Deltares - Department Transformation

Deltares – Department Transformation

When Deltares asked me to lead this department, the brief was simple but challenging: restore sustainable motivation in a team whose flagship product had just been declared end‑of‑life. Six months earlier, they had heard that their main product would be discontinued because of unmaintainable legacy code and replaced by a new system built elsewhere. The department had little structure, fragile processes, and collaboration was uneven.​

Analysis: An eager department

I began by interviewing every team member to understand their perspective. I saw distrust and fear, a rigid and risk‑averse way of working, a strong subconscious hierarchy based on age, and melancholy about losing “their” product. But I also noticed genuine pride in what had been built, deep passion for the underlying science, and a strong desire to do what is best for users and Deltares. The situation made clear that the problem was not motivation, but untapped potential held back by a lack of direction and psychological safety.

Technically, the core product was a monolith with manual deployments, minimal automated tests, and fragmented coding styles, with guarded single points of failure that left key parts of the code base unmaintainable for most engineers. At the same time, I saw a perimeter of services with modern architecture, solid test coverage, and an emerging CI/CD pipeline, which showed that the department already had the skills and patterns needed to modernize.

Organizationally, team sizes varied wildly from 2 to 17 people, sprints existed but scrum was implemented ineffectively, knowledge was hoarded, and communication could be harsh or even aggressive. Yet I consistently met people who cared deeply and were eager to change things for the better. They simply lacked the mandate, structure, experience, and support to do so.

Design: A strategic framework

I formulated a clear vision and strategy for the product and the department. Although the product had been “discontinued,” it was obvious it would be in use for at least another five years and that users were satisfied. The business logic was considered best‑in‑class; the real problem was code quality and development speed. The vision therefore stated that the product would continue to help Deltares grow as the industry’s best solution, while we systematically improved its internals to make it easier and faster to evolve. The strategy focused on four areas: technical excellence, operational excellence (agile), domain knowledge, and innovation, documented transparently on a wiki and refined with feedback from the team.​

To ensure this vision was owned broadly, I brought together high‑potential and influential team members as a coalition to drive the strategy. I professionalized people management: everyone received personal development goals, high potentials were actively supported and given more influence, and under‑performance was addressed with clear expectations and consequences. Regular one‑on‑ones made sure people were seen and heard, and gave me a continuous pulse on the department.​ Reward and recognition shifted from seniority to merit.

Recruitment and selection were redesigned to be more objective and inclusive. I had a commission jointly review resumes and conducted both technical and behavioral interviews, improving quality and diversity of hires. I trained members of this commission to select for skill and talent over culture fit. Over the next twelve months we added ten new team members, each bringing fresh skills, knowledge, and energy.​

Build: Processes and technical excellence

On the process side, I introduced quarterly Big Room planning sessions where the whole department shared achievements, knowledge, and plans. Bi‑weekly “scrum of scrums” and “Product Owner alignment meetings” created cross‑team transparency. Retrospectives and stand‑ups were reshaped into concise, result‑oriented sessions instead of zombie rituals. Teams were restructured to 4–7 people, each with a clear lead, and people were no longer spread thin across multiple teams, which restored focus and collaboration.​

Technically, the improvement potential was enormous, and opinions on where to start were strong and fragmented. Together with two high potentials, I designed a Model of Technical Excellence, inspired by agile maturity models. It defined key aspects such as architecture, knowledge sharing, testing, and coding practices across five maturity levels, from ad hoc to innovating. Teams used this model for structured self‑assessment and to choose their own improvement priorities.​

This approach shifted the dynamic from defensive debates to constructive conversations. Veteran engineers accepted the model because it invited self‑evaluation rather than top‑down judgment, while newer team members finally had a shared language to contribute their perspective. It created clarity, focus, and, most importantly, a culture of continuous improvement rather than a chase for perfection everywhere at once. I further supported this by hiring technically strong leaders for architectural work and by encouraging conferences, reading, and internal tech talks.​

Outcome and impact

When I joined, the department was seen as slow, high-maintenance, and individualistic. Through clear vision, structural process changes, investment in people, and a pragmatic approach to technical excellence, that perception changed fundamentally. Colleagues from other parts of the organization started reaching out to ask what had changed and how they could replicate it. The department’s reputation evolved from problem child to one of the best‑performing units in the organization.​ The organization regained confidence in the potential of the flagship product, and it was revitalized with a department that is proud to be its owner. People enjoy being part of the department again, and continuous improvement is now the norm. For me as a leader, this assignment reinforced my belief in how blending engineering discipline with empathetic cultural change can transform a discouraged, legacy-burdened group into a confident, high-performing, resilient one that the organization looks up to as an example.