Let's get Started with All things Scrum and Agile

The Aaha moment came while I was jogging through the woods in the dead of the night.

One month earlier I had registered SIM as my business name so that I could do Freelance work. At that time, the acronym stood for Strategic Innovative Management.

I wasn’t convinced of the name and continued juggling new ideas to replace it.

Step into More spit out of my lips and I felt as if I had given birth. It was the perfect expression that culminated all the thoughts that had been going through my mind over the last years and it fit into Acronym. That was Sub-Conscience thinking at its finest.

Plug in your SIM card and Step into More…….

Abundance, Flow, Creative Solution Finding, Re-evaluation of what we Value, Deeper Social Connections, Post Modern Organizations.

I am an American living in Germany and at the age of 37 I find myself in the middle of a transitional period of life. The last few years have been filled with self-reflection and now new life orientation. Quasi a sheading of my old skin. During this time I found myself being overwhelmed by the shear amount of possibilities that interested me of what could be and stifled by the rigid structure of the German professional world. However, I have pulled out my magnifying glass, focused my energy and found a topic that has sparked a flame of Passion in me. Here is my short story.

Last year in the fall of 2017, I traded in my tradesman tool box and bowed out of the renewable energy field for a position as Problem Solver at a striving young American company who was expanding into the European market. They had engaged the agile mindset and wanted to help everyone with their Radical Alignment program. The growth was rapid, inspiring and in the end, too fast for the business to keep up and the pockets not deep enough to sustain a lull in projects.

The expression Agile was then defined for me. It defined practices that we had been using in the Solar Field for years. We were inspired professionals who knew they were making an Impact by delivering sexy, clean, affordable, and decentralized energy to the World. We were continually bettering all processes involved in the supply chain to deliver an ever higher-performing, less expensive product to the customer. I was part of the solar revolution.

And now I have decided to focus my energy on the post modern organizational revolution to change the way we work; with each other, with the customer and how we approach problem solving.

Finally, I get to the most important part, telling you what this blog will be about. It is meant to be used like head lamp, delivering content that will shine light on what Agile actually is. I will classify my writings in the following 6 topics; Self-organization, Kaizen, Germany vs. Agile, Tools, Personal-Marketing and Ecstasis. I will be exploring these topics through the various lenses that I carry with me, but the main focus will be to challenge individuals and companies in Germany to work together to change the status quo of how we work and organize in this society.

What makes me an expert? I am a Scrum Master and I am active in the Agile/Scrum communities in Germany and in the Netherlands. I also love running through the woods in the dark. Propelling myself through the darkness has sharpened my skills of concentration, it has also, trained me not to let my uncertainly for that what I can’t see paralyze me.

This skill will prove very important in helping individuals, teams and organizations relieve fear as they make their way through the darkness on their journey to Step into More.

I am excited to take this journey into the world of blogging and I hope that you the reader will feel my passion for the subject and that this passion becomes contagious. Please feel free to continue the conversation with your comments. I will do my best to respond to everyone who takes time to write.

Best

Joshua