“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”

Lao Tzu

During my PhD I discovered the agile mindset and quickly became a passionate advocate. I’m always trying to find a way to introduce agile approaches as a way to enable effective communication and calm creativity, especially in remote culture.

I strive to create a safe space for exploration. When we take the time and make the space for this attitude, the feeling of the process shifts, and the output is exponentially of a higher quality.

Work flows, the output is better.

Then comes learning and adaptation. With structure to keep processes transparent, and regular moments of feedback and course-correction, we zero in on producing value.

Beyond Burnout

“Beyond Burnout: How I made my PhD and social research agile by adapting scrum values” tells the stories and shares the journey of how I made agile work for me in my context. It is based on my collaboration with Nikitas Chronas Foteinakis.

You can download it here.

The report won the award for best experience report at the Agile Alliance XP2023 conference in Amsterdam.

You can also see the slidedeck of my XP2023 presentation, which was part of a fantastic session on storytelling, commitment and hooliganism. The audience was very familiar with agile, so the presentation is really just they key points.

Agile productivity for PhDs

This slidedeck shares how to use the agile mindset for productivity in solo projects. While I’ve iterated my approach many times since, it still captures the essence of my thinking.