because going to this conference means that he will be away from the hectic chaos in the office for 2 days.
Philippe

Georges is a stressed project manager. He's heard that agile projects are more effective, more fun and rewarding.  He doubts if everything he's heard is true. But what if it is...?
Georges

Vincent is the IT manager of a large company. The CEO has asked him to propose a plan to increase the efficiency of his department by 10%  in the next two years. He comes to the XP Days to get a taste of what "agile" can offer him.
Vincent

Joke is a product manager for a succesful product company. Joke finds it hard to talk to the development team, to make them understand what she needs in the product. Joke hopes to meet some developers and other product managers who can help her and give her some tips.
Joke

Hank is a motivated and experienced software engineer cum system architect who spends his days knee deep in the quagmires of enterprise automation. He comes to the XP Days to share with and learn from like-minded colleagues.
Hank

Ellen is an agile coach. She wants to learn and share new ideas and experience of techniques that work. She comes to XP Days because of its friendly and collaborative atmosphere.
Ellen

Back to program


max
40

Laptop

(Slow (code) retreat)

Let's try slow programming by experimenting with XP practices together.

Philippe Bourgau

Isn't it time to deal with the rampant stress and burnout in the industry?

Let's try slow programming! Using TDD, and TCR as a neurofeedback tool that will remind us whenever we are rushing, we will experiment with various flavors of mob to solo programming and discover what we enjoy most!

Goal of the session:Get a unique experience, see TDD in a completely new way!
Intended audience:Jan, Marieke, Leo, Bram, Hank, Ellen
Expected experience:Beginner
Session Type:90 min hands on coding/design/architecture session

"Simplicity–the art of maximizing the amount of work not done–is essential." We're definitely not there yet!

Isn't it time to deal with the rampant stress and burnout in the industry?

Let's try slow programming! Using TDD, and TCR as a neurofeedback tool that will remind us whenever we are rushing, we will experiment with various flavors of mob to solo programming and discover what we enjoy most! Here are the benefits we could expect:

  • less stress, by focusing on what we are doing NOW, in the present moment
  • more value creation by focusing on what really matters
  • less technical debt
  • better interactions with devs and non-devs colleagues
  • more clarity about what to do, easier decision making
  • a chance to better tackle the ethical challenges of technology
  • happier families by bringing less stress home
  • a form of deliberate practice of zen
  • helping each other on our path to self-actualization!

Join us in this slow dojo!

Jan is an experienced programmer. He comes to XP Days to get tips and tricks from experts and to learn about the latest trends in continuous integration and automated testing.
Jan

Marieke  is part of a team that delivers product software on a regular basis and has started to use some agile techniques. She feels it doesn't really work in her situation. She hopes she can hear from real people in real teams how they have been practicing these things, and which problems occurred in their situation, and what kind of consequences that had for them.
Marieke

Leo has been around forever. He has seen everything, done everything. He wants to go to XP Days because he thinks it's an excellent opportunity to meet with a lot of young, smart and enthusiastic  people.
Leo

Bram has never missed an XP Days. Bram likes the XP Days because of the friendly and informal atmosphere. Every year he goes back to work from XP Days full of energy, with a bag full of new ideas and techniques.
Bram

Hank is a motivated and experienced software engineer cum system architect who spends his days knee deep in the quagmires of enterprise automation. He comes to the XP Days to share with and learn from like-minded colleagues.
Hank

Ellen is an agile coach. She wants to learn and share new ideas and experience of techniques that work. She comes to XP Days because of its friendly and collaborative atmosphere.
Ellen

Back to program


max
30

Laptop

A Journey to Property-Based Testing

Yoan Thirion

Goal of the session:Understand what is PBT and how / when to use this practice.
Intended audience:Jan, Bram, Hank
Session Type:90 min hands on coding/design/architecture session

Make your code bulletproof with property testing.

Together with a hands-on workshop (in java, C# or scala) we will discover :

  • What it is Property-Based Testing
  • How this approach radically changes the way we design our tests
  • The associated benefits: better business understanding, identification of edge cases
  • When to apply this practice and more importantly when not
  • Related anti-patterns

Because this session is really hands-on, you will be able to use this learning instantly after the session.

Jan is an experienced programmer. He comes to XP Days to get tips and tricks from experts and to learn about the latest trends in continuous integration and automated testing.
Jan

Bram has never missed an XP Days. Bram likes the XP Days because of the friendly and informal atmosphere. Every year he goes back to work from XP Days full of energy, with a bag full of new ideas and techniques.
Bram

Hank is a motivated and experienced software engineer cum system architect who spends his days knee deep in the quagmires of enterprise automation. He comes to the XP Days to share with and learn from like-minded colleagues.
Hank

Back to program


max
32

Dreaming of a fully aligned multi-team environment?

