Ben Linders

I deliver agile training and workshops, provide advice, play games and exercises, and do professional coaching and mentoring in Agile, Lean, Quality, and Continuous Improvement.

My clients include Tech Startups, IT Companies, Software Development Professionals, and Agile Teams all around the world.

My strength is sustainable improvement and agility. I can help you become more effective by together reflecting and exploring your way of working to increase the value that you deliver.

I am the author of various books, including:

• Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives

• Waardevolle Agile Retrospectives

• What Drives Quality

• The Agile Self-assessment Game

• Problem? What Problem?

• Continuous Improvement

As well as a well-known speaker and author, I have created many Agile Coaching Tools, for example, the Agile Self-assessment Game.

My books and games have been translated into more than 12 languages and are used by professionals in teams and organizations all around the world.

As an adviser, trainer, and coach, I help organizations with effectively deploying software development and management practices. My focus is continuous improvement, collaboration and communication, and professional development, to deliver business value to customers.

I am an active member of networks on Agile, Lean, Kanban, and Quality, sharing my experience in a bilingual blogs (Dutch and English), as an editor for InfoQ.com, and as a practitioner in communities like Computable, Quora, DZone, Stackoverflow, and TechTarget.

I am based in Tilburg (North Brabant, Netherlands), but I deliver training and workshops across Europe, both in-person and remotely.

Recognitions and Awards

I’m recognized as a Top 40 Influencer on Product Management by Product Management year in review. This list also includes people whose work has influenced me, like Eric Ries, Melissa Perri, and Marty Cagan.

I’m listed as a Top Project Management Influencer; I’m one of three Dutch persons on the list, ranked between Jurgen Appelo and Henny Portman.

My blog is among the Top 50 Agile Software Development Blogs and Websites for Scrum Masters compiled by Anuj Agarwal from Feedspot. On position 23 I’m the only Dutch person with a blog on this list.

Testimonials

• "I attended Ben's workshop "Making Agile Work for You" as part of Agile Greece Summit 2018; the overall experience was excellent both from a content and coaching perspective, using a pragmatic delivery approach which proved to be very useful. I would definitely recommend this for Agile practitioners." Nikitas

• "Ben heeft het ontwikkelteam van Smile via een hands-on aanpak naar grotere scrum-hoogte gebracht. Hij weet op een prettige manier knelpunten zichtbaar te maken én biedt een scala aan praktische oplossingen. Ik beveel Ben van harte aan!" - Wendelien

• "Really adaptive (agile ;)) workshop! Helped us in our discussions and finding the points where we can improve. I liked the materials as well. It was nice working with you!" - Dagmar

• "It was a pleasure to be in the workshop Making Agile Valuable by Ben Linders, one of the most useful workshops I’ve been on. I liked that it was very practical without tons of theoretical ppts. I liked the one big exercise which was good decomposed and realized in many practical steps which enhanced team work, feedback and learning from failures." - Attila

• "Ben is very knowledgeable and highly experienced in Agile. He is coaching me remote on Scrum and Kanban. The coaching sessions that we did on agile estimation, backlog management, flow and bottlenecks, handling impediments and retrospectives helped me to use these practices in my daily work. I am very happy to learn from him and work with him, highly recommend him for agile coaching." - Patricia

• "Ben provided training for our Product Owners and Scrum Masters and it was a great experience for all involved. I was familiar with some of Ben's publications prior to working with him, but I was still impressed by his vast knowledge, professionalism and genuine interest in understanding our pain points in order to tailor the course to address our specific needs. I would recommended Ben services, to any team that wants to genuinely improve." - Costa

• "I attended the first change management training pilot Ben held and was impressed by the knowledge and experience Ben has built up since leaving Ericsson. He has vast experience in change management, agile and how to facilitate and coach transformation in both in organizations and individuals. I would recommend him for in-house training, workshops, agile implementations and projects and initiatives that impact organizations or employee's." - Mirjam

• "I recently attended a 4-hour workshop on handling remote Agile retrospectives given by Ben Linders. Given this remote world in which we live, doing the work we do is even more challenging when working virtually. I'm glad I went. In four hours, we covered a lot of ground, from different methods of approaching retrospectives to dealing with introversion to ways to bring the energy level back up. I thought I knew something about retros but as with all good classes and instructors, I learned a few new tricks. Highly recommended. And this review was not solicited by Ben in any way." - Jim