About me

Circa 2014, at our first Rails Girls event.

People don't resist change. They resist being changed.
Peter Senge

**“Who” this is for**

This blog will appeal to anyone that is interested into transformation, from personal, to teams, organisations, and societies. I am especially focused on organisational agile transformation, as it is my area of expertise.

I will document my learning and experimenting, my own moments of awareness, to help you identify your own.

I will be writing about:

agile transformation (frameworks, practices, mindset and behaviours)
personal transformation and growth
climate change and what can we do
social change
women empowerment
techniques to create safety in systems

I will also share my path to learning to code 🙂 my struggle gave birth to Girls Who Code Romania and other amazing initiatives to support women who want to learn to code.

*Jump to Footer, Categories, for a complete list of topics.

**The “What“**

We can’t impose our will on a system. We can listen to what the system tells us, and discover how its properties and our values can work together to bring forth something much better than could ever be produced by our will alone.”
― Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer

I’ve been an Agile Coach for over four years, helping organisations transform into better functional systems, but also a Coach, helping individuals drive their transformation.

My goal is to move on to bigger systems, and create awareness for social and global change, such as women empowerment, equality of chances, and climate change. I use games, play, coaching and facilitation to make it happen.

**The “Why“**

“Our prevailing system of management has destroyed our people. People are born with intrinsic motivation, self-respect, dignity, curiosity to learn, joy in learning. The forces of destruction begin with toddlers – a prize for the best Halloween costume, grades in school, gold stars – and on up through university. On the job, people, teams, and divisions are ranked, reward for the top, punishment for the bottom. Management by Objectives, quotas, incentive pay, business plans, put together separately, division by division, cause further loss, unknown and unknownable.” – Dr. Deming’s letter to Peter M. Senge, intro to The Fifth Discipline, revised edition.

Quick bio

I am an Agile Coach, Co-Founder of Girls Who Code Romania, former Scrum Master, Lean enthusiast, mother, believer that people really do want to give their best to work (if only they are allowed to), and committed to continuous learning.

I worked various Agile frameworks and practicesm, starting with the DSDM framework, then got into Scrum about five years ago as a Product Owner and then Scrum Master. I continued in the last couple of years with Kanban, Scrumban, XP, LeSS etc.

I got into Agile way back, in 2003, just that I didn’t know it 🙂 I was working in an automobile plant (Dacia-Renault) as a Purchasing Manager. Dacia was trying a lot of the Toyota Production Systems (TPS) – Lean practices (value stream mapping, eliminate waste, kanban, pull systems, etc.), but they didn’t come with the Toyota’s values and practices.

Later on, as a consultant in operations and then Project Manager (Consultant) in software development implementation I ran into more issues and problems, and half-implemented lean / TPS practices, but every single time just the mechanics on their own, without the supporting management philosophy and continuous learning.

In my projects and experience with lean manufacturing / lean operations, something was always missing. Agile is not about the practices, tools, systems, frameworks – even though absolutely everyone focuses religiously on those – it’s about the mindset, values and principles behind. It’s all about the people and their ability to adapt, transform, and eventually change their behaviours.