Simulation game of a 4-step approach to align dreams, priorities, scope & delivery forecast

Stefan Vanlokeren
& Jurgen Maus

Ever experienced an energized, motivating big room planning?

In this session we will dream of building a new magic world, we will decide together how it will look like and we will identify and plan the realization of the most valuable items. Hope to see you as member of one of our magiciens teams.

You will experience the elements that are needed to engage, motivate people and create a learning organisation. 4 steps that really makes a difference. Per step we will reflect back to reality.

Goal of the session:Experience the difference between planning team dependencies and getting motivated, engaged, growing teams that are working towards the same goals and the same time also discussed the most important dependencies.
Intended audience:Leo, Bram, Philippe, Georges, Vincent, Joke, Hank, Ellen,
Session Type:90 min experiential learning session

The story begins with teams chasing their own, separate goals, ignoring each others’ talents & forgetting to make their customers happy.

Join our experience of writing the next chapter. You will be drowned, as a member of one of the teams, in a new world of inspiring collaboration via an interactive & fun simulation boardgame.

Feel how experimenting with a 4-step alignment moment on "magic features", "priorities", "scope" & "delivery forecast" can lead to pursuing a common dream … and what about the chapter thereafter ?

At the end of every step, we'll return back to reality for a while.

You will experience the elements that are needed to engage, motivate people and create a learning organisation. 4 steps that really makes a difference.

Required Experience: Working in a world full of misalignments, misunderstandings & flawed input is a plus.

Leo has been around forever. He has seen everything, done everything. He wants to go to XP Days because he thinks it's an excellent opportunity to meet with a lot of young, smart and enthusiastic  people.
Leo

Bram has never missed an XP Days. Bram likes the XP Days because of the friendly and informal atmosphere. Every year he goes back to work from XP Days full of energy, with a bag full of new ideas and techniques.
Bram

Philippe comes to XP Days because his boss told him to go. He doesn't really care, because going to this conference means that he will be away from the hectic chaos in the office for 2 days.
Philippe

Georges is a stressed project manager. He's heard that agile projects are more effective, more fun and rewarding.  He doubts if everything he's heard is true. But what if it is...?
Georges

Vincent is the IT manager of a large company. The CEO has asked him to propose a plan to increase the efficiency of his department by 10%  in the next two years. He comes to the XP Days to get a taste of what "agile" can offer him.
Vincent

Joke is a product manager for a succesful product company. Joke finds it hard to talk to the development team, to make them understand what she needs in the product. Joke hopes to meet some developers and other product managers who can help her and give her some tips.
Joke

Hank is a motivated and experienced software engineer cum system architect who spends his days knee deep in the quagmires of enterprise automation. He comes to the XP Days to share with and learn from like-minded colleagues.
Hank

Ellen is an agile coach. She wants to learn and share new ideas and experience of techniques that work. She comes to XP Days because of its friendly and collaborative atmosphere.
Ellen

Back to program


Agile Coaching Growth Wheel

What is it? How to use it? What are my experiences?

Frederik Vannieuwenhuyse

How are you doing in your agile coaching? The Agile coaching growth wheel gives a view of Agile coaching competency skills. The wheel allows you to reflect and grow on your agile journey. I'll share the model, how to use it and my experiences.

Goal of the session:After this session, I learned about this model, how I can use it, and how to get started.
Expected experience:real-life experience in Scrum Mastering, Agile Coaching, …
Session Type:30 min short experience report (30 min)

Agile coaching is a profession entangling different skills, competencies, and stances. The Agile Coaching wheel came into existence to Professionalize the World of Agile Coaching and help answer "what competencies are needed for a successful agile coach?"

How are you doing in your agile coaching? The Agile coaching growth wheel gives a view of Agile coaching competency skills. The wheel allows you to reflect and grow on your agile journey. The Agile coaching growth wheel originated from the agile community (http://whatisagilecoaching.org/agile-coaching-growth-wheel/) and nowadays is endorsed by the Scrum Alliance (https://resources.scrumalliance.org/Article/agile-coaching-growth-wheel)

I'll share the model, how to use it and my experiences. You can use the model for your learning journey and explain and mentor others about agile coaching. We can also discuss how organisations can use this model to support Scrum Masters, Team Coaches, and Team Leads in their growth.

Back to program


max
20

How to solve the mystery of better refinements?

How a lateral thinking game can improve refinements

Eddy Bruin
& jordann@theseriousgamers.com

Get ready for a game that only takes you 10 minutes to get your team ready to refine like a detective solving the most complex crime.

