Andy van der Gugten

I’ve always worked in an agile way – even before I knew what that meant. When I was an IT project manager, others often wondered why I was never at my desk. Instead, I was spending most of my time with our business teams or customers, trying to understand their needs and frustrations so I could find the best solution for their problems.

Throughout my career working on IT projects and change management initiatives, I found that a lot of organisations try to tackle complexity with even more complicated solutions, technology or hierarchies. When what they really needed was simplicity. 

The sentiment of agile that struck me the most was how it helps you find the simplest and most efficient solution to meet the needs of your stakeholders. This mindset served me well in my more technical IT roles working at Honda Suisse SA and Radford Software, and it ignited my passion for coaching and creating high-performing teams.

As a certified trainer, facilitator and coach, I find the most joy in equipping teams with the skills, knowledge, freedom, and support they need to solve problems and delight customers. Creating team cultures that thrive on open communication and collaboration is also what drew me to DevOps. Agile and DevOps go hand-in-hand in that sense.

Outside of work, the agile way of thinking is not something I can turn off. I’ve renovated a few houses and always use a visual board to manage the workflow. When I’m not renovating houses, I like to travel with my wife and our four kids. Our village, Féchy, is surrounded by vineyards and is well known in Switzerland for its superb white wine.

My certifications:

• ICAgile Authorised Instructor
• ICAgile Certified Professional (ICP)
• ICAgile Certified Professional – Agile Team Facilitation (ICP-ATF)
• ICAgile Certified Professional – Agile Coaching (ICP-ACC)
• ICAgile Certified Professional – Agile Product Ownership (ICP-APO)
• ICAgile Certified Professional – Enterprise Product Ownership (ICP-EPO)
• ICAgile Certified Professional – Delivery at Scale (ICP-DAS)
• ICAgile Certified Professional – Agile Project and Delivery Management (ICP-APM)
• ICAgile Certified Professional – Foundation of DevOps (ICP-FDO)
• ICAgile Certified Professional – Implementing DevOps (ICP-IDO)
• ICAgile Certified Professional – Agile Test Automation (ICP-ATA)
• Certified Professional for Requirements Engineering, SAQ Swiss Association for Quality

My education:

• Postgraduate Certificate in Management Studies, The University of Waikato