• Agile Coach

Tim Veldt on reinventing yourself, your team and the way you work

We mark the year 2018. Professional cyclist Tim Veldt makes a surprising transfer and joins Scrum Academy’s Agile team. Remarkable, because in the years before, he mainly gained experience in elite sports. So when Veldt stepped off the saddle at 32, a period of reflection and new plans followed: “I really had to reinvent myself a bit. At the same time, I knew that my experience could also be valuable in other sectors.” And so it turns out anno 2023.

Agile & elite sports: 4 similarities

Athletes go all out to cross the finish line first. Agile teams are equally goal-oriented to achieve success. To continuously improve in small steps. Scrum Academy trainer Tim: “As an athlete you are very consciously working on those little steps, you know that’s the way to eventually get to your PR. Per millisecond. It doesn’t happen in one big leap.” And although track cycling may seem to the outsider to be a somewhat more individual sport in which the pro only works very hard on himself, this sport stands or falls (literally) with good teamwork. Not only is Tim competing on various team components, he is surrounded by experts and coaches. “In the end, a victory or a record can always be attributed back to a team working well with different disciplines. I find that team performance incredibly interesting in the Agile world as well,” Tim compares. Not surprising, then, that he himself is now active as a coach in the cycling world.

You will have to make very sharp choices to reach your goal. Sometimes you don’t make others very happy either

The third similarity between Tim Veldt’s two worlds has everything to do with focus, making very clear choices. As an athlete, he makes a very clear choice to do everything for the sport. And that sometimes comes at the expense of others. “In Agile teams you have that too. You can’t pick up everything, you have limited resources, limited time,” Tim explains. “At the same time, you have to realize that Agile is not a quick fix. To grab the benefits, you need perseverance as a team and you also have to fight your way through resistance sometimes,” again a description that does seem very close to the world of sports. Can you make that link again Tim? ” Agile training alone won’t get you there overnight either. You’re going to have to figure out a lot in practice with each other after the training. That’s when the real competition starts.” A competition that Tim, as a coach, is only too happy to supervise.

Team performance and coach performance

So as a Scrum Master, coach and trainer, Tim now guides several teams on their way to their peak performance. It won’t surprise anyone that he still does this in the top sports world. Ideal, because it is precisely the mentality and innovation from that world that provide enormous added value for Agile teams. For Tim, by the way, it doesn’t really matter in which of his two worlds he coaches. The question he asks himself as a coach is always: what does it take to work well together, to continuously optimize team performance? “To answer that question you have to zoom out. I also really enjoy doing that, to really look at challenges at the team level and get results as a team. To continuously improve as a team.” Even as a hands-on coach, by the way, Tim continues to develop himself, substantively in the Agile field, but certainly also in coaching people. “That’s why I feel so at home at Scrum Academy, surrounded by experts and professionals!”

The magic of a Scrum Academy training or coaching program is really in the fact that you can share personal experiences

Starting shot with LUMC

The first coaching project Tim does in his early Scrum years is at the LUMC hospital. There, the management department is constantly ad hoc solving all kinds of small problems throughout the hospital. Result: pat on the back from a doctor, but also the same little problems recurring again and again. And so Tim flies in to set up an Agile team: “We started looking at how we could tackle those problems on a larger level as a team. That we couldn’t just help one doctor all the time, but 100 doctors at once.” That successful concept of a well-oiled Agile team, tastes like more to Tim.

Crossing the finish line with The Beehive

And so, now more than five years on, he is working as an Agile Coach with various Agile Teams. For example, he recently did so at Bijenkorf. “There I coached two multidisciplinary teams responsible for the online part of men’s fashion and living. Together we improve Agile working. Continuously, in small steps” And so the circle is complete. Agile Coach Tim Veldt continues to reinvent himself, but especially guides teams in reinventing their way of working. Soon there will be another kick-off for Tim, this time together with TOPdesk in Delft.