Welcome to My Blog
My thoughts on Lean, Agile, psychology, creating businesses excellence & making people happy.
Where do you aim, deal or ideal? (subtitle: continuous customer-supplier alignment)
As we all know, projects are complex. That applies even more to ICT projects. The problem with complexity is that it creates unpredictability. We do not like unpredictability because both customer and supplier want to have a successful business case and need to know...
presentation published: The Two Largest Project Killers (in English)
I promised an English translation of my presentation 'The Two Largest Project Killers', so here it is. It is my strong belief that if everything else fails, removing fear and complexity increases the odds for success substantially. The two largest project killers View...
Comments are welcome (again!)
It seems I have to apologize. I've invited you all to share your thoughts and opinions on my blog, but it seems that comments are disabled the last couple of months. Comments are enabled again, so please don't hesitate to ask questions, to discuss what you...
When to trust your gut…. and when not
IT is thought to be a rational world. A world of facts and logic, of analysis and methods. Yet in my experience IT is far from rational. We all believe we are rational people where in fact, in my opinion, we often are rationalizing our beliefs: 'a process of...
Business & IT anti-patterns
I've seen it again and again, the same business & IT anti-patterns in organisations with an internal IT department. According to Wiki, an anti-pattern 'is a general reusable solution to a commonly occurring problem, but is ineffective and/or counterproductive in...
Cool Videos (and informative too!)
Jeff Sutherland brought this video about intrinsic motivation to my attention. (Thanks Jeff!). It's not only a very cool video, it's also very true. I've noticed that newbies from universities have lots of up to date knowledge, but haven't got a clue what's really...
Whitebook: Agile Business Case management (Dutch)
Today my (Dutch) Whitebook on Agile Business Case management is published here. This Whitebook explains why an agile approach is useful in determining the project validity within a PRINCE2 project and also explains how this works in combination with Scrum.
Two project killers (ome-b.nl)
My colleague Douwe Pieter van den Bos really was impressed by my last presentation and couldn't wait to share his thoughts on his blog. 😉 If you can't wait on my English translation please have a look at his post. There's lots more interesting stuff too 🙂
De twee grootste projectkillers
Yesterday I gave a presentation (in Dutch) on what I believe are the two most common reasons for projectfailure. I published the presentation on Slideshare. I'll try to post an English version the next few weeks. Twee projectkillers View more...
Book review: Corps Business: The 30 Management Principles of the U.S. Marines
It was a nice sunny day today and I finished 'Corps Business: The 30 Management Principles of the U.S. Marines' on the beach. The marines have to deal with life and death decisions in highly unpredictable and fast pacing situations. To cope with this they created...
Optimizing change processes with Value Stream Mapping
Value Stream Mapping is useful for optimizing processes, but not usually applied to change processes itself. There is a hidden opportunity here because determining and discussing the change process VSM also helps optimizing the change process. It helps determining what the change is all about (the value that should be created) and helps determining what parts of the change process create value and what parts don’t.
Scrum for maintenance? Old habits die hard.
After successfully completing a project with PRINCE2 and Scrum, it looks like maintenance will be done the traditional way. Strange, because Scrum still remains the best approach to software development.
Getting a cup of coffee with PRINCE2
PRINCE2 can easily be applied in a lightweight fashion. To illustrate this I’ve created the story of Pete and Jane.
Jane wants some coffee. Pete agrees to get some. Both use PRINCE2 without being aware of it.
Presentation ‘Agile Systeemontwikkeling Met Scrum’ (Dutch)
Last Thursday I gave a presentation about 'Agile system development with Scrum' to an audience of project managers, business consultants and more technically involved IT people. My main purpose was to provoke a 'paradigm change' since most...
Whitebook: PRINCE2 combined with Scrum
Last year I published a Whitebook in Dutch about the combination of PRINCE2 and Scrum. I also promised an English translation. It is long overdue, sorry about that, but finally here it is. Why combining PRINCE2 with Scrum? I think Scrum is great and we all should use...
Presentation knowledge session PRINCE2 with Scrum (Dutch) published
My (Dutch) presentation on the combination of PRINCE2 and Scrum is published on slideshare. One warning though. In 1.5 hours it isn't possible to explain all the details of both PRINCE2 and Scrum, so I didn't. I told a little bit about Scrum and almost nothing...
Where Gemba is found in projects
Three words: Gemba, Kaikaku, Kaizen. Gemba means 'the place truth can be found'. Kaikaku means 'radical improvement'. Kaizen means 'gradual improvement'. Projects are all about change. Usually we're talking about a large change (Kaikaku). That's why it's a project: a...
Published Whitebook ‘PRINCE2 + Scrum: 1 + 1 = 3’ (Dutch)
Yesterday I published my latest Whitebook 'PRINCE2 + Scrum: 1 + 1 = 3' (in Dutch) in which I make the case that PRINCE2 adds value to Scrum. This Whitebook is largely based on my presentation 'Agile results with PRINCE2 control', which in turn is based on my latest...