Author: Thomas van der Burg

Thomas is a leader in a global pharmaceutical company. He works as Head of Operational Excellence in a Medical Device Development Unit. Acting as a change agent he is driving a continuous and sustainable improvement culture. Thomas has several years of experience in classical Waterfall-like project execution, as well as in agile Hardware Development, agile Portfolio Management using Kanban and leading Change and Agile Transformation in conservative and highly regulated environment. Agile education: Enterprise Kanban Coach (EKC) Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) Certified Agile Leadership (CAL) Kanban Management Professional (KMP) Accredited Kanban Trainer (AKT)
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Aim High – Start Small

“Aim high – Start small, but start!” that was my answer to the question in how to get started with an agile transformation. Thankful that I have been invited to … Continue reading Aim High – Start Small

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Autoagil Podcast

What has automotive development in common with medical device development? In both areas there are many processes, standards, regulations. More on this topic I discussed with Leonid Lezner in his … Continue reading Autoagil Podcast

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My slides from Manage Agile 2019 are available

For all who want to revisit my talk “Changing Pharma: Wie ein MS Project Plan mein Leben veränderte” I hold at the Manage Agile Conference 2019 in Berlin, the Slides … Continue reading My slides from Manage Agile 2019 are available

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#ChangingPharma: Operationalizing Strategy

Do you think Agile in Pharma is impossible? Is strategy something that do for 2 days every 12 month with your top level managers? Do you believe people cannot volunteer for their projects? Then be careful – this video might scare you!

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Kanban University Accredited Kanban Trainer

Now it is official: I´m a Kanban University Accredited Kanban Trainer (AKT). From now on I can and will provide Certified Kanban Trainings within my company. So much looking forward … Continue reading Kanban University Accredited Kanban Trainer

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#Empowering.Team meets #DBART

I am really looking forward to speaking tomorrow at the Agile Round Table of DB. Had the pleasure of joining this great event several times so fare as a participant. … Continue reading #Empowering.Team meets #DBART

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Value-oriented Work Breakdown

What are possibilities to slice down your product requirements and structure your backlog in order to increase impact for your customer? This is the question that Carolin Salz and I tried to answer. In a previous post we we already shared her personal journey from Project Management to value-oriented business agility. With this post we want to share some of our results with you.

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From Project Management to value-oriented business agility

From Project Manager to Agile practitioner. That’s in short the story of Carolin Salz. Today she supports companies where you might not even expect agile development – like carpenters or construction companies. Not for introducing Scrum in their IT department, but striving for more agility in their business processes. This is the first of two posts on our work related to deriving a value-oriented Product Strategy.

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Read: The Principles of Product Development Flow

From Donald G. Reinertsen What you will learn: The current approach to product development has institutionalized a set of dysfunctional beliefs. Besides others, beliefs like the one that Efficiency is good or that … Continue reading Read: The Principles of Product Development Flow

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Doing Strategy

Ever wondered why the 500 ppt slides on corporate strategy did fail in execution, communication and operationalization? Yesterday I had the honor to work with Markus Andrezak, Carolin Salz, Oliver … Continue reading Doing Strategy

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Next Stop: Agile

Principle-based Agile Implementation in Conservative Environment Co-Authored by Chris Keller Driven by the need for increased efficiency in operational processes a multitude of modern organizational forms are emerging that seriously … Continue reading Next Stop: Agile

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Read: Reinventing Organizations

From Frederic Laloux What you will learn:  Frederic Laloux provides insights in the principles of self-managing organizations and gives examples of companies where he studied those. For me “Reinventing organizations” … Continue reading Read: Reinventing Organizations

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Read: Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency

From Tom DeMarco What you will learn: This book is an amazing summary of principles of effective organizational Slack and misconception in our current thinking of efficiency. Tom DeMarco describes his … Continue reading Read: Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency

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Visit: LEANability

For Kanban, Enterprise Agility and more Description: “Even for the most successful of companies, the world is spinning faster and faster – continuous improvements are becoming more and more important … Continue reading Visit: LEANability

