Mischa is an agile software developer and coach with over 20 years of experience. His work experience is primarily in high tech: in academia, company research, startups, (medical) product development and embedded application environments. Some of the applications he has worked on are deep brain stimulation therapy systems, multi-core processors, real-time file systems and IP-based multimedia services.

Starting his professional career when better ways of software development were uncovered that culminated in the Agile Manifesto in 2001, Mischa rode the wave of agile software development all his professional life. During that ride Mischa experienced firsthand the growth that makes agile and agile coaching work: from scrutinously following agile methods like Scrum and Lean to laying the foundation of agility as the Modern Agile guiding principles prescribe; from a focus on each of the individual XP best practices to syncretizing elements of software development methods into ‘holistic agile’; and from a focus on the technological output (software) to a focus on the sociological input(peopleware). During that journey Mischa worked at Philips, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Medtronic.

Mischa holds a Master of Computer Science from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He gathered fame as a zealous Unixophile, fanatically preaching the beauty and necessity of simplicity. Unix v6 and v7, Minix, Linux and the BSDs all had a place in his life. In his search for simplicity Mischa also studied Religion and Philosophy of Life at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He now thinks he found it with the existentialists and philosophers that emphasize the will (Schopenhauer, Nietzsche). In his spare time Mischa enjoys sports (field hockey, hiking, running, mountain biking). He lives in the Netherlands.