Goal of the session:Become better at refinements while having fun
Intended audience:Marieke, Bram, Georges, Joke, Ellen
Expected experience:None
Session Type:60 min experiential learning session

Refining can be very helpful in determining what a new feature is about. So it's an event to uncover the unknown, the question what's meant by certain desires of how a system works. How do you suppport your team to be open-minded and unbiased when refining? Are your teams just racing through the refinement just to discover to have loads of questions while implementing them? Or even worse; resulting in quite some bugs?

Get ready for a game that only takes you 10 minutes to get your team ready to refine like a detective solving the most complex crimes.

Black stories are dark riddles to be explored and solved. The players ask the game master questions to unravel what happened in this riddle. This little card game is a great tool to create a collaborative mind to lateral thinking. A skill to let you explore requirements and user stories. It's a perfect opener to host a refinement session of any sort.

In this session Jordann and Eddy will guide you to facilitate this game and get the best out of your team.

Session takeaways

• Know how to activate a team for a refinement session/requirement review

• Understand what lateral thinking is

• Tricks to improve refinements

• A 10 minute game that impacts your refinements

Marieke  is part of a team that delivers product software on a regular basis and has started to use some agile techniques. She feels it doesn't really work in her situation. She hopes she can hear from real people in real teams how they have been practicing these things, and which problems occurred in their situation, and what kind of consequences that had for them.
Marieke

Bram has never missed an XP Days. Bram likes the XP Days because of the friendly and informal atmosphere. Every year he goes back to work from XP Days full of energy, with a bag full of new ideas and techniques.
Bram

Georges is a stressed project manager. He's heard that agile projects are more effective, more fun and rewarding.  He doubts if everything he's heard is true. But what if it is...?
Georges

Joke is a product manager for a succesful product company. Joke finds it hard to talk to the development team, to make them understand what she needs in the product. Joke hopes to meet some developers and other product managers who can help her and give her some tips.
Joke

Ellen is an agile coach. She wants to learn and share new ideas and experience of techniques that work. She comes to XP Days because of its friendly and collaborative atmosphere.
Ellen

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Fifty Shades of TDD

Driving development with more than examples

Arnaud Bailly

A live-coding introduction to X-Driven Development where X ∈ { Types, Properties, Mutations }

Goal of the session:(re)discover new techniques and tools that can be applied to daily coding
Intended audience:Hank, Jan, Bram, but where are the testers?
Session Type:60 min hands on coding/design/architecture session

Test-Driven Development is a cornerstone of XP and a great way to grow software incrementally and safely. But as it's been advocated on numerous occasions, the word "Test" in TDD is misleading: It's not really "testing" we do here, it's using automated execution of sample test cases to define short term goals and thus frame our development effort.

Examples are necessary to understand the "shape" of the problem-solution space but they suffer from a few shortcomings:

  • Their enumerative nature makes them somewhat unexpressive, verbose, and hard to link to the actual problem one is trying to solve,
  • They are hardly adequate to build confidence in the robustness of the proposed solution.

This session introduces the audience to different ways of driving one's design or coding effort:

  • How to use more precise type systems to "Make impossible states unrepresentable" thus reducing the coding (hence testing) space to explore,
  • How to define and run automated properties, aka. Property-Based Testing, that both drive development and increase confidence in the written code,
  • How to use Sample Mutations to refine naive code and make it more resilient.

I will expose the principles and practices live coding a concrete and realistic example drawn from our day-to-day life, namely the validation of French social security number.

Jan is an experienced programmer. He comes to XP Days to get tips and tricks from experts and to learn about the latest trends in continuous integration and automated testing.
Jan

Bram has never missed an XP Days. Bram likes the XP Days because of the friendly and informal atmosphere. Every year he goes back to work from XP Days full of energy, with a bag full of new ideas and techniques.
Bram

Hank is a motivated and experienced software engineer cum system architect who spends his days knee deep in the quagmires of enterprise automation. He comes to the XP Days to share with and learn from like-minded colleagues.
Hank

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Making a tanker turn: Agility in the medical device industry

Our journey of introducing agility into large scale hardware development in big cooperate structures

Erika Schüttfort
& Joost Zeilstra

Join us when we share our experience of adapting agile and lean methodologies for developing products as business units in a large medical device cooperation. We will share challenges we have had when adapting iterative development of large scale automation machines that require hardware and software as well as regulatory and quality system to work together. We will also share experiences of using self selection to set up new agile roles and teams as well as adapting governance and management structures.

Goal of the session:Inspiration, courage and curiosity
Intended audience:ideally all of them to get variation of questions
Expected experience:every level
Session Type:30 min short experience report (30 min)

We are all tempted by the fruits of agility, this is why the agile manifesto has found its way into so many other pockets beyond the software development where it originated. Being part of a big healthcare cooperation as well as producing large scale machines poses an interesting challenge on how to reach the alluring agile mindset and execution when simply scrum doesn’t suffice to address the complexity. We will go through the journey so far in two small business units of the large cooperation that have ventured into scaling agility, what have been our learnings so far when implementing SW and HW skills in agile teams, changes to how we work with strategy and new concepts around roles and leadership that were necessary to enable moving towards more agility. We will also share our concepts and ideas on how to bring organizations towards value stream structures and thereby more clearly bringing the powerful tools of LEAN into play.

