Living Software B.V.

Living Software is Willem van den Ende's company, that is why the remainder of this little story is writtin in the "I" form, that makes it much simpler to write...

Since I started developming softawre, I have wanted to do it more effectively and pleasurable. That is why I am continuing on this quest.

In 1997 the quest got me interested in Design Patterns, and along that route to the c2 wiki, the very first wiki, intended as a gathering place for patterns and patterns writers. A number of people were writing about something odd, new and promising for my quest: eXtreme Programming. 

In order to find more like-minded people we organised the first xpnl meeting, after a number of us indicated through the eXtreme Programming newsgroup (now the XP mailing list) that we wished to get together to learn from each others' experiences. I have visited and co-organised meetings since.

At SERC (short for Software Engineering Research Centre, a consultancy firm that is now part of CIBIT), and before that during my software engineering studies I have occupied myself (amongst other things) with “Refactoring” and how Refactoring can be supported by processes and tools. 

In 2001 I finally got the opportunity to apply eXtreme Programming in a project.

I got more and more in to coaching overtime, mostly through the influence of XP - by then the only development process I knew that prescribed the roal of (XP) coach in a team. I added that besides consultancy and training. It became clear to me that I needed more practical work experience in real projects than was usual witihin SERC, and I wanted the resources for coaching and visiting conferences, so I could grow futher. In 2002 that led to me becoming an entrepreneur - together with a business partner I founded CQ2, so that I could invest in my own development :). 

XP has several nice paradoxis in it, and making it fit in an orgisation can be done well, but require change artistry skills. The puzzles we encountered in applying XP led to intervision workshops on systems thinkers with a group of like-minded coaches of xpnl and xp.be At first those were Nynke Fokma, Peter Schrier, Pascal van Cauwenberghe, Vera Peeters, Erik Groeneveld, Laurent Bossavit en MarcEvers.

Organisation of XP Days Benelux and Agile Open emerged from that group. As well as a blog aggregator for systems thinkers - systemsthinking.net.

In june 2004 I left CQ2 and continued as an ‘inter dependent’ consultant, where I work from my own company bedrijf Living Software B.V. and collaborate closely on a project basis with other inter-dependent consultants . Projects can be joint-consultancy, training as well as workshops on (inter)national conferences.

Those collaborations led in 2005 to several new initiatives, most prominently a collaborative for training on change artistry and systems thinking: Satir workshops  and a new course about Agile Software Development: eXperience Agile, in which insight and experiences with agile software development (from planning, technical and people perspectives) are transferred effectively.  

In 2005 and 2006 I participated in the elections for the Agile Alliance board. The Alliance is the international non-profit foundation for promoting the practice of Agile Software Development. I got elected to the board in summer 2006. I focus on the AA website and doing more Agile things in Europe.

eXperience Agile runs were also a successful so we passed the mark of ten courses in Januari 2007. In the mean time we have extended it with an edition for people who only want to be informed (one day) an edition for managers (one day in addition to the introduction). Besides these courses and coaching Agile (Scrum and eXtreme Programming) projects, I did a couple of general IT consultancy jobs for a large transport firm - assessments on IT infrastructure and software-development. 

December 2006 marked the fifth anniversary of Living software. Five years indepentent trainer, coach, consltant and sometimes still programmer. It is a worthwile journey, one that I hope to continue for some time to come.