I had the pleasure of working with Johan for about a year at the start of my career as a software engineer. When Johan joined our team, it was not in a great shape: everyone was working in their own silo and it took a long time to develop new features. I even had my own personal planning because I couldn't make sense of the team’s JIRA board. During his first week in the team, Johan proposed a vision on how to move forward and fix our many issues. Initially, I was sceptical, as I had seen team leaders talk about big changes before, only for them never to leave the slideware stage. But Johan took a different approach: he immediately took a hands-on approach, working together with the team to set up the new system, hear our concerns, and he was open to making changes. Over the next few months, our teamwork improved, planning got better, and the overall morale of the team got much better. And we did all this on a very challenging project. Johan is well-versed in agile theory, but he doesn't leave it at that: he truly embodies the idea that practice comes before the theory. I never felt like we were doing something because that is how it is supposed to be done; we always did things because they made sense. That is what I liked most about working with Johan: there was a healthy sense of pragmatism. Our goal was to get stuff done! During my time with Johan, he filled many different roles: scrummaster, project leader, coordinator for the production environment, but I never had the impression we didn’t have his full attention. He delegated the right tasks but was always there when you needed him for something. I genuinely learnt a lot from him about leadership and project planning. When Johan left us to move on to other projects, a lot of the concepts he introduced stayed because they just made sense. Whenever I start with a new team or on a new project, I still think back on the lessons Johan taught us.

Met Johan zette ik reeds einde 2017 de eerste stappen van (wat nu) Scaled Agile noemt. Hij was de metronoom van de organisatie, zette de toon en bleef steeds het ritme van de teams bewaken. Bij momenten deed hem dat pijn want Johan was en is er altijd als het er toe doet. Niet alleen is hij een excellente team coach, hij is ook niet vies om met de botten in de modder te staan. Opvolgen van productieflows, data orchestration, deploys, releases, ... Johan regelt het allemaal en zorgt er voor dat je nooit het overzicht verliest. Zelfs niet als het gaat over honderduizenden queries ... hij zal altijd zoeken naar een bevattelijke manier om de status weer te geven. Van 2017 tot vandaag (2021) kon ik op je rekenen, soms in zeer moeilijke omstandigheden. Dank je wel !

I had the pleasure of working with Johan for about a year at the start of my career as a software engineer. When Johan joined our team, it was not in a great shape: everyone was working in their own silo and it took a long time to develop new features. I even had my own personal planning because I couldn't make sense of the team’s JIRA board. During his first week in the team, Johan proposed a vision on how to move forward and fix our many issues. Initially, I was sceptical, as I had seen team leaders talk about big changes before, only for them never to leave the slideware stage. But Johan took a different approach: he immediately took a hands-on approach, working together with the team to set up the new system, hear our concerns, and he was open to making changes. Over the next few months, our teamwork improved, planning got better, and the overall morale of the team got much better. And we did all this on a very challenging project. Johan is well-versed in agile theory, but he doesn't leave it at that: he truly embodies the idea that practice comes before the theory. I never felt like we were doing something because that is how it is supposed to be done; we always did things because they made sense. That is what I liked most about working with Johan: there was a healthy sense of pragmatism. Our goal was to get stuff done! During my time with Johan, he filled many different roles: scrummaster, project leader, coordinator for the production environment, but I never had the impression we didn’t have his full attention. He delegated the right tasks but was always there when you needed him for something. I genuinely learnt a lot from him about leadership and project planning. When Johan left us to move on to other projects, a lot of the concepts he introduced stayed because they just made sense. Whenever I start with a new team or on a new project, I still think back on the lessons Johan taught us.

Met Johan zette ik reeds einde 2017 de eerste stappen van (wat nu) Scaled Agile noemt. Hij was de metronoom van de organisatie, zette de toon en bleef steeds het ritme van de teams bewaken. Bij momenten deed hem dat pijn want Johan was en is er altijd als het er toe doet. Niet alleen is hij een excellente team coach, hij is ook niet vies om met de botten in de modder te staan. Opvolgen van productieflows, data orchestration, deploys, releases, ... Johan regelt het allemaal en zorgt er voor dat je nooit het overzicht verliest. Zelfs niet als het gaat over honderduizenden queries ... hij zal altijd zoeken naar een bevattelijke manier om de status weer te geven. Van 2017 tot vandaag (2021) kon ik op je rekenen, soms in zeer moeilijke omstandigheden. Dank je wel !

I had the pleasure of working with Johan for about a year at the start of my career as a software engineer. When Johan joined our team, it was not in a great shape: everyone was working in their own silo and it took a long time to develop new features. I even had my own personal planning because I couldn't make sense of the team’s JIRA board. During his first week in the team, Johan proposed a vision on how to move forward and fix our many issues. Initially, I was sceptical, as I had seen team leaders talk about big changes before, only for them never to leave the slideware stage. But Johan took a different approach: he immediately took a hands-on approach, working together with the team to set up the new system, hear our concerns, and he was open to making changes. Over the next few months, our teamwork improved, planning got better, and the overall morale of the team got much better. And we did all this on a very challenging project. Johan is well-versed in agile theory, but he doesn't leave it at that: he truly embodies the idea that practice comes before the theory. I never felt like we were doing something because that is how it is supposed to be done; we always did things because they made sense. That is what I liked most about working with Johan: there was a healthy sense of pragmatism. Our goal was to get stuff done! During my time with Johan, he filled many different roles: scrummaster, project leader, coordinator for the production environment, but I never had the impression we didn’t have his full attention. He delegated the right tasks but was always there when you needed him for something. I genuinely learnt a lot from him about leadership and project planning. When Johan left us to move on to other projects, a lot of the concepts he introduced stayed because they just made sense. Whenever I start with a new team or on a new project, I still think back on the lessons Johan taught us.

Met Johan zette ik reeds einde 2017 de eerste stappen van (wat nu) Scaled Agile noemt. Hij was de metronoom van de organisatie, zette de toon en bleef steeds het ritme van de teams bewaken. Bij momenten deed hem dat pijn want Johan was en is er altijd als het er toe doet. Niet alleen is hij een excellente team coach, hij is ook niet vies om met de botten in de modder te staan. Opvolgen van productieflows, data orchestration, deploys, releases, ... Johan regelt het allemaal en zorgt er voor dat je nooit het overzicht verliest. Zelfs niet als het gaat over honderduizenden queries ... hij zal altijd zoeken naar een bevattelijke manier om de status weer te geven. Van 2017 tot vandaag (2021) kon ik op je rekenen, soms in zeer moeilijke omstandigheden. Dank je wel !