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Design and Reality

Mathias Verraes

How introducing novel abstractions in the design can reframe the problem.

Goal of the session:Insight into the design process.
Session Type:short experience report (30 min)

Domain models, user stories, examples, capabilities… Good software designers know that we need models to capture a deep understanding of the problem domain and turn it into well working applications. But sometimes it's not enough. We may need to introduce new elements, new metaphors, novel abstractions in our design, that didn't come from the domain experts or the users. I'll tell some stories of cases where we solved problems by creating a software design that was at odds with the reality.

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ADHDeveloper

What are the similarities between development teams and people with ADHD? Let's find out!

Dietrich Moerman

In this experience report I will tell a personal tale of being a software developer with ADHD, what I discovered and learnt being a tech team lead, and how I myself could apply the same principles and techniques in my personal life.

Goal of the session:You will become aware of the (traits of) neurodivergent people in your team(s), how they may have personal struggles, and what can help them and the team overcome this. You will also learn how some agile and lean practices can be generalized to help both a team as well as a person struggling with ADHD.
Intended audience:Jan, Marieke, Leo, Georges, Vincent, Ellen
Expected experience:Beginner
Session Type:30 min short experience report (30 min)

Some call ADHD a blessing, some call it living hell, … The truth – as usual – is somewhere in the middle. Having ADHD has its downsides that one learns to recognize, accept and work around, all while leveraging the upsides to the benefit of yourself, your team and your company or employer.

Since getting my diagnosis of ADHD I went through a series of hurdles and personal discoveries, including on focus and self-motivation, that reminded me of the typical software development team in today's tech company. For example, the team's focus is all over the place, there's a lot of starting but less finishing, and they may lack a shared vision or strategy.

After learning how to improve these matters for the team as a lead developer in a couple of companies, I also had to admit I could take my own learnings and apply them in my personal life.

Jan is an experienced programmer. He comes to XP Days to get tips and tricks from experts and to learn about the latest trends in continuous integration and automated testing.
Jan

Marieke  is part of a team that delivers product software on a regular basis and has started to use some agile techniques. She feels it doesn't really work in her situation. She hopes she can hear from real people in real teams how they have been practicing these things, and which problems occurred in their situation, and what kind of consequences that had for them.
Marieke

Leo has been around forever. He has seen everything, done everything. He wants to go to XP Days because he thinks it's an excellent opportunity to meet with a lot of young, smart and enthusiastic  people.
Leo

Georges is a stressed project manager. He's heard that agile projects are more effective, more fun and rewarding.  He doubts if everything he's heard is true. But what if it is...?
Georges

Vincent is the IT manager of a large company. The CEO has asked him to propose a plan to increase the efficiency of his department by 10%  in the next two years. He comes to the XP Days to get a taste of what "agile" can offer him.
Vincent

Ellen is an agile coach. She wants to learn and share new ideas and experience of techniques that work. She comes to XP Days because of its friendly and collaborative atmosphere.
Ellen

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max
100

From Zero to Hero

The story of Dstny's agile evolution

Chris Parker
& nick.bosmans@dstny.be

The hero's journey of Dstny… so far. Dstny has grown rapidly from a Belgian telecommunications challenger to a European communications software group. We are on a journey of agile evolution across industry boundaries and country culture gaps.

Goal of the session:Discover how we have embarked on our journey and perhaps give us some tips for the future!
Intended audience:Leaders of any type introducing the agile mindset…
Expected experience:None
Session Type:30 min short experience report (30 min)

The hero's journey of Dstny.

Dstny is the leading European challenger for Secure Cloud Communication services. This is an adventurous story of challenges and creativity, baby steps and big leaps, pitfalls and fun.

Founded by two Belgian brothers, Dstny is set to become the next billion euro unicorn in Europe. We are bringing together over 20 acquisitions across multiple countries to create an organisation that is simplicity obsessed.

Each company that has joined the group was already agile, cross-functional and entrepreneurial. Our challenge is to keep this energy while harmonising into a multi-national learning organisation. What could possibly go wrong?

We will share with you our approach to introduce Agile into the group and what we've learned so far – both the beautiful and the painful. We would love some insights from the participants to help us craft the next steps on our journey!

