I provide Scrum Master support for scaled environments and single teams. As a certified Professional Scrum Master II™ my solutions comply to the newest Scrum Guide and follow the bottom-up approach.

My certification in Professional Scrum with Kanban I™ proofs that I can help teams to merge Scrum with Kanban to optimize their flow.

To be a Scrum Master signifies to be a team player which works with the developers and the Product Owner as equals to accomplish the goal of continuous team and product improvement.

Part of my role is the establishing of Scrum events like Sprint Planing, Dailies, Reviews and Retros to set the framework for the continuous improvement. I also support the Product Owner to take care of the Scrum Artifacts.

I adapt process and structural changes with a high focus on the needs of the stakeholders, the customers and the team.

Next to the known Scrum Events and Artifacts I have a wide tool set to make the Scrum process more efficient.

I help teams to define, to improve and to hold to the Definition of Ready and the Definition of Done.

My goal is to make my self as needless for the team and the stakeholders as possible.

I support stakeholders and Scrum team members in the agile transformation and the continual improvement process. Therefore I offer coaching, workshops, seminars and consultation to help you to self organize and to develop methods to become better.

Coaching means for me to work together with the client on one level. I don’t know beforehand what’s the best solution for the coached person or group. By the use of methods like active listening, re-framing, defining SMART goals or the introduction of “Objectives and Key Results” I facilitate the solution finding process.

As a certified and experienced mediator I use my knowledge to mediate the conflicts of groups and individuals.

This includes conflicts between team members, between teams, between Product Owners and Stakeholders, but also conflicts with external Stakeholders or business partners.

I fully comply to the Harvard Concept of Negotiation and try to create a win-win-situation for all involved parties.

In my opinion every conflict is a chance.

Due to my certifications and experiences as IPMA® Level D Certified Project Management Associate and Professional Scrum Master II™ I know how to implement agile methods in the classical project management frame.

Out of this reasons it’s pretty easy for me to help companies with the agile transformation process, which are oriented on the classical project frame.

I can explain the benefits and disadvantages of classical and agile project management and for this reason I can help you to understand what’s the best method for your project.

An important part of the Agile Transformation Journey is the implementation of an agile company culture and mindset and bottom up decision making structures. I accompany stakeholders and employers on their way and facilitate this process. My certification in Professional Agile Leadership™ is another proof of knowledge in this field.

I’m a Certified SAFe® 5 Release Train Engineer and I’m certified in Scaled Professional Scrum™ . Therefore I provide coaching, management and consulting services concerning the implementation of scaled and lean agile solutions.

Nexus

My experiences and my certifications in the field of the Nexus framework help me to support multiple teams in scaled Scrum environments and to help the whole organisation to continuous improve and to deliver valuable products. I accomplish this by the use of Scaled Scrum Events like Nexus Refinements, Nexus Dailies, Nexus Sprint Reviews and Nexus Retros.

SAFe

I provide my services as Certified SAFe® 5 Release Train Engineer. As a Coach and Scrum Master for an Agile Release Train I work closely together with the Product Manager and the System Architect. Besides this I’m a servant leader for Scrum Masters and help the ART to continuous improve and produce valuable increments. Therefore I implement the Scaled Agile Framework and all ceremonies and estimation methods which are needed. This includes among others Scrum of Scrums, Inspect and Adapt Ceremonies and WSJF estimations.

Spotify

In some of my projects I worked with the Spotify Model. I’m keen to implement Tribes, Squads and Chapters to help your organisation to improve and to produce valuable products.

Others

Besides my experience with the Nexus Framework, SAFe and Spotify I’m experienced with other methods to make Scaled Scrum successful. This includes Communities of Practice, Communities of Interest, Initiatives, but also concepts like Lean-Coffee or Scrum of Scrum.

I’m also open to work in a Large Scale Scrum Framework (LeSS) to implement agility to orchestra multiple teams.

Consultation concerning the Integration of an Continuous Integration or Continuous Delivery Pipeline and the needed build server is an integral part of my work as well.

I offer training concerning the implementation of automatized testing approaches like Scenario, Functional or Unit Testing.

Implementing Extreme Programming approaches like pair-programming and code-reviews, or Test Driven Development is a must have for quality assurance and to raise the bus factor of the project.

Besides this I see it as a fundamental part of my work to coach your organisation in how to implement the KAIZEN philosophy to your culture.

