One of the things that have surprised me in the past few years is the size of the ecosystem around startups. We see the same ecosystems evolve in all the major hubs across the globe, but we lack an ecosystem for scaling up.
In my own journey the past decade, … Continue Reading
Scrum masters are the spiders in the agile web. They coach the development team and remove their impediments. They spread scrum throughout the company. They teach customers how to work with their company using scrum. And they advice the product owner how to collaborate best with all people involved. In … Continue Reading
Most people use agile and scrum interchangeably. It’s often not even clear what the difference is. So last week during our Jakarta scrum meetup, organized at Happy Fresh, we decided to find out. We did a group study on some different agile concepts (Kanban, Lean & Lean startup, … Continue Reading
“Does scrum fit outside IT and helps you manage tasks?” was one common question bounced at me at the Jakarta Scrum Crash Course, on November 11th-12th. My answer is always YES, 100%! We had a diverse bunch, from marketing/sales and operations, though many most of the attendees were IT … Continue Reading
One question that always pops up during my trainings and workshops is ‘how to sell agile and scrum?’. Now there are 2 versions of this question: A. How to sell scrum to your management? and B. How to sell scrum to customers (who are in a waterfall/fixed big mindset)?
I’ll … Continue Reading
This year, I’ve been to a dozen agile conferences. One thing that stood out for me is that there’s a lot of ‘air talk’. People talk about agile, scrum, agile transformation, etc. After a couple of hours, your head starts spinning and you don’t have a clue what people are … Continue Reading
If you Google on ‘remote teams’, you get many articles about startups engaging remote teams. What isn’t clear in these cases, is at what stage those ‘startups’ engaged remote teams.
I am a strong believer of one thing: it’s best to have remote work in your company’s … Continue Reading
The past months, I’ve been doing several scrum trainings. In our scrum crash course, we always do a theory part in the morning and a practical scrum game with lego in the afternoon, the game introduced by Alexey Krivitsky. I’ve done the lego game in 2 countries … Continue Reading
I recently moved to Bali for a year to experience something new and enjoy life (it’s not a completely business-oriented decision). To dive into the IT and Agile community, I spoke at a conference in Jakarta last week. The conference was organized by Discussagile, a group of Agile enthusiasts … Continue Reading
I recently gave a talk at Outsource People in Minsk. My presentation was 45 minutes, so I can’t repeat the whole story here, but I wanted to share some of the insights. The conference was a very positive experience for me since I was the only speaker from Western … Continue Reading
Last Friday, we organized a Scrum crash course in Amsterdam. In the morning, Arjan Franzen gave the theoretical introduction.
He shared his experiences on Lean, Agile, Kanban and then went into the Scrum Methodology. One of the things that stood out for me in the morning part was when … Continue Reading
Last week, I did a tour through Eastern Europe. I did 2 talks and 2 workshops on 3 locations and some things stood out for me. The most interesting thing to me was to see how teams in India do the workshop (I did the same workshop about a month … Continue Reading
Over the years, as an entrepreneur, I’ve always been looking for tools, methods and frameworks to grow my company. I’ve always wanted to build my own company, since early childhood. For that, I did an MBA in Rotterdam. My expectation was to learn about building and growing companies. Although … Continue Reading
I joined the panel from the comfort of my home, but it felt like a real panel. The panelists could rotate their kubi towards each other to have discussions and the people in the webinar could participate. I’ve written an earlier blog post, including a video, about my experience. … Continue Reading
No one can deny the fact that managing cross-cultural and virtual teams effectively could bring ample opportunities – deep knowledge of products and their markets, how to deal with culturally sensitive customers and the 24-hour working pattern. However, these advantages can be eclipsed by the obstacles arising from teams working … Continue Reading
Our challenge for 2016, a book…
Last year I had some good discussion about distributed team with Ralph van Roosmalen, Founder of Agile Strides.
In the past two years, I have published 6 books. The project was organized as crowd-writing, with very good results. What I intended … Continue Reading
Last week, I joined a panel discussion for CES in Las Vegas. Cool and awkward at the same time! I am not an incredible fan of digital gadgets, but I loved this! In general, I believe ‘let us just get things done’. And for getting things done, you don’t need … Continue Reading
The past couple of months, I have been thinking about a method for larger scale distributed work. I envision how productive distributed teams could be if this method worked. Teams could gather, create a ‘map’ for their collaboration and once aligned, login to a dashboard where they can select the … Continue Reading
In June, I decided to take a sabbatical of 3 months. In July, I started that and I now consider doing that every year :). I’ll tell you a bit about my life as an entrepreneur to shed light on this decision. In 2004, I did a back packing trip … Continue Reading
A few days ago, I joined a meetup about distributed agile: cultural differences. It was hosted by Cognizant and Agile Holland.
Two people shared their stories on distributed agile and culture. In the break, I spoke to Cristian Mihăilă, a scrum master from Liberty Global. He had … Continue Reading
Last week I attended the distributed agile conference in Berlin. We had two days of inspiring workshops. I hosted my own workshop ‘how to structure your distributed team productively’. The interesting thing about the event was that the workshops had to be without powerpoint slides. So there was little … Continue Reading
Happy to welcome Tallitha Campos who has more than 12 years of experience in Information Technology, an enthusiast on new trends, technology and culture to discuss on distributed teams from Quality Analyst perspective. As a Quality Assurance Analyst for 8 years, Tallitha’s customer centric approach helps Yellow Pencil deliver user-friendly … Continue Reading
At Ekipa, we view ourselves as a software development market, where clients who want enterprise level service can get it from qualified software development teams with our help. What does this have to do with AirBnB?