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Agile 4.0, agile at scale: the long learning journey of Telenet’s Agile Way of Working

The inspirational story of Telenet becoming Agile as a whole

Philippe Van Negen
& Evan@ideator.be

Intended audience:Leo, Bram, Philippe, Vincent, Hank
Expected experience:understand agile basics and big corporations
Session Type:30 min short experience report (30 min)

It will be a story to listen to

going 3 years back in time and at least one year in the future.

If you want to know what type of scaled agile tools we used in Telenet

how we failed fast in trying them out

how we introduced solutions in a complex environments, often influencing the environment itself.

how we navigated in such a system, certainly not linearly,

than this session will help you learn a lot!

Leo has been around forever. He has seen everything, done everything. He wants to go to XP Days because he thinks it's an excellent opportunity to meet with a lot of young, smart and enthusiastic  people.
Leo

Bram has never missed an XP Days. Bram likes the XP Days because of the friendly and informal atmosphere. Every year he goes back to work from XP Days full of energy, with a bag full of new ideas and techniques.
Bram

Philippe comes to XP Days because his boss told him to go. He doesn't really care, because going to this conference means that he will be away from the hectic chaos in the office for 2 days.
Philippe

Vincent is the IT manager of a large company. The CEO has asked him to propose a plan to increase the efficiency of his department by 10%  in the next two years. He comes to the XP Days to get a taste of what "agile" can offer him.
Vincent

Hank is a motivated and experienced software engineer cum system architect who spends his days knee deep in the quagmires of enterprise automation. He comes to the XP Days to share with and learn from like-minded colleagues.
Hank

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Presenters

Geert Van Aken

Geert Van Aken

"It takes more than a delighted customer to classify a project as successful. The journey to achieve that delightment should be as wonderful as well."

An agile mindset and an environment in which it is safe to think for yourself and to experiment are both necessary to let people fully connect with their work. As an Agile Coach or Scrum Master, I make it my goal to create those conditions for my teams and the companies I work for.

I strongly believe that people are able to organize themselves in ways beyond their

imagination and that respectfully tapping into the collective wisdom of the group is

one of the most beautiful things that can happen during a collaboration.



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Bastiaan De Brock

Bastiaan De Brock

Hi,

I am born in Ghent, lived for 8 years in Dendermonde and recently moved to Doorslaar.

You will hear in my accent that I'm from Ghent, my birthplace and a city I'm very fond of.

Today I live in Doorslaar, a small town North of Lokeren.

I am a father of 2 kids, a girl of 5 and a boy of 3.

I started working about 18 years ago as a pastry chef/chocolatier.

After 2 years I started working as a team-lead in a callcenter for a telco company called BASE.

1 year later, I switched to become a salesperson at the competition, Proximus.

In a short time I discovered that back then Proximus was a very rigid company with a strict hierachy and a vast structure.

Since I still knew a couple people at BASE, I knew there was a job opening to become a shop manager for a BASE shop in Ghent. A job I did for about 9 years. During this time I discovered that coaching people to guide them in becoming even better versions of themselves was something I wanted to do more.

So, 2 years after the takeover from BASE by Telenet I applied (3 years ago) for the role of Scrum Master and have never regreted my choice.

My biggest motivation in life is to learn, gain knowledge and to experiment with these learnings in real life.



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Per Beining

Per Beining

Twitter: @perbeining

Per is a Scrum Master. Teacher. Coach. For teams and individuals, on all organisational levels.

Former colleagues, customers and teams often refer to him as "probably Denmark's best Team coach".

Per is a well-known face in many of the agile circles in Denmark and around Europe. Typically known for his infectious mood and happy energy.

Per is passionate about helping create good, well-functioning, stable and happy teams. Something that from his perspective often starts with someone who has understood what leadership is all about and who wants to help his team members and colleagues live this to the fullest.

Per teaches Courses targeted at Product Owners, Scrum Masters, Facilitators, Requirement Writers and real humans. One could say his knowledge is broad and versatile when the subject is related to Agile and Scrum.

Per has worked with Agile, Scrum and team development for the past 21 years, within most industries and at most levels. He is often to be found at Danish and international conferences and coach camps, as a speaker or participant.



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Rikke Thomsen Kornby

Website: http://www.ugilic.dk



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Koen Vastmans

Koen Vastmans

Website: https://www.simu-learn.net

Twitter: @koen_v

I started my carreer in IT in 1992 as a developer. After being involved in several development environments, using different technologies (mainly Java based) in different business entities, I switched to training and coaching in 2011, initially focusing on modeling and design, later on agile. I was full time agile trainer and coach for about 6 years, when I decided I wanted to be more involved with technical stuff again. So in 2018 I started focusing on processes in a DevOps context: just technically enough to understand what's going on, without the need to actually do it hands-on. But once agile coach, always agile coach? So in that same year I started developing my first serious game, together with a former colleague (the Scrumban simulation). At the end of 2019 I started my secondary occupation offering training products and services using games and simulations. With my second game, Build-Run-Improve-Repeat, a game about DevOps, I hosted a session on the last edition of the XPDays conference.



