04

My posts

Team-culture, the importance of ‘how to get there’

August 2021, also posted on the Wehkamp Techblog.
Since long I wanted to write a story about the importance of the right mindset in a team and I think, this is the right moment. Besides the fact that I am on holiday and I find it relaxing to write about some stuff that is om my mind. The Olympics are just over in which Sifan Hassan fell in one of the first qualification rounds, stood up, kept going and won a medal for all 3 disciplines she participated in. Continue reading...

Why lego technic is the microservices architecture of toys

July 2020, originally posted on the devblog of Jumbo.
To illustrate the phases in which companies can be in their architecture and the relation with their partners, I made some pictures of toys of my daughter. They visualise the evolution of Lego, which, funny enough, nicely relate to the evolution of IT landscapes in many companies. Continue reading...

Cherry Picking

November 2018, originally posted on the devblog of Jumbo.
We are building the Jumbo Tech Campus, the development organisation of Jumbo, since October last year. We wanted the Jumbo Tech Campus to be an organisation based on Agile principles so we've reorganized ourselves shortly after that. You want to know more about our experiences? Continue reading...

Tech pets

December 2017, Not long ago I saw someone using ftp, a protocol that is used as long as I can remember to move files, 25 years or so. We started talking about the funny little Fetch, that used to be there, running from the server with the files to the server that was supposed to get them. Fetch is a dog, but more recently I see cats used everywhere in the Tech world. To speak with Hillary Clinton ‘What happened?'. Did cats replace dogs in the Tech World? Continue reading...

OKR template for teams

June 2017, If your team has clear goals, they can be more focused and therefore be more effective. A popular framework for defining and tracking objectives is OKR (Objectives & Key Results). It was originally created at Intel and later adopted by Google, where they use it intensively. Apart from within these bigger companies, I believe the OKR framework can work for every size of a team or company. I have created a template in Google Sheets, feel free to copy and use it for your company or team.

First things first, Add it to the pile.

May 2017, originally posted on the devblog of Coolblue.
Do you know that feeling? When you’re looking at your to-do list, trying to decide where to start. Your eye catches a specific item, but you don’t really feel like doing that one right now. You decide there’s still plenty of time to do it later and put it aside. Besides, there are several urgent items on the list which can be completed much more efficiently. So you decide to complete these first. Continue reading...

Hamburgers & Knowledge sharing

January 2017, originally posted on the devblog of Coolblue.
Three years ago we created an event called “Behind the Scenes” [BTS] at Coolblue. And over the years, not much has changed. The event starts off with hamburgers at around 18:00, followed by a few presentations about various topics, delivered by people who work at Coolblue Tech. After that, we treat our guests to a tour of the office and show them our cool meeting rooms. To wrap things up, we enjoy a few drinks at our very own bar, located in the cafeteria. Once all of that’s done, there’s only 1 thing left to do: making sure that everyone leaves before midnight. 😉 Continue reading...

An internet love story

November 2016, let me take you back to March 1995. At that time internet wasn’t commonly used, at least not among my friends. I was studying Industrial Design at the Technical University of Delft. I was in my 4th year when I took an internship at Philips in Eindhoven. This was the title of my thesis: The WWW? What is it and what can Philips Media do with it? Continue reading...

Pizza Sessions

October 2016, originally posted on the devblog of Coolblue.
As a young company, we like to learn. In our work, from our colleagues, and in educational settings like workshops and classrooms. Learning is what motivates us; what makes us happy to work at Coolblue. Continue reading...

A farmer won’t eat what he doesn’t know

June 2016, originally posted on the devblog of Coolblue.
I know, this is a Dutch proverb that doesn’t work in English. It means you dislike things, even though you haven’t tried them. Usually for no particular reason. This blog is about how we internationalized the IT department of Coolblue, and how we taught the farmer to broaden his horizon. Continue reading...

Growing at high-speed while keeping our culture

March 2016, originally posted on the devblog of Coolblue.
Two years ago there were 38 of us in the IT development department of Coolblue. As a company we grew very fast and our backlogs were long and expanding. We had to do something about that and we decided that we wanted to hire 100 more developers. And we did! Continue reading...