Ben Linders: Trainer / Coach / Adviser / Author / Speaker

BenLinders SquareBen Linders runs a one-person business in Agile, Lean, Quality, and Continuous Improvement. Author of Getting Value out of Agile RetrospectivesWaardevolle Agile RetrospectivesWhat Drives Quality, The Agile Self-assessment Game, Problem? What Problem?, and Continuous Improvement. Creator of many Agile Coaching Tools, for example, the Agile Self-assessment Game.

Ben is a well-known speaker and author; he’s much respected for sharing his experiences and helping others share theirs. His 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 a trainer, facilitator, coach, and advisor, he helps organizations with effectively deploying software development and management practices. He focuses on continuous improvement, collaboration and communication, and professional development, to deliver business value to customers.

Ben is an active member of networks on Agile, Lean, Kanban, and Quality. He shares his experiences in a bilingual blog (Dutch and English), as an editor for InfoQ.com, and as a practitioner in communities like Computable, Quora, DZone, Stackoverflow, and TechTarget. Follow him on Twitter: @BenLinders.

In need of training, coaching, advice, consultancy, speaking? Have a question? Contact me!

 +31 6 2901 3863
 [email protected]
 @BenLinders
 Ben Linders
 Ben Linders Consulting
Icons-mini-icon_home Tilburg, The Netherlands

My Values

My success comes from doing things that

  • I’m good at or willing and able to try out
  • I love to do and give me energy
  • are helpful and solve people’s needs
  • are appreciated by people and have value for them
  • provide an income and have a future

It’s my personal Ikigai that drives what I do and how I do it.

What I do

I’m a one-person business (sole proprietorship) doing many different things to help people, teams, and companies become better at developing and delivering high-quality software products and services. 

I’m a practical person who wants to have a real impact and make the world a little bit better. I look for ways to apply things, share experiences, and help people experiment and learn. 

In my workshops, advice, and coaching sessions, I focus on adopting agile ways of working, increasing agility, dealing with impediments, collaboration and communication, continuous improvement, and making retrospectives valuable. 

I believe people have the power, so it’s for instance things that start with “self” that get me going. Self-organization, self-assessments, self-awareness, and self-development are examples of this. 

As a psychologically safe culture lays the foundation for improvement and leadership drives such a culture, those are two topics where I’d like to keep learning: try out new techniques and existing ones, reflect to see the results, and find out about what others have done that worked or didn’t work. 

The Agile Coaching Tools

I’m connecting with more and more, people around the world who want to become better in developing and delivering software products and services, or help people to become better. But I can’t possibly travel everywhere (and I do travel a lot) and help everyone on-site in person. 

That’s why I started my own “agile scaling and digitalization” journey making my books, games, exercises, workshops and remote training, papers, and other agile coaching tools that I use myself in my workshops and advice work available to the world as digital downloads at benlinders.com/shop. And they come with free lifetime support personally by me. 

Examples of the products and services that I provide are the Agile Self-assessment Game (close to 2000 downloads!), Impediments Cards and Games, Agile Retrospectives Bingo and Agile Retrospectives Smells Cards, Agile Quality Coaching Cards, and cards on Psychological Safety and Culture.

People can use them to self-improve their way of working, or coach professionals, teams, and organizations in improving their performance and increasing the value that they deliver.

Of course, also my books are available in many languages, including my first book Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives which was originally published as an InfoQ minibook and has been translated into 13 languages. 

This journey of agile scaling and becoming a digital company makes me eat my own dog food. I apply what I teach, advise, and coach on how to work and be agile. I’m learning what my customers need, how they use my agile coaching tools, and the benefits that it brings. 

I develop digital tools, publish them, and update them, where ideas from DevOps help me to do it effectively. I use techniques from Kanban, Lean, and Scrum, to manage the many different things that I do. 

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.

This blog is listed on the Top 100 Agile blogs, a list that was maintained by Luis Gonçalves from 2014 to 2017.

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