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Linda van Sinten

Linda van Sinten

Website: http://www.creativeelephant.nl

Linda van Sinten is an experienced freelance Scrum Master/Agile Coach and creator of the Liberating Structures Visual design cards. She combines her knowledge of Scrum with the powerful skill of creating visualizations and visual tools to drive teams forward. With her company Creative Elephant she has trained over 500 people in making powerful visuals out of ideas, structuring strategies and product visions in Tech, Healthcare and other industries.

Her vision is that everyone has a creative part inside of them, waiting to be ignited. She is eager to help release a spark to trigger creativity in everyone. Her power lies in making complex things look simpler and easier to grasp by clear and to the point visualizations.



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Robert van Lieshout

Robert van Lieshout

Website: https://www.pragmaticall.nl

Robert is a compassionate agilist, coach and facilitator, with a love for happy people and high standards. He combines excellent theoretical knowledge with a pragmatic approach and deep respect for the people he works with. He has trained hundreds of people in Scrum and related practices.

A good way to get Robert started is to offer him a beer or a board game.



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Jan de Vries

Jan de Vries

Website: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jandevries/

About

Jan de Vries is a senior trainer, business IT consultant, coach, researcher and public speaker in the fields of Agile, DevOps, Business Information Management, Antifragility and Strategy Development.

He (co-)founded:

– BlueOceanRecon.com to facilitate the development of Blue Oceans and Lean Startups.

– Antifragility.works to conduct research on the practical application of antifragility in organisations.

– GRCinAgile.com to explore common ground between Agile/DevOps teams and Governance, Risk & Compliance.



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Cédric Pontet

Cédric Pontet

Website: https://www.agilepartner.net/

Twitter: @cpontet

Cédric is a seasoned software expert and Agile/Lean coach. He started his software engineering career in 2001 and since 2005, has been happily employed at Agile Partner, where he has worked with a large variety of customers both in public and private sectors.

He is now helping teams on matters such as software architecture, cloud computing, Agile, Lean, and DevOps. Defining himself as curious and pragmatic, Cédric is proud to be part of different communities (Agile, Domain-Driven Design, EventStorming, Sketchnoting) and enjoys mixing these influences to bring people together.

Cédric is a speaker at conferences such as Build Stuff, Voxxed Days, KanDDDinsky, Agile Grenoble and FlowCon. He is also the co-founder of #play14, a worldwide gathering of like-minded people who believe that play is the best way to learn, share and be creative.



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Philippe Bourgau

Philippe Bourgau

Website: https://philippe.bourgau.net

Twitter: @pbourgau

eXtreme Programming coach and sustainable pace Hacktivist!

Life is too short for boring stuff! So I help software engineers to reach a productive and sustainable pace through continuous refactoring of their code and organization.



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Yoan Thirion

Yoan Thirion

Website: https://yoan-thirion.gitbook.io/knowledge-base/

Twitter: @yot88

I am passionate about agility and liberated organizations.

I became addicted to agility from my first reading of the manifesto and am firmly convinced that the only way to work is by considering people as individuals in their own right and no longer as "resources".

My personal aspiration is to help as many teams as possible to deliver in the best possible conditions by helping them develop their capabilities.



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Stefan Vanlokeren

Stefan Vanlokeren

I passionately like to explore how collaboration between different people could make a positive impact.



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Jurgen Maus

I had the luck to start my professional live in a fantastic team. A team full of energy, realizing our projects, looking for the better way and just having fun.

Over the years that feeling disappeared…

I was lucky to get in touch with some fantastic people that just opened my eyes. A moment that changed my life.

I’m passionate to change the world… I want everyone to get the experience to work in a fantastic team. To feel the motivation, to feel the energy, to feel having a purpose. I coach, I teach, I learn and above all I share all the insights I gather that lead to a positive environment.



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Frederik Vannieuwenhuyse

Frederik Vannieuwenhuyse

Website: http://www.ilean.be

I work as a Scrum Master, Agile Coach, facilitator, and educator.

I work at iLean: http://www.ilean.be.

If you want to know more about my background, studies, certifications, experiences, interests … connect with me on http://linkedin.com/in/frederikvannieuwenhuyse/ and my professional activities, check https://value-first.be/.

Happy to listen to you and reflect! How can I help you today?

Frederik is also XP Days Benelux co-organizer, Agile Consortium Belgium board member, and event organizer at the Agile Belgium meetup.



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Eddy Bruin

Eddy Bruin

Website: Https://www.theseriousgamers.com

Twitter: @eddybruin

For many years Eddy & Jordann have been using serious games and learning metaphors in their coaching. They have facilitated and created games that advocate agile to move teams forward.