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Watch: “Five *Oops!* Six Mistakes You are Making as a Leader”

From Pete Behrens Recommendation: Beginners, Managers Language: English

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Exchange on value based task breakdown with Carolin Salz

Prioritizing the product backlog and being focused on doing the right things first needs clarity about the conditions you are working in. Product Owners need to evaluate the circumstances and … Continue reading Exchange on value based task breakdown with Carolin Salz

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#LKCE18 Talk and Panel Discussion

Visual Workmanagement at Sanofi – A Journey towards organizational effectiveness At the Lean Kanban Central Europe conference 2018 Thomas van der Burg was giving a talk on Visual Workmanagement. He … Continue reading #LKCE18 Talk and Panel Discussion

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QUESTI?N EVERYTHING (18/02): Mike Burrows

“This much should be obvious: You can´t plan to have everyone occupied 100% of their time on fixed-date work, allow them to be interrupted by expedited items, and still expect … Continue reading QUESTI?N EVERYTHING (18/02): Mike Burrows

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I am Speaking at Lean Kanban Central Europe

I will speak at the Lean Kanban Central Europe Conference in Hamburg beginning of November 2018 about Visual Workmanagement and how we use evolutionary change to develop out Lab towards … Continue reading I am Speaking at Lean Kanban Central Europe

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Work Visual

I have the pleasure to work with incredible talented people like Holger Nils Pohl and his colleague Beni in cologne on visualization of some of our key learnings for my … Continue reading Work Visual

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What doesn’t fit will be made to fit

Some weeks ago I had the pleasure to be interviewed by Tanja Könemann (Creditreform) for an Article on Agile implementation in large organizations and more conservative environments. She did a … Continue reading What doesn’t fit will be made to fit

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QUESTI?N EVERYTHING (18/01): Isabel De Clercq

“A knowledge worker who doesn’t share his knowledge actually damages the organization.” – Isabel De Clercq This quote is taken from the great book “Social Technologies in Business“. In first … Continue reading QUESTI?N EVERYTHING (18/01): Isabel De Clercq

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Interview with Klaus Leopold from LEANability

Last week I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Klaus Leopold for his video Blog on Lean Business Agility. Here you can find the results: Lean Business Agility E026: … Continue reading Interview with Klaus Leopold from LEANability

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Enterprise Kanban Coach

This week I successfully finished the last of four inspiring and amazing workshops in my journey to become an Enterprise Kanban Coach. It was a tough but incredible mind opening … Continue reading Enterprise Kanban Coach

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Rare-Earth Work: The economics of Slack

Would you agree or disagree to the following statement: A development team with high utilization creates more value than a team with lower utilization? Are you sure? I have been … Continue reading Rare-Earth Work: The economics of Slack

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Team Transition

One of my first exercises as a Team Leader was to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the team members of my department. For team analysis I reviewed literature and … Continue reading Team Transition

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Safe to Fail

Imagine a meeting room filled with People watching on results of the last project. While the project manager explains why this project has not been executed successfully and the majority … Continue reading Safe to Fail

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The biggest challenge

Just to make it clear from the beginning: There is no easy change or transition. In the human language „known“ has the meaning of „safe“, while „unknown“ always means kind … Continue reading The biggest challenge

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Risk that your teams outgrow you!

I’m not very old, but I promise I have some good years behind me since I started my professional career several years ago. As I started, it was natural to … Continue reading Risk that your teams outgrow you!

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How it started…

2013: I’m standing in the copying room, waiting anxiously for the copying machine to warm up and print a working plan. While waiting, all the sounds in my head went … Continue reading How it started…

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Let´s start #EMPOWERING.TEAMs!

Hi there! Today we went “live” with our own Web-Page! 🙂 We are collecting and publishing content for Visual Workmanagement, Agile Leadership and Product Development Strategies – aiming to find more people who … Continue reading Let´s start #EMPOWERING.TEAMs!