• Agile Coach

Roy Gielen: “Shall we choose A or B? It depends.”

Tuesday. The phone rings. IT executive Roy Gielen is sitting behind his keyboard. “Can you tackle the next project Agile with Scrum as the framework?” asks a voice on the other end of the line. The shrewd Limburger dives headfirst into said matter. And so that Tuesday becomes the day when everything would change. “Can’t this introductory paragraph be a little shorter? This was all 14 years ago,” Roy interrupts this writing anno 2024. It typifies the development drive of the coach and trainer who now looks at Agile very differently.

Years ago, with the phone in his hand, question marks initially floated through Roy’s mind upon hearing the term “Agile working. Fortunately for many professionals and organizations, those very question marks are triggers for the IT guy of the day. For over fourteen years, Roy has dedicated himself to answering those question marks. Not from behind his keyboard, but in practice. And so today he is better known as an experienced coach, trainer, transformation consultant and creator of a valuable team game.

After completing my first Agile process, I knew this was really for me: in method, but even more so in mindset

The mindset

Giving yourself that mindset is different from training other professionals in that mindset. So Roy is moving quickly with his trainers ambitions during that time. Gielen explains, “I wholeheartedly started focusing on change management. That then logically resulted quickly in a meeting with Gert-Jan Danenberg of Scrum Academy.” It clicked. Roy seizes the opportunity to develop further as a trainer and coach at Scrum Academy and in that capacity works with well-known parties. Parties such as Dela, Avans, Nationale Nederlanden, ASML, VDL, APG, CZ and TenneT. During all these change processes, Roy’s vision of Agile working also changes. Terms and frameworks become less prominent, the focus on the solution to a specific issue in its own context increases. How Roy sums that up?

I see myself as a facilitator of people, teams and organizations in development

It depends

If an organization wants to move from loose teams to Scaled Agile with SAFe, an Agile framework, where do you start? A question to which Roy has a ready-made answer, always based on his years of practical experience: “I always ask what problem they want to solve with this and in what specific context.” Sounds logical, but in practice people sometimes skip that question. That is precisely when Roy can put his experience and knowledge to use. Together with the team(s) or organization, he makes the question concrete and summarizes the challenge one wants to take on. “Only then do I get inspired by many models and, together with the client, try out components that might fit. So it’s all trade-offs, both in terms of product and organizational choices that you make together,” Roy emphasizes.

Shall we choose A or B? It depends!

People’s Work

Transforming, changing is people work. It is therefore important for organizations to always find a good balance. A balance between ‘cold’ issues such as goals, methods and structure. And the ‘warm’ side that ensures that people also want to contribute. Exactly in the middle lies Roy’s strength: the human contact without losing sight of the organizational goal. That human touch is also something he appreciates in the management of Scrum Academy: “I have no-nonsense, super fun, experienced and smart colleagues with whom I can always make an educational party of it. “He also conveys that energy and positivity to teams during coaching projects. His most important lesson therein? “Always try to have an open and curious attitude and keep the drive to want to learn.”