In his article ‘from social networks to market networks‘, James Currier explains … Continue Reading
As an entrepreneur who brings top quality software teams together with clients who need great service, I’ve had many discussions with people about moving work overseas. If a company isn’t used to offshoring software development, it can be a challenge to help them understand how remote teams can work to … Continue Reading
Here, we are excited to welcome the “Pragmatic Manager,” Johanna Rothman, who helps organisational leaders see problems and risks in their product development. A very special thank-you to Johanna, being kind enough to share her experiences, insights on the pragmatic approach to manage remote teams and workshops. You can … Continue Reading
I attended a Growth Hacking training on June 15 in Amsterdam. I am kind of new to growth hacking, so I decided to go there to learn what the new marketing kids on the block do. Some things are still good old marketing, but I do see differences between growth … Continue Reading
Today I am glad to welcome one of the prominent specialists creating online collaborative communities for over 10 years, Lisette Sutherland, on Ekipa. I must say I was lucky enough to be part of the CollaborationSuperpowers pros stories on bridging the distance on remote teams.
Listen to my podcast here… Continue Reading
Lean startup might look as an industry jargon for many, however, the process has flourished beyond Silicon Valley and tops by Eric Ries’ viral release. The lean startup methodology gives companies (not only … Continue Reading
In this post, I have gathered advice from six experts on managing remote teams. I have written 6 books about the topic. I always believe I need to learn from other experts, I asked all these experts on what they see as the 3 pitfalls in offshoring & their advice … Continue Reading
I just read an inspiring article by Waseem Hussain ‘How deadlines can kill your outsourcing deal in India‘. He summarized some of the talks that were held last week on the Nordic IT Sourcing & Innovation forum. One excerpt that triggered me:
…Anthony Lamoureux of Velocity, … Continue Reading
At Ekipa, the mantra we use in our product development team is ‘try not to build anything – use services’. I see that most startups are launching big platforms in rapid pace. They do this by integrating services instead of developing the features of their platform by themselves. One example … Continue Reading
Hiring developers remotely seems to become more popular all the time. I see that some companies actually make this standard procedure – they don’t look for people (only) in their local office, but hire global for each position. I just came across this instructive post about hiring remote developers (… Continue Reading
2 weeks ago, Ekipa.co was one of the featured startups at The Next Web Conference in Amsterdam. Out of 400+ submissions, we were selected to present Ekipa in a booth. Because our community voted a lot on Ekipa, we could also pitch. A short report on the experience.
The morning … Continue Reading
In my last blog – ‘Manage your remote team with this #1 tool’, I wrote about sharing my experience to a group of senior HR managers in the Netherlands on the one page strategic plan in managing a remote team.
The next big things I discussed … Continue Reading
Last week, I had an opportunity to talk to a group of HR Managers from some big multinational firms in the Netherlands. It was on the topic – ‘Leadership and organisation for distributed teams’, I expressed my views. The slide presentation gives you a clear overview.
At the time … Continue Reading
Sometimes I think ‘am I that old fashioned’?!?!
If I look around me, I see that people in our space are obsessed with ‘freelancers’. The past decade, many people became ‘freelancers’ as an alternative to labor contracts. Companies … Continue Reading
This press release was sent out to some press agencies worldwide the past week. Ekipa got featured several times within a couple of days:
http://www.pr.com/press-release/613136
http://bit.ly/1O1vuO8
http://bit.ly/1O1xsyb
http://www.computable.nl/artikel/nieuws/development/5250709/1277180/bridge-start-werkspot-voor-ontwikkelaars.html
http://appworks.nl/2015/03/19/100-software-teams-sluiten-zich-aan-bij-marktplaats-voor-maatwerk-software-ekipa/
http://ictvalley.nl/nieuws/bid/204892/Bridge-lanceert-internationale-marktplaats-voor-software-teams
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/features/smartbuy/tech-news/bridge-india-launches-online-marketplace-for-software-teams/article7081339.ece
Press Release: Bridge Launches Global Marketplace for Software Teams
Schiphol, 17 March 2015 – An online platform that enables … Continue Reading
This is the second Q&A blog post on Ekipa. Our trusted community of software teams will be featured on this blog regularly. To give some more background on the teams we have on Ekipa, we do short interviews in written format.
Our interviewee is Branislav Gjorcevski, the CEO of … Continue Reading
Ekipa is delighted to have our first interviewee Ali Zaidi, the founder and CEO of ZEPCOM, a technology based services and Consulting Firm. Ali has helped ZEPCOM grow from an early stage startup to an established provider of E-Business Consulting Services and Tech-Based Solutions which help improve Business … Continue Reading
We try to explain what we have in mind, what business result we’re after and what software we envision. Labeling the challenge in outsourcing as ‘making requirements’ has some flaws, however:
Ekipa, the new global marketplace for software teams, hosts its first kick-off event during Cebit 2015, Hannover.
Target audience
This event is for buyers and providers of software services. During the event, we will present Ekipa to you. The main goal for us is to generate user feedback on Ekipa. … Continue Reading
The past weeks, both IBM and TCS announced layoffs. I read an interesting analysis on the site of the Everest group:
One of the paragraphs that triggered my interest:
Both companies recognize that they don’t have enough of the new skills needed for the new digital services markets and … Continue Reading
Many companies follow a philosophy; to outsource their software development to other companies, unfortunately, some find it completely waste of resources; time and money as they finally get the product. In that case, we need to agree with Peter Vaihansky who strongly advice to “stop outsourcing software development .” After … Continue Reading
Last week, there was a startup Safari in Berlin. Hugo visited several events. A short report by Ekipa’s Co-Founder.
During my two days at the Safari, few things stood out. First of all, the startup scene in Berlin is really booming. There are startups in almost every courtyard (and … Continue Reading
