Curriculum Vitae
Daniela Arndt completed her studies in international economics at the European Business School in Oestrich-Winkel. She spent her first ten professional years in renowned consulting companies. She has been working for R+V Versicherung for 15 years, currently as an Agile Innovation Coach. She has accompanied numerous units and executives up to the board of directors on their way to agility and most recently successively introduced the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe®) with 20 trains. In parallel, she is self-employed on a part-time basis and works as a freelancer for KEGON.
Skills and main topics
- Agile transformation, taking into account individual needs, structures and current possibilities for action of the company
- Transition and change management
- Agile Coaching
- SAFe, FlightLevel, Kanban
- Use of Jira and Confluence in an agile world
Training and Project experience (selection)
Implementation of the Scaled Agile Framework in the IT department of an insurance company
- Pre-study for the selection of a suitable scaling framework.
- Set-up and support of the first pilot training as SAFe programme consultant incl. SAFe trainings for all roles as well as additional trainings and workshops
- Evaluation of the pilot experiences and development of a transformation roadmap
- Founding member of LACE (Lean Agile Center of Excellence)
- Successive establishment and support of further trains (up to 20) and centres of excellence
- Design and implementation of the qualification programme (in addition to method-oriented SAFe trainings, further trainings and workshops, e.g. an Agile Leadership Programme, Change Management for Scrum Masters, Kanban for teams)
- Support in the reorganisation of the organisational structure
Board project for the agile transformation of a corporate group
- Agile Coach, Scrum Master and agile expert
The holding board wanted to find out whether, to what extent and how a group-wide agile transformation of the group (18,000 employees) would make sense and achieve its goals, and at the same time get to know the agile way of working itself. For the first time, a project team worked together with the board in direct workshops without other committees and developed iterative approaches to solutions.
Introduction of self-organised teams
- Leadership
As a part-time employee, Daniela Arndt was a manager for a group of 26 employees in direct leadership in the IT infrastructure/ITIL processes environment. She was advised to move to a team leader level, but she relied on self-organised teams, which she gradually empowered. Internal projects were designed according to Scrum and own development topics were pursued via Kanban.
Building a new holocratic entity
- Agile Coach, agile expert, Changemanager, communication
The newly founded unit "Digital Transformation" was set up on the basis of holocratic principles and grew from an initial five to over 50 employees.
- Design of an initial circle structure
- Setting up and supporting effective meeting formats
- Training and onboarding of staff in the holocratic way of working
- Change manager for accompanying the teams and the environment into the new way of working
- Lead link for the "Projects" circle
- Moderation of the anchor circle
- Publication of experiences at conferences and as a contribution to the book "Agile Organisation - Methoden, Prozesse und Strukturen im digitalen VUCA-Zeitalter" (Agile Organisation - Methods, Processes and Structures in the Digital VUCA Age), published by Verlag Dr. Götz Schmidt.
Introduction of agile methods in (line) units
- Agile Coach, agile expert, agile consultant, agile trainer
As the first "Agile Coach" in the Group, contact person, consultant, expert and trainer for all units outside IT who wanted to gain experience with agile working methods, e.g.
- Design Thinking with Corporate Purchasing
- OKR training and introduction
- Kanban workshops with marketing
- Scrum introduction in the event sector
- Retrospective introduction in major projects and programmes
- Agility and SAFe for the works council
- Drawing up a works agreement for agile working
- Setting up a guideline for agile project management
- Development of agile guardrails approved by the holding board