News

Michelle van Kuijzen looks back on her start at Improven

18
Dec

Michelle van Kuijzen joined consulting firm Improven as a young consultant in March this year. She looks back on the past period and shares a day from her working life.

Since March this year, I have been working as a young consultant at Improven. I immediately started an assignment in central government as a Project Management Officer. I was supporting the division manager and helped organise the department in the transition to Agile working. My role was quite broad, allowing my enthusiasm and eagerness to learn about Agile to run wild.

Soon I was shadowing a Senior Scrum Master, signing up for Agile training courses and getting my Scrum certifications. Through good timing of various things, I got the opportunity to become a full-time Scrum Master of a Network Security team. My role as PMO was dropped and suddenly I was responsible for running the team's processes and adapting Scrum within the team.

I facilitate Scrum events and look together with the team at how they can perform even better. I am also a kind of coordinator for the team with regard to internal communication, obstacles and the optimisation of overarching activities with other teams.

My day looks different every day, the only daily recurring thing is our stand-up at 09:30. I have many different contacts and tasks that I perform on a daily basis. My goal is to facilitate the team so they can perform at their best. Every day I look at what is needed for this and what I can do. It is fun during the fortnightly retrospective to see what steps we have already made as a team. The joint results become more and more visible!

Even though I was on an assignment from day one, we had to work from home due to corona and this assignment is full-time, I feel positively connected to Improven. There are internal assignments where I connect, everyone is willing to help (digitally) or just catch up.

Improven not only helps organisations realise change, but also knows how to respond to this work-at-home corona-SOS change itself. We have digital get-togethers, group meetings with fun themes and also our Young Improven training courses (online) mostly continue.