Vision on
Product Leadership
Great products delivered by amazing people form the heart of any company. Today’s organizations have widely adopted an Agile way-of-working, enabling more effective and efficient delivery of products and services. However, delivering value to customers remains a challenge. Companies are reinventing themselves in a way that power trickles down to the people and teams with the right knowledge and insights to make decisions. This change exposes a new kind of problem though; the need for product leadership.
Knowing what to build for whom and why, is what every company needs to find out fast, in order to stay relevant and successful. Often the answer lies at the intersection of (1) something customers love (2) something with great market potential and (3) something that is feasible to create. That intersection, where UX, Business, and Tech meet, is a great place to be. But it is an ever-changing journey to get there.
We are The Value Maximizers; and our mission is to move product management forward. We share knowledge and experience all over the world. We love building great products with our clients. We empower organizations to build the right things by growing product leadership in the heart of a company. Because we all agree… Life is too short to build boring stuff!
We are…
The Value Maximizers
Willem Vermaak
Willem is a Product Management trainer and consultant, who has a passion for leadership and creating high-value products. His passion come to live in everything revolving around product management, product leadership, product strategy, and product ownership. For Willem, it’s all about a new way of leadership and creating value. Willem is specialized in product management, product leadership, product strategy and product ownership. In his courses, he uses this knowledge and his experience (as an Armed Force officer amongst others) to dive deep into ways to manage a team and use customer input to add value to every part of an organization.
Besides teaching Professional Product Management programs, Scrum.org courses, and coaching/consulting, Willem is also a regular speaker at events and conferences. Willem is a co-author of the book: Master the Art of No – Effective Stakeholder Management for POs and PMs. Willem is passionate about for developing people and organizations, and within that a special place in his heart for people that are accountable for driving a product to success. Want to contact Willem and start collaborating? Please connect via LinkedIn!
Robbin Schuurman
Robbin can talk about product management all day long, and he literally does so. He is the Head of Product at Xebia Academy, founder of Professional Product ManagementTM and The Value Maximizers, a Product Owner Course Steward at Scrum.org, writer, speaker, and author of Master the Art of No – Effective Stakeholder Management for POs and PMs. Robbin’s career is all about Agile Product Management and he is on a mission to move the profession of Product Management forward. He moves the profession forward by developing product people into exceptional Product Leaders, through teaching, coaching, mentoring, writing, and consulting.
He has worked with start-ups, hypergrowth scale-ups, small- and medium businesses, and global enterprises. Although Robbin has a vast experience in Agile, Scrum, Project-, Product-, and Portfolio Management, his passion is all about product. With his latest product – called Professional Product Management – Robbin provides skill-development programs for product professionals, that are not just awesome (according to clients), but also deliver measurable results. Want to contact Robbin and start collaborating? Please connect via LinkedIn!
Get the Book
“A must-read for every Product Owner and Product Manager. Packed with valuable and applicable insights, stories, and practical tools for starting Product Owners. It’s a feast of recognition for experienced Product Managers, yet offers them new insights and approaches to stakeholder management. An excellently written book, created by very experienced product professionals.”
— Productowner.nl —
Move Your Product Management Forward!
Learn from the Experts and PO/PM Peers
Training Courses
We are the go-to company for product management training. Whatever your preferred way of learning, we’ve got you covered. Expand your network by meeting peers from other organizations and experience the benefits of our learning community.
Individual Training Courses in a nutshell:
Learning Journeys
A learning journey is created for specific roles and personas. For example, we have created a tailored learning journey for becoming a Cloud Developer on AWS, for becoming an excellent Product Owner/Manager, Security Engineer, great Digital Leader, or Agile Coach.
Learning Journeys in a nutshell:
Upskilling Programs
A comprehensive program to level up the skills of your workforce and teams. Highly engaging training sessions, hands-on support when applying new skills in practice, mentoring and coaching support, access to Xebia’s online community and learning platform where people can meet alumni from all over the world and access the content, tools, and practices they need to do an awesome job. All to achieve a future fit workforce.
Upskilling in a nutshell:
Get Yourself some Goodies
From our Shop
Product Owner Maturity Cardgame
Discover how the accountabilities and authorities of a Product Owners change along the growth path from Scribe to Entrepreneur. Discuss the accountability cards with your peers, Scrum Master/Agile Coach, or your Product Lead(er).
The Product Owner Maturity Cardgame provides great opportunities for Identifying potential growth for yourself, your product team, and your organization. The game supports Product professionals in understanding and increasing their ownership of the product. So, get ready to take the next step in your product career!
Business Model Innovation Cardgame
Product innovation comes from many sources. Great Product Owners/Managers leverage customer insights, product analytics data, and input from their peers and broader colleagues. However, what can you learn from other organizations? We don’t refer to your known competitors though. What can you learn from other organizations outside your own industry?
The Business Model Innovation game will provide you with insights and inspiration to drive value for your product, using other types of business models.
Agile Governance
Cardgame
Most Product Owners are great collaborators by nature. Considering the Product Owner stances, about 50% of all Product Owners prefer to take the Collaborator stance in complex situations. Collaborating however is not always easy. It can become very challenging to collaborate well, if the organizational governance doesn’t allow for strong Product Ownership, Professional Scrum, and/or Business Agility.
The Agile Governance game will help you to explore different Governance elements, and helps you to have the right discussions about governance within your organization.
Proudly Part of Xebia Group.