Review Blue Striped Frog – The agile community – Magazine (3rd edition)

The third edition of the Blue Striped Frog magazine offers insights into leadership, programme management, the combination of low-code with agile working and several articles focusing on working remotely under the Northern lights, Pippi’s lesson about the agile mindset and wonders if agility lost its ability to be innovative.

The first article gives an impression of a walk and talk in the surroundings of Loon op Zand with Theo van Kessel, APG, about the role of leadership in agile transformations. Using a vision-map, ICT song about the vision and a two-week heartbeat to bring the vison alive and define true distinctive values. How did Theo managed to change the way of working and mindset? What does it ask from him as a leader? It’s not only facilitation but also act if individuals do not deliver as promised. It’s about sustainable change and the importance of feedback. It’s about the right balance.

The second article Working remotely makes you jealous. Maurits Kühne and his girlfriend Laura combined their passions for the great outdoors and northern light/aurora photography with their Teams/zoom meeting environment and moved during the pandemic to Norway. The article describes their journey and ends with their learnings: 1) Trying something is better than not trying at all; 2) Think in possibilities; 3) Prepare for the worst, plan for the best.

In the article Golden duo low-code and agile working: quickly demonstrates added value by Hans Canisius, we get an explanation of low-code. Low-code is a widely used means of accelerating digital transformation because with low-code you separate form and content, you can work in ‘natural language’ and business and IT work together even more easily.

Daniel van Zuydam holds up a mirror to us with his article Has agility lost its ability to be innovative? His thesis is that agility is more a tool for operational excellence than it is a tool to be used for innovation. He looks a lowest-lying fruit, speed, and stable teams to substantiate his claim.

In the article TOAH and programs by Henk Venema and myself we explain what programs are and what added value does a program approach provide. We use TOAH (the Organizational Agility Heartbeat) to connect program coordination with agile execution in the teams and we show how TOAH can be combined with Managing Successful Programmes (MSP) and Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe).

The last article is Pippi’s lesson about the Agile Mindset by Vincent Snijder. Vincent explores his own wonderful and sparkling feeling when he focusses on growth and development or with other words, he compares a growth with a fixed mindset. He ends with Pippi Longstocking’s historical words “I’ve never tried that before, so I think I should definitely be able to do that”. (Note: there is still a debate going on to find the source of the quote in Pippi’s books and movies, but it’s certainly an attitude for a growth mindset!)

Conclusion: A must read. And, if you haven’t subscribed yet be fast and you will receive this one and all the upcoming issues of the Blue Striped Frog Magazine for free (physical and/or digital edition). You can subscribe at https://www.bluestripedfrog.com