Kevin Thiels

Understanding the importance of MBTI

Do you have a list of complaints? You wish that your colleagues would understand better what you are going through. Or, for example, do you think people at work don’t take into account your full potential and possibilities?

The strength of MBTI

MBTI can help you to understand each other better. It is an assessment tool that separates people into 16 personality types. Each type has features, which distinguish it from others. This helps us to see strengths and weaknesses in real life and at work. The knowledge of differences will change the way we perceive ourselves and our relationships with others like family or friends or colleagues or bosses etc. Continue reading Understanding the importance of MBTI

Iterating during summer

You probably noticed that during summer vacations, items don’t fly to that ‘done’ column. In most cases, this is due to the absence of people. Not only the development team but also Product Owners take a vacation too.

This might directly lead to more blocking issues. *yikes*. Continue reading Iterating during summer

Working in Corona times

Most people in IT are working from home, or are very little at the office, during these Corona times. Myself, I’ve been a part of the teams, as the architect and/or coach, creating multiple MVP applications in a matter of days, for the Flemish government, to support companies survive this financial disaster by allowing them to request premiums.

Pulled out of the comfort zone of seeing a colleague’s face on a daily base, to an online video chat mimicking that feeling. The balance between working/personal life is put under pressure. Some people had their kids at home while still working.
Continue reading Working in Corona times

Treasure hunters

Treasure hunters is a theme you can use to make the retrospective even more fun. As the team uses the sprint goal as their treasure, they will highlight events within the iteration that were positive or negative and had an influence on the outcome of the iteration. Continue reading Treasure hunters

Being the Product Owner is a full time job

I often get the question from people that are starting a project how much time the Product Owner will spend on the project. Yes, this question mostly comes from the client side if the PO is assigned by them.

Being the Product Owner is a full time job.

Continue reading Being the Product Owner is a full time job

Creating a safe space

A team member that feels comfortable will speak his mind, leading to big advantages: the cause of a certain delay being found, the reason why a person was underperforming at one time,…

We often underestimate the value of these advantages. It doesn’t have to be hard to make people feel a bit more at home. Continue reading Creating a safe space

Emotional retrospecting

Emotional retrospecting is me trying to stimulate participants into talking more from a personal and emotional point of view.

So how did you feel about that? What did that do to you?

I have seen teams growing and understanding each other more after everyone heard what a certain event actually did to that person.

Continue reading Emotional retrospecting

Playing games

Working in a team means a couple of things:

Figuring out who can help you with what and vice versa.
Exposing your strengths and weaknesses to others.
Sharing
… And many more

When working together, it feels like you’re in a relationship, which it basically is. All good relationships have fundaments created together. It should not always be work. Doing fun things together thickens that bond.

Continue reading Playing games

Are we slowly killing Scrum?

Most companies I’ve seen implementing an Agile framework, are using Scrum.

I believe that Scrum is commonly used due to the fact that it’s pretty strict.
Meaning: You will do the Daily Scrum daily and according to its three key topics. You will have a retrospective at the end of each sprint and also come out with improvements that you can implement in the next iteration.

Companies that love processes, steps, following plans,… are likely to move towards Scrum for these reasons. At least from what I’ve seen. Continue reading Are we slowly killing Scrum?

The team’s superhero

Some development teams have a member that always saves the day, can handle any error and write a fix for it. I’m talking about the person you go to when you’re stuck with a logical programming issue.

These people are amazing and really can save the day.

But there is a pitfall. At least, it depends on the person. In this article I am calling the superhero the saviour who enjoys the attention of saving the day. While there is absolutely nothing wrong with that(! don’t get me wrong here), it might be unhealthy for the team. Continue reading The team’s superhero