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jordann@theseriousgamers.com



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Arnaud Bailly

Arnaud Bailly

Website: https://abailly.github.io

Twitter: @dr_c0d3



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Erika Schüttfort

Erika Schüttfort

Website: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erika-sch%C3%BCttfort-7349a03/

I am originally Swedish but really consider myself a European: I started my engineering physics education in Sweden, continued part of the masters in Munich, did my master thesis in Switzerland/Lichtenstein and my Phd degree in England. I now work in Germany, Thank god for EU! 🙂

For almost a decade I have been working in various areas with focus on enabling cross functional teams; establishing cross-functional teams, developing a PMO organization into an agile transformation for the business, moving towards overall organizational development. I thrive on supporting classical structured businesses to find new ways of moving towards agility. I also have a keen interest in adjusting scaling up smaller start ups to avoid imposing classical structures and thwart the innovation and agility.

My professional career has been solely in the medical device industry and I have a passion for being in areas that deliver and optimize solutions aimed to in the end benefit a peoples life's.



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Joost Zeilstra

Joost Zeilstra

R&D Director/Site leader of BD Kiestra Lab automation,

22 years of experience in the development of physical products (combining software, electronics and mechanics) in roles as SW developer, architect, project manager and functional management. Now leading an R&D department of 100+FTE developing innovative medical devices. I have been using agile methods in software development since 2005 and am always trying to use Agile/Scrum effectively in the mechanical and electrical product development domain.



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Mathias Verraes

Website: https://verraes.net

Twitter: @mathiasverraes

Mathias Verraes is the founder of Aardling, a boutique consultancy that advises organisations on designing software for complex environments. Mathias' focus is on design strategy and messaging-centric domain modelling.

He has worked with clients in Finance, Government, Supply Chain, Mobility, Energy, E-Commerce, and more. He blogs about software design at verraes.net. Occasionally, he teaches public courses on Domain-Driven Design & messaging. Mathias is also the founder of the DDD Europe conference.

Mathias has a Masters in Music from the Royal Conservatory of Ghent, and is an autodidact on software. When he’s at home in Kortrijk, Belgium, he helps his two sons build crazy Lego contraptions.



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Dietrich Moerman

Dietrich Moerman

Website: https://bjien.be/

Twitter: @dietr_ch

I am a software engineering consultant, agile coach and advisor with 18 years of experience with developing web based (cloud) applications.

In 2021 I co-founded Bjièn, an independent consultancy helping tech startups and scaleups to build and maintain a healthy organisation. We introduce sustainable and holistic approaches for marketing, product management and software development.



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Chris Parker

Chris Parker

Website: http://dstny.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/simplycparker

Chris Parker is a business simplifier and digital accelerator.

His purpose is to create more joy and meaning in the workplace through the disciplined pursuit of simplicity.

He is currently an executive at Dstny and is the host of The Business Simplicity Podcast.



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nick.bosmans@dstny.be



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Philippe Van Negen

Philippe Van Negen

Website: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philippe-van-negen-17328a/

Obsessed to increase Flow!

I started my career as Flow Manager in Atlas Copco, reducing stock and increasing Flow in Compressor assembly lines.

Seven years later, I became the hero of my 3 children by becoming Technical Director in Studio100 !

Again, seven years layer, I joined Telenet via an ex Atlas Copco colleague to lead some great programs in Internet connectivity and in the Digital TV world.

Became PMO Lead and from there jumped in full force into the Agile world that Telenet entered:

After 10 tears of technological innovation and big project being pushed into our customers' houses, it was time for Telenet to become product, service and above all, customer centered .

I was lucky to be on the front row of all this as an active member of the Agile Transformation Team and as chapter lead of the brand new Scrum Master Chapter, growing the talent of over 80 internal and external Scrum masters across all departments of Telenet.

And the Telenet journey is far from over…



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Evan@ideator.be



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Participants

Jan
Jan

Jan has been working as a programmer for 5 years now. Jan loves to program. He knows a lot of languages, and a lot of tools. At work, he he is not always happy because the circumstances often force him to deliver the quality he knows he can reach. Jan explores new technologies and trends on the internet and in books and magazines. At night Jan contributes to an open source project together with 10 other guys, from all over the world. That's where he heard about agile methodologies. In the open source group, he is used to work with unit tests, but he hopes to get some real in-depth tips and tricks from experts at the XP Days conference. He is also interested to learn about the latest trends for continuous intergration tools and test automation.

