Category: Agile

Agile Culture Articles

In 2021 many organisations are trying to become more agile. They do that by applying techniques such as Scrum or Kanban. In the articles I wanted to shed some light on more hidden aspects of cultural development which I think is the real success factor of agile organizational development.

Recently I published a series of articles about agile culture development in the German IT magazines Java Magazin and Windows Developer.

Those are the Java Magazin issues that contain the article:

I am glad to see that this time the article was published in two magazines. Those are the Windows Developer magazines.

If you are interested in the content, please visit entwickler.kiosk, or even better, get in touch with me so that we can talk personally about agile culture development in your organisation. 🙂

JAX 2020: Big Data and Agile Culture

This year JAX is taking place from 7. September to 11. September in Mainz. W-JAX is taking place from 2. November to 6. November in Munich. Due to the Corona situaton it will be a special experience as the conferences are going to be held in an hybrid manner (on-site and online). In my sessions I am going to talk about Big Data and Agile Culture.

In the Big Data session I am going to show you how to set up an Open Source Big Data platform from scratch. You will see how popular technologies such as Hadoop, Spark, Hive, Kafka and others work together. We are going to implement a typical end-to-end use case live together. You’ll get a solid understanding of what these technologies do and how they work together to form a platform.

The Agile session covers aspects of culture as a building block of agile organisation development. I am going to talk about what culture actually is, why it is an essential part of “being agile” and how to develop it. Moreover I am going to share experiences and common pitfalls on the journey of agile culture development.

I am glad to be there and hope to meet you on-site or online.

Success Story: Big Data in Logistics

In the years 2019 and 2020 I had the pleasure to support TIMOCOM in the implementation of their brand new Big Data Platform.
TIMOCOM is an international logistics platform provider and a true champion in its area.

When we started the initiative the company had an existing BI-System to perform reporting and statistical analysis. The aim was to extend the capapabilities of the company to collect, store and analyse huge amount of data. A Big Data solution comprising best of breed open source products was chosen. The new technology stack is able to scale not only technically but also business wise as it ist completely license cost free. It is based on technologies such as Java, Python, Hadoop, Hive, Kafka, Spark and HBase.
A major challenge in the beginning was that the staff had almost no knowledge of the applied technologies. To cope with this situation and to establish the solution quickly and in high quality, we’ve set up a Creative Software Workbench (CSW). A CSW combines the areas of modern technology, agile methodology and team dynamics to create an enviroment in which digital products can be created in the best possible way. It is based on more than 25 years of practical experience from many successful and of course some not so successful projects. In this enviroment agile engineering and active learning are important parts which helped us to master the Big Data ecosystem in a reasonable amount of time.

The new platform enables the company to gain new insights from their data today an tomorrow. It is an important step in the future to support their data driven business model.
You can read about the project in the success story “Wissen aus Daten”. I am glad that I can add this story to our list of success stories. If you want to know more about it, don’t hesitate to contact me.


JAX 2019: Agile Team Architecture and Big Data

JAX is one of the most known conferences for Java, architecture and software innovation in Germany. Im am glad to be invited this year to give some sessions. Between the 6th and 10th May 2019 JAX will be taking place at Rheingold Halle in Mainz.

Agile product teams are becoming more and more mission critical. On the 6th I am going to give a presentation about the way agile product teams can be built by applying software architecture principles such a resilience and performance to teams.

When people start learning Big Data technologies for many it seems to be complex due to the sheer amount of products in the Big Data ecosystem. On the 8th I am going to show a simple Big Data Stack to get started with. I am going to set up a working stack from scratch and implement a working lambda architecture.

You can see the timeslots on the JAX website. I look forward to seeing you there.

Fintech Success Story

In 2017 PLEUS Consulting supported Yareto GmbH in the development of their new independent comparision site for the automotive finance industry.
Yareto is a fintech company that specializes in automotive financing. In 2016 the corporate startup was founded to build a brand new comparision site for the automotive finance industry. The site enables car dealers to compare credit offers in the areas of sales financing and purchase financing. Lenders get access to sales channels they couldn’t serve before.

PLEUS Consulting supported Yareto in setting up a Creative Software Workbench. The Creative Software Workbench aligns technology, processes and people in a way that creates an environment in which high quality digital products can be developed in short time.

The front-ends were developed using modern web technologies such as Java-/Typescript, HTML5, CSS and Angular. For the backend Java Enterprise (JEE) and a Sustainable Service Design approach was utilized to design and build a backend with a high degree of reuse and scalability. The service landscape was established using Domain Driven Design principles. Operations was performed using cloud platforms.

On the technical side, PLEUS Consulting supported the teams as Lead Developer. In the area of agile techniques, PLEUS Consulting supported the development teams as Agile Coach. The combination of those roles worked quite well especially in the phases of seed and growth. With these roles the company received thorough support in the areas of technology and methodology.

The project has shown that with a combination of modern technologies, agile approaches and the right people a very short concept to market cycle can be achieved, creating competitive advantages. This is what the Creative Software Workbench is all about.

You can read more details about the project in the official success story. More info about the Creative Software Workbench can be found on the official website.

JAX 2018: Management of Requirements and Quality the Agile Way

Between the 23th and 27th April 2018 JAX will be taking place at Rheingold Halle in Mainz.

On the 23th I am going to give a presentation about the way agile companies turn ideas into valuable software in a short time and how this differs from classic requirements engineering practices.

On the 24th I am going to show how agile teams build high quality software. I’ll cover techniques and principles that help to ship software increments to the customer after every Sprint.

You can see the timeslots on the JAX website. I look forward to seeing you there.