A fundamental idea of agility is to have iterative success and to don’t burn colleagues on the short term. High peeks and pressure moments can exist in projects but they shouldn’t be the standard.

My education as hypnotherapist and mediator gives me a tool set to help Stakeholders, Managers, Developers, Scrum Masters and others. I mediate between them to protect the individual and the project success. Next to this I offer coaching to prevent stressful situations or to find strategies how to deal with them.

Development and Operations, short DevOps, combines software development and IT operations. The aim of DevOps is to shorten the systems development life cycle by providing continuous delivery with a high software quality.

Guiding teams concerning the coding, building, testing, packaging, releasing, configuring and monitoring of software can be a part of my coaching services.

To optimize the DevOps chain I implement tools like the DORA Metrics, containers, build servers, versioning systems, servers, automatized tests and Extreme Programming approaches like Pair-Programming.

The setup and developing of high performance agile teams I support by holding workshops and seminars about agile methods like Kanban and Scrum. I choose the best methods from my method toolbox to make seminars interesting, interactive and sustainable.

I also support the agile journey and the social grows of teams by organizing team building workshops. My wide range of professions allows me to create team building experiences which team members will not forget.

From October 2021 until February 2022 I worked as an Agile Coach in the energy industry for the Consilica GmbH.

I accompanied four IT-teams on their agile journey during DevOps waves and helped them to implement methods like Scrum and Kanban and measured the success by applying the DORA metrics.

To accomplish this I coached Scrum Masters, Product Owners and Managers. A crucial part of this project had been the implementation of T-Shaping, also known as cross-skilling.

From 2021 on I worked as a Scrum Master for two German and one Romanian developer team for the Miele Cie. & KG in a scaled Scrum Environment.

This included the continuous improvement of Scrum inside the teams, but also on the scaled level.

I also supported Miele as Agile Coach as a member of the executive department for agile transformation, the “Agile Center of Expertise”.

Besides this I helped Miele in the cultural change from a classic to an agile company as Part of the “Culture & Mindset Initiative”.

Internal conflict mediation, quality and process improvement, and the development of an Agile Playbook had been a part of my daily business.

Organizing fun activities like online team-building-events or release parties was also part of my role.

Product Owners, Scrum Masters, Developers and Stakeholders got coached by me.

From 2019 on I supported AtoS in the Agile Transformation Process in a project for the German Ministry of Justice.

This included the iterative implementation of Scrum and an agile Mindset in an classical plan oriented environment.

The usual Scrum Framework Events had been used in this transformation process. They consisted out of Dailies, Sprint Reviews, Retros, and Plannings inclusive Planing Poker.

The technology stack consisted out of Java, Spring Badge, Docker and JUnit as Test-Suite. We used Extreme Programming methods like pair-programming and code reviews.

From 2018 on I worked for IBM and I was responsible for the transformation of an Java legacy platform to a scaled environment with docker for Daimler.

This included the implementation of Scrum Events like dailies and the use of an Kanban Board.

Besides this it was a hard agile challenge to explain the stakeholders, that agility isn’t there to make mile stone planing easier.

Extreme Programming methods like code reviews and pair-programming had been used.

In 2022 I worked as an Advanced Scrum Master for two international developer teams for VW.

I organized and moderated Scrum Ceremonies and SAFe events. Part of my work was the Product Increment Planning and Preparation. Besides this I organized team events and trained Scrum Master apprentices.

From 2017 on I worked for Neue Werte and I was responsible for the development of an vacancy platform for orchestras.

This included the implementation of a Test-Driven-Development approach, the use of docker for local development and the Integration of an CI\CD pipeline.

Besides this we integrated Scrum Ceremonies like Dailies to improve the development process.

The hardest challenge in this project was the high amount of legacy code and the refactoring process and the clash with classical planning approaches.

To prevent “bad code” and unnecessary refactoring I pushed the development of an “Clean Code Guide”.

From 2015 on I worked at Dionera for blaudirekt.de

At the time in which I worked in this company we used the classical development approach.

This included e.g. ticketing systems. In this project I was responsible for the implementation of insurance calculators.

My time at Dionera taught me how important DoD’s, User Stories, Clean Code, a test environment and automatized tests are to develop a customer focused product with a high quality.

Kevin Veen-Birkenbach
Beratungs- und Coachingdienstleistungen
Afrikanische Straße 43
13351 Berlin
Germany

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