XP Days Benelux 2025 on Coffee-Driven Development

Whole Team Collaboration: Navigating the seven C's

Fri, 12 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0100

On November 27 and 28, I went to the XP Days Benelux conference. This blog post is a short recap of all the things I learned.

In this third post in the XP Days series, I’m sharing my notes and reflections from the session “Whole Team Collaboration: Navigating the Seven C’s” by Per Beining. There are many ways of working together, and many ways of not really working together. By introducing the Seven C’s (spoiler: there are actually eight), Per offered a simple but powerful lens to help teams recognise how they currently collaborate and what they might change to truly work together.

The goal of the session was to build awareness: understand the difference between merely working side by side and genuinely collaborating, and learn how to spot which “C” your team is currently navigating—so you can steer toward the harbour you actually want to reach.

DUO Portfolio Game

Thu, 11 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0100

On November 27 and 28, I went to the XP Days Benelux conference. This blog post is a short recap of all the things I learned.

In this second post, I’m sharing my notes and reflections from the session “DUO Portfolio Game” by Jan-Willem Zijlstra, Jeroen Smit, and Willem Kleinenberg. The session introduced a game they developed to spark conversations about culture, collaboration, and ways of working. Through several rounds, participants experienced firsthand how different strategies for distributing work across teams can shape flow, ownership, and alignment.

The goal of the session was clear: explore how teams might organize and collaborate more effectively, and discover what happens when you shift constraints, responsibilities, or communication paths.

So long, and thanks for all the fish - The farewell tour

Wed, 03 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0100

On November 27 and 28, I went to the XP Days Benelux conference. This blog post is a short recap of all the things I learned.

In this first post, I’m sharing my notes and reflections from the session “So Long, and thanks for all the fish - The farewell tour" by Ron Eringa, Paul Kuijten, and Dajo Breddels. The session explored the question of whether the Agile movement has run its course: been there, done that, got the T-shirt. With the Agile label losing some of its shine, the facilitators invited us to properly say goodbye to what no longer serves us, and to salvage the practices and principles still worth keeping.

The goal of the session was simple but important: take stock. Is Agile dead? And if not, how do we move forward?