Innspire – Derk-Jan de Grood

The power of dropping practices

In February, I published the article Skilling Up Development Teams on Agile Alliance. In it, I argue for the need to consciously and structurally improve the people who build and maintain software. I explain how adopting the right practices can help bridge the gap between the needs of development teams and broader organizational goals.

By focusing on practices, small containers of knowledge, skills, and mindset that help you perform a specific job well, we can make skilling up more tangible. Instead of vague ambitions like “we need better quality” or “we should innovate more,” we can talk about adopting or improving specific practices, such as continuous integration or organizing innovation sprints.

The article triggered several interesting discussions. One of them was with my colleague Dion Nicolaas, an agile coach and Scrum Master. Dion pointed out that, rather than adopting new practices, there is another option that I overlooked. Sometimes teams improve by doing less. In his article Breaking Eggs, he explores the power of deliberately dropping practices.

You can read the article on the agile alliance site: Breaking Eggs: The Case for Dropping Practices

New episode of our podcast ‘Inn het Midden’ is live!

In episode 4, Nienke Alma and Derk-Jan de Grood take you behind the scenes of their experience at ScanAgile – the largest Agile conference in Scandinavia. Together with André Scholten, they reflect on their own talk and discuss some of the most inspiring presentations they attended.

What to expect? An engaging conversation featuring:

Playgrounds, not pipelines – Linda Liukas
Strategic Storytelling in Agile Teams – Osita Ifezue
Agile Coach: The discomfort of a job title – Nienke Alma & Derk-Jan de Grood
Building Resilience – Tricia Broderick
Strategic Alignment and Cross-Team Collaboration with The Solar System – Cansel Sörgens
PeacePlanet Connecting Finland, Japan, and the USA with MobAI – Joe Justice

Get inspired by fresh insights, personal stories, and the international Agile vibes of ScanAgile!

Episode 4 of Inn het Midden is now available on all major podcast platforms. Full video version included in the show notes.

Episode 1 – New podcast series.

I’m really excited to share that within Innspire, we’ve launched a new podcast series!

Together with three inspiring colleagues—Andre, Nienke, and Marcel—we’ll be releasing episodes on Transformation, IT, Software Development, and Agile. So far, we’ve created one pilot episode, and today I recorded the first official podcast.

In this episode, I speak with Berry Vermeulen and Michel Kooiman about Benefits Management: what it is and why every organization should care about it. We also discuss the relationship between Benefits Management and the value determination of backlog items. The Value Framework helps translate the product vision into backlog items. The benefit of this approach is that we focus on the right things, can better explain why we make certain choices, and significantly increase the chances that, when we complete something, it will help the organization move toward its goals. We conclude that even in organizations where the benefits are not easily measurable, the combination of Benefits Management and the Value Framework can still be effective.

Berry Vermeulen is a Senior Consultant at Mobile, and Michel Kooijman is a Product Owner.

Please give it a listen! You can find the podcast on Spotify (in Dutch only):
The show notes are available on this blog at Podcasts

How the Squirrel Becomes a Giraffe

As a transformation consultant, I’m fascinated by change—how rigid organizations evolve, how junior employees grow into seasoned professionals. Nature provides countless examples of transformation: the caterpillar becomes a butterfly, the rosebud blooms into a flower. Yet, every so often, we encounter transformations that are far more unexpected. Ever seen a squirrel turn into a giraffe?

Rare as it may be, trust me, sometimes it happens.

Today marks my first day at Innspire, and like all transitions, it brings both excitement and the bittersweet task of saying goodbye. Embracing the new requires letting go of parts of the old. For me, that means parting with cherished colleagues at Squerist—friends who have supported, inspired, and collaborated with me over the years. Thank you all for your encouragement, kindness, and camaraderie. You’ve made a lasting impact on my journey.

This move also means retiring a familiar image that’s been close to my heart and featured in many of my publications: the Squerist mascot, the squirrel.

To my future colleagues, new challenges, and soon-to-be friends at Innspire: I’m excited to meet you and begin this next chapter. And as for the transformation? Well, if you look closely, you just might witness a rare sight—a squirrel transforming into a giraffe.

Bringing the DevOpsImprovement Game to Ibiza

This weekend Innspire and Fincalabs host the Agile Coaching Summit – Digital Innovation Camp on the beatiful island of Ibiza. I was thrilled to participate and did the Valori DevOpsImprovement game. We had great fun playing it and had a fruitfull debate afterwards.