Category Archives: Highlights

30 Mar

Remote Classrooms: three things we’ve learned

Suddenly both trainers and participants find themselves unable to travel or even stuck at home entirely. Luckily, we’ve come prepared: we’re thrilled to introduce Gladwell Academy’s Remote Classrooms! With adapted content and pacing to allow digital delivery of our courses in SAFe in Agile Scrum and Kanban and in information management, your professional learning journey is continues fully adapted to digital interaction! Tried and true platforms Our instructors at Gladwell... Learn more

26 Mar

Herbert Schönebeck: “Typical mistakes when starting an Agile transformation”

At this year’s upcoming Agile for Hardware conference hosted by Gladwell Academy, Herbert Schönebeck from Co-Improve is planning an interactive workshop where he will offer a deep-dive into the typical problems encountered during an Agile transformation. Expert on Hardware and Agility Herbert describes how he spent “over twenty-five years in various functions within traditional line-organizations, where I was responsible for a wide variety of different projects. In 2017 I made the... Learn more

17 Mar

Remote Classrooms: distant locations, nearby learnings

Suddenly both trainers and participants find themselves unable to travel or even stuck at home entirely. Luckily, we’ve come prepared: we’re thrilled to introduce Gladwell Academy’s Remote Classrooms! With adapted content and pacing to allow digital delivery of our courses in SAFe (private only) in Agile Scrum and Kanban and in information management (both private and open), your professional learning journey is continues fully adapted to digital... Learn more

12 Mar

Andres Jansen: “Organizations often run on distrust; RTEs should change that.”

Andres Jansen, Founder and Chairman of the RTE Summit (EU & Americas) and an experienced RTE himself explores the ‘culture of distrust’ that he says exists in most organizations. RTEs can be instrumental in founding a new ‘philosophy of trust and cooperation’. Cutting your teeth as an RTE Andres bases his perspective on the RTE role from over 15 years working with Agile practices and various frameworks. He launched over a dozen Agile Release Trains (ART) around the globe... Learn more

11 Mar

The Agile Coach Toolkit

The responsibilities of the Agile Coach are many and diverse. Hence, the ‘ Agile Coach Toolkit’ for the AC is equally diverse! Here’s my own take on the collection of skills and best practices that every Agile Coach should employ. It ranges from to ‘how to start out as an Agile Coach’, to Agile Coaching techniques, and to the Agile Coach’s role as a facilitator - to name a few. Supercharge your organization’s Agile transformation with these Agile Coach ‘tools.’ Building my... Learn more

11 Mar

Richard de Hoop: “From Classical to Jamming”

Inspirational speaker and entert®ainer Richard de Hoop is offering a sneak peek into this year’s Agile Coach Conference on June 24th. Expect to be entertrained as you learn to harmonize with your team as never before. Richard de Hoop: A ‘Classical’ Agile Entertainer With over 25 years of experience in 17 different countries, Richard has been using his talent for music and words to inspire collaboration and resilience in others. He is regularly sought after by organizations... Learn more

08 Mar

Partner CO-Improve is ‘a natural fit’ with Gladwell Academy

To build a consultancy firm that embodies values like appreciation and trust. That combines industry, product development and transformation competence. To irreversibly improve – rather, ‘co-improve’ - complex industries that they know inside-out. That was the goal of founder and managing partner Dirk Meissner, some eight years ago in 2012. Three years ago, they added SAFe to the range of improvement frameworks that they practice – and today Gladwell Academy CEO Miranda Goossens... Learn more

06 Mar

Ali Hajou, the youngest SPCT ever: “On the crusade to cut the bull*!”

Ali Hajou has just recently received his SAFe® Program Consultant Trainer (SPCT) certification, making him the youngest person to receive Scaled Agile’s highest certification. Here’s how he reflects on his journey towards SAFe grand wizardry. Doing things differently Ali has been working to advance Agility since 2009, when he noticed how, at a pharmaceuticals company, “passionate people eager to develop new medicines spent the majority of their time developing documents instead of end... Learn more

04 Mar

Saahil Panikar: “Compromise in the changing demands of PI Planning.”

Certified SPCT Saahil Panikar of Icon Agility Services is planning a workshop at the RTE Summit Americas. The pitch: a deep-dive into the conflicts of communication and visualization that take place between teams during PI planning events. Saahil being an expert in virtually every aspect of working within an Agile framework, we expect an exciting, informative moment. An RTE with ‘rock star’ status? Saahil has over 10 years of experience with Agile, working with SAFe since 2014, and time... Learn more

27 Feb

Maaike Klasen: “Ethics in Agile Coaching.”