Meet Jan at the following sessions

Marieke
Marieke

Marieke is part of a team that delivers product software on a regular basis. Several months ago, her team had an introductory training on extreme programming and scrum. Some of the ideas she learned about seemed interesting enough, but she is not sure if this methodology is applicable in their particular situation. After the course, some of her colleagues started to write unit tests, but there still are only a few, and they are not run very often, as far as Marieke can see. They also started to do a daily standup meeting, because according to the trainers that is a tool to enhance communication within the team. But these meetings are rather boring, and they tend to take 1/2 hour, every day. Team members are grumbling about wasting their time.

Marieke started to think all this agile stuff is only an unusable hype. But then she heard about XP Days, and she thought "well, let's give it another chance, if 150 people go to this conference, for 11 years in a row now, maybe there is more to it". She hopes she can hear from real people in real teams how they have applied these techniques, which problems occurred in their situation, and what kind of consequences that had for them.

Meet Marieke at the following sessions

Leo
Leo

Leo has been around forever. He has seen everything, done everything. Over the years, Leo has been working as a developer, as a project lead, as a tester, as an analyst, as a manager, and as a consultant. He knows from experience that everything comes back, if you only wait a few years. He has learned that the same problems and the same solutions have been invented and re-invented a hundred times in computer science. He has lived through the rise and fall of uncountable new technologies and methodogies. All of them brand new, all of them the one and only forever best way to make software. Leo wants to go to XP Days because he thinks it's an excellent opportunity to meet with a lot of young, smart and enthusiastic people.

Meet Leo at the following sessions

Bram
Bram

Bram has never missed an XP Days. He has been to several other conferences in Europe, and also attended quite a few bigger agile and other conferences. Bram likes the XP Days, because of the friendly and informal atmosphere. Every year he goes back to work from XP Days full of energy, with a bag full of new ideas and techniques.

Meet Bram at the following sessions

Philippe
Philippe

Philippe comes to XP Days because his boss told him to go. He has never heard about this agile stuff. He doesn't know what it is, or what it can be used for. He guesses it is something his boss wants to buy. He doesn't really care, because going to this conference means that he will be away from the hectic chaos in the office for 2 days.

mmm I think maybe it is not very useful for Philippe to come to the XP Days? -Vera

Why not? Let Philippe come, let him relax and have a beer and dinner with agile people. He might even attend some presentations. And, once he's relaxed, who knows what could happen? –Pascal

Meet Philippe at the following sessions

Georges
Georges

Georges is a project manager. His life is filled with stress, deadlines, difficult programmers, unhappy customers and demanding bosses. Sometimes he wonders if he's chosen the right career.

Lately, Georges has been hearing more and more about agile methods. Some of his ex-colleagues have converted from project management to agile coaching. They tell him tales of vibrant, exciting, fun projects where customers and developers live in perfect harmony. That can't be true. They must be exaggerating. Or are they….?

Meet Georges at the following sessions

Vincent
Vincent

Vincent is the IT manager of a large company. His teams don't do too badly. Some projects are allright; some don't fully satisfy their users. The CEO has asked him to propose a plan to increase the efficiency of his department by 10% in the next two years. So, Vincent looks around for solutions that might help him to create and implement the plan. He has looked at a lot of things: processes, tools, consultants… He's heard that some other companies (even some reputable companies) have had success with "agile" methods, so he comes to the XP Days to get a taste of what "agile" can offer him. He doesn't know what to expect. Hippy surfer dudes? 18 year old wizz kids with piercings? Greybearded hackers? Oh well… What does he have to lose?

Meet Vincent at the following sessions

Joke
Joke

Joke is a product manager for a succesful product company. Joke understands her customers needs, she has lots of ideas for new features that would enhance the product. She knows that this product really enhances its user's lives. That's one of the reasons her company is so succesful. But they have trouble keeping up with customer demand. Joke finds it hard to talk to the development team, to make them understand what she needs in the product. If only she and the development team could work together more efficiently, they could make this product make more of a difference. Maybe this "agile" stuff can help? How does product management work in agile projects? Joke hopes to meet some developers and other product managers who can help her and give her some tips.

Meet Joke at the following sessions

Hank
Hank

Hank is a motivated and experienced software engineer cum system architect who spends his days knee deep in the quagmires of enterprise automation. Appalled and bemused by the shocking waste of time, money, and people, he does his best to bring the joy back in the life of those around him by introducing agile methodologies wherever he sees the opportunity. Hank comes to the XP Days to share with and learn from like-minded colleagues.

Meet Hank at the following sessions

Ellen
Ellen

Ellen is an agile coach. She's been using agile methods for a few years now. XP, SCRUM, Lean… it doesn't matter much to her. She's more interested in doing things that matter to deliver value for her customers. She wants to work with a happy team, doing meaningful work.

Ellen wants to learn new ideas and share experience of techniques that work. She comes to XP Days because of its friendly and collaborative atmosphere.

Meet Ellen at the following sessions