Pleased to meet you, my name is Bas van Haren-Suarez and I want to tell you about Scrum.
My career as a Scrum Master started in 2019, when I started working as a Scrum Master at a digital agency. After using the waterfall method (as a project manager) for seven years at an advertising agency and seven years at a game development studio, Scrum was a completely new way of working for me. After a Scrum training and getting my PSM I certificate, I facilitated Scrum teams for various projects and clients. I switched to a fully digital working environment during the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic, and as such have been involved in streamlining and professionalizing the Scrum processes in the agency.
The subject matter did not let me go. There was so much more to learn! I collected articles, devoured book after book, dreamed about getting more certificates. More recently I got a kick out of summarizing my learnings and transforming them into presentations for my peers. It was only later that I began to realize that it had been a while since I was so passionately involved with a subject. I had to do something with that. That’s how this blog was born: to share my experiences.
However, it is not my intention to share my experiences as ‘best practices’. In the spirit of empiricism, each situation has its own unique properties. What I want is to provide a number of possible tools and ways of thinking, so that the readers themselves can evaluate them and, where possible, apply them themselves. My way may not be the ‘highway’.
My ambition is to one day transfer my knowledge and experience to other motivated professionals. To train future generations of Scrum Masters. I hope that through this blog I can already make a start, albeit in a humble capacity.
More about me
Married, ‘catdad’ of two beautiful black cats, living in the beautiful city of The Hague, the city of peace and justice. Avid gamer, home chef and all-round bon-vivant. Right now I work as a Scrum master at an international software development company. Want to know more? Check out my personal website or LinkedIn profile.
So why ‘kingmaker’?
A kingmaker is a person who ensures that another person or institution gains or can maintain a position of power. Now I’m no ‘Uncle Warwick’ or a brooding and scheming character on Game of Thrones. As a Scrum Master I am involved in facilitation, empowerment and optimal self-management. Servant-leadership, without taking the spotlight myself. I found the denominator ‘kingmaker’ appropriate (yes, my mother did always say I had a flair for the dramatic).
Certificates