Maaike Klasen, an experienced Agile Coach and Scrum Master, gives us an idea of the workshop she intends to host at the Agile Coach Conference, upcoming June 24th in Amsterdam. With a topic of “Ethics in Agile Coaching”, you can expect a deep dive into how to balance the tightrope of transparency and confidentiality within an Agile organization. Who is Maaike? Maaike began her career as an Educational Psychologist and Play Therapist but it wasn’t long before she found herself... Learn more

24 Feb

Calling US based RTEs and Super Scrum Masters to New York: June 19, NYC

After four successful editions of the RTE Summit in Europe, we’re taking this event to the United States: RTE Summit Americas! As the first and only event to focus entirely on building best practices for the role of the Release Train Engineers and Scrum Masters at scale, Gladwell Academy and Scaled Agile are bringing this event to the Western hemisphere. Andres Jansen, chairman of the previous Summits will host the Summit in New York City on the June 19th. Why are... Learn more

11 Feb

Sicco Maathuis: “Connect the data, connect the people”

Our first presenter to highlight for the Agile Coach Conference is Sicco Maathuis, who has worked at Dutch market leading companies such as Ahold, Nike and PostNL. He explains why he looks forward to the Conference, and a bit of what he plans to share. “It’s an exciting time for roles like the Agile Coach – so it’s also a good time to visit this event. Companies and organizations are getting used to the idea. We need someone who doesn’t fall into the conventional... Learn more

11 Feb

Your Route to RTE – Part 2: How far will you go?

In a role as newly-minted as that of SAFe Release Train Engineer there are still few practicing, certified RTEs, and no prescribed or clearly-defined career paths to becoming RTE. But there are trends in the pathways to this very significant senior role according to Andres Jansen, Senior Trainer, interim RTE at ASML and Founder of the RTE Summit. And right now, the two main career routes to becoming RTE are via the program side (PM, PL and the like); or from the (Advanced) Scrum Master... Learn more

06 Feb

“Shorter time-to-market? Too expensive.”

Making a physical product is always at risk of becoming a game of risk avoidance. Time and time again, we hear people in hardware manufacturing industries say ‘our production process is too expensive to change on a dime’. You know what’s more expensive, though? Not changing when you should. Of course, it’s true that you won’t happily throw away hundreds of thousands worth in casting dies or millions in production lines, just because you had an epiphany. But that casting die and the... Learn more

15 Jan

What Lean, Agile and SAFe have in common – and what sets them apart

Both Agile and Lean thinking have been around for more than decade now, and they’re arguably the most popular reasons for large organizations to review the way they work. Though the two terms regularly bounce around together in conversations, there are significant differences between the two. And both their mutual and their specific benefits meet each other in the Scaled Agile Framework. Here’s how. The mother of all Agile methodologies It might be nice to begin with the... Learn more

13 Jan

First Agile Coach Conference: “Building the knowledge exchange”

The number of people who call themselves ‘Agile coach’ has exploded in recent years. For Gladwell Academy, reason enough to step up and build a platform for knowledge exchange in this diverse discipline. First order of business: the first Agile Coach Conference on 24 June ’20. A place to meet and become immersed in the profession. Chairwoman Renate Cremer, experienced trainer of Agile coaches, dives into the agenda. Why an Agile Coach Conference? “With... Learn more

19 Dec

Living the Lean-Agile mindset – Anand Murthy Raj

After delivering a most inspiring keynote presentation on the Lean-Agile mindset at this year’s RTE Summit, SPCT Anand Murthy Raj joins us to further explain how to successfully embrace the Lean-Agile mindset and the success that flows from it. What do you mean by calling it a mindset? “When we talk about the Agile mindset, it’s important to understand that a mindset is a personal belief system. Very often when we are faced with a problem, we think that only one solution... Learn more

18 Dec

“Scrum Masters: upgrade your skill set with Agile coaching.”

Maaike Klasen and Renate Cremer are both experienced Agilists. Maaike is an experienced Scrum Master with extensive coaching capabilities who is involved with the International Coaching Federation, as well as working with Scrum.org; Renate Cremer, on the other hand, an ICF-certified Agile trainer and coach at Gladwell Academy who also put together the 12-day in-depth Agile Coach course. Together, they’re going to explore the Agile Coaching discipline. This first edition: the Scrum master as... Learn more

17 Dec

Give engineers problems, not instructions

We don’t apply Agile ways to make the simple stuff. We use Agile because what we create is hard. By that, I mean those hardware manufacturers that seek to apply Agile ways of working are usually in complex manufacturing industries: automotive, semiconductors, medical tech. Embracing Agility in such industries is very advisable, and indeed many are attempting this in some way. But it does come with its own manual. Here’s a page from my book. Hardware development comes down to... Learn more

14 Nov

RTE Summit 2019: “…inspirational.”

Yesterday’s LinkedIn post by Bengt Magnus Dyrkorn of EVRY/Tieto just about sums it up for us: “…two super exiting days at the yearly RTE Summit in Amsterdam.…really inspirational talks and presentations on a variety of subjects.” Thanks, Bengt! He also mentions some of the most ear-catching topics covered: measuring of value delivery, improving flow and value throughput in product development; enhancing predict ability and how to create energy when speaking to big... Learn more