Impact
From monitoring to change
Scrum Masters are active change agents who strengthen collaboration across team boundaries.
Quality and efficiency
The community keeps IT costs manageable while improving the quality of products and services.
Agility without noise
During major changes, the community acts as a hinge between strategy and teams.
Scalable behavior change
Scrum Masters address colleagues as well as managers on non-helpful behavior. Culture change becomes repeatable capability.
About
Energy was once an annual bill. Now it’s a relationship with 2.5 million households. Visible on a daily basis. Socially sensitive. Customers want to know what they consume, why prices move and what they can do themselves. The energy market is volatile and permanently under a magnifying glass.
As one of the largest players, Essent consciously chooses to go beyond green electricity. The ambition is to help people save, with affordable sustainability. That requires a growing ecosystem of installation partners, systems and contact moments. Promising. And complex.
IT thus became mission critical. Behind every customer response, every insight and every new service is software. And behind that software are teams that must constantly shift gears. That’s exactly where friction arose. Not in the technology, but in how the work was done
“Team Rockstars gives people room to develop outside their job description. This allows them to really improve from the content at Essent.”
THE TECHNOLOGY STANDS. BEHAVIOR MAKES THE DIFFERENCE
For three years, Essent invested heavily in engineering transformation. “Rightly so,” says Evelien van Blitterswijk, Engineering Manager at Essent. In a hyperactive market, systems had to be more stable and scalable. They succeeded.
“Then came the tricky part: behavior, collaboration, decision-making, ownership.” The challenge shifted from how people talk to each other. “People have to learn to have the conversation, without escalating to a manager.” With a master’s degree in Socioeconomic Psychology, Evelien knows where change really starts: with culture.
As long as the focus was technical, the system held up. But once collaboration became decisive, processes proved inadequate. According to Evelien, the Scrum Master is crucial then. “Where product owners and engineers can get bogged down in day-to-day work, the Scrum Master keeps his distance and keeps looking: where is room for improvement?”
The conclusion was clear: “We needed to improve the Scrum Master community to improve our processes.” The dedicated Scrum Master role had eroded. Developers were doing it on the side. Scrum Masters had not grown with them. The movement: from process guardian to true change agent. Beyond the Scrum Guide. Closer to behavior.
Essent engaged Team Rockstars IT to help the community work together differently.
COMMUNITY AS LEVERAGE
The Scrum Master Community is at the heart of behavior change. Thirty Scrum Masters work together to professionalize, share knowledge and focus. Not a consultative structure, but a workshop for better behavior.
Data plays a clear role, but not as an end point. Evelien: “I use data to achieve quality improvement. Why does it take so long? That can be in teams or departments that don’t work well together. That’s a much more qualitative way to look at it.” At the same time, data is needed: “You do need that data to identify where it is.” Essent also learned what doesn’t work. “Focusing heavily on metrics like velocity or capacity leads to gaming. Without context, measurement becomes sham control.”
Scrum Masters have a key position, according to Evelien: the only discipline in any team. “They must feel able to hold their supervisor, and above, accountable for unhelpful behavior.” That’s why Scrum Guide knowledge is not enough. Scrum Masters must understand the software development lifecycle to recognize pain points and be serious interlocutors. Capability building is a conscious decision.
A training program for all Scrum Masters will follow next year. The community was initiated by management, but deliberately fleshed out bottom-up. Thirty Scrum Masters with one goal: continuous improvement. Paul Heiner, Rockstar and Scrum Master at Essent: “There have to be leaders. Otherwise the structure collapses.” The ambition: “We turn all the Scrum Masters into change agents who translate the strategic vision into how we work.”
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THIRTY PEOPLE FIND THE SAME RHYTHM
In a highly dynamic market, Scrum Masters have become the critical hinge between IT and Essent’s customer promise.
- Improvements become deeper and more consistent: Scrum Masters are change agents. By understanding technique and behavior, refinements become sharper, decisions fairer and waste more readily apparent.
- Quality and efficiency increase simultaneously: The community provides better insight and less waste. “This is how we keep IT costs manageable and products affordable,” says Evelien. This directly touches the customer promise.
- Hinge on big changes: When Essent halved its planning & innovation sprint, the community didn’t just deliver the message. It helped teams understand the new rhythm and maintain innovativeness. No delays, no noise.
- Agility in volatile market:Teams are faster, calmer and more attuned. Essent reacts appropriately to market shifts that would otherwise cause delays.
- Tangible culture shift: Scrum Masters dare to address colleagues and managers directly. Evelien: “The higher up the tree, the more abstract the conversation. Scrum Masters also learn to have that conversation.” The community makes this scalable.
Collaboration
The power is not in capacity, but in mutual trust. Essent deliberately gives externs room for responsibility. Team Rockstars provides people who use that space. Paul: “It’s fantastic how much freedom you get to improve. How you are listened to. What you can bring extra as an external, apart from purely your position.” That freedom translates into initiative and acting in Essent’s interests.
That trust is mutual. Evelien: “If you make an appointment with Paul, you know it’s going to be okay.” Essent is also clear in profile choice: “Team Rockstars does not provide thirteen-in-a-dozen engineers.” The need varies from moment to moment. Sometimes it calls for someone who challenges patterns. Sometimes it requires calm and structure. Her conclusion is sober: “The cooperation was just good.”
Technology stands. Behavior makes the difference. The scrum community makes that scalable. “You can really make an impact here as a Rockstar,” says Paul. Evelien concludes, “He is direct, honest when he doesn’t know, and a good interlocutor. That leads to better solutions.”
“Your Rockstar is direct, honest when he doesn’t know, and a good conversationalist. That leads to better solutions.”
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