One of just 100: An interview with Andrej Tkalec — Prokanban.org certified trainer and Scrum expert at generic.de

There are many trainers who work with Kanban. However, only around 100 worldwide comply with the standards of Prokanban.org — one of the leading organizations in the area of Kanban — officially trained and certified. The newest member of this selected group is Andrej Tkalec, Scrum Master at generic.de.

In an interview, he explains what makes training at ProKanBan different from others — and what meaning it has for him personally and his daily work.

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Andrej, first of all, congratulations on this great success! What does it feel like to be one of only around 100 people worldwide who are allowed to wear this certificate?

Thank you so much! I am extremely proud of this opportunity and at the same time deeply grateful for the trust placed in me. At the same time, I also feel a great responsibility, but I am happy to accept it. The journey there involved a lot of work and personal commitment, making it all the better to see that this effort paid off.

For me, this is not only a personal milestone, but also a motivation to share my knowledge, promote professionalism in teams and to accompany and train others on their journey into the world of Kanban. I am particularly pleased to be able to train colleagues at generic.de, to offer in-house training, to conduct trainings in my native language Croatian in the future and to spread the topic of Kanban in this region.

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For anyone who is not so familiar with the terms — can you briefly explain how Scrum and Kanban differ as approaches?

Gladly. Put simply, Scrum is a framework with clearly defined roles, events, and artifacts. It sets out what needs to be done, but leaves open exactly how the implementation will take place.

Kanban, on the other hand, is neither a method nor a framework, but a strategy for optimizing workflow. It helps teams to make bottlenecks visible, to continuously improve processes and thus to work more efficiently, effectively and predictably — also very well in combination with Scrum, by the way.

And a practical tip: Scrum and Kanban are not mutually exclusive — on the contrary, they complement each other perfectly. While Scrum creates structure and clear responsibilities, Kanban brings flexibility and flow to daily work. Anyone who combines both enables empirical process control and establishes a continuously optimized work process.

Or figuratively speaking: Scrum is the skeleton, Kanban is the muscles — only together do they bring movement and strength to everyday work.

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What exactly makes training at Prokanban.org different from others in this area — and what makes it so demanding?

Prokanban.org pursues exceptionally high quality standards and applies strict selection criteria. Unlike many other providers, you can't simply register, pay and are automatically there. Instead, you have to prove your suitability through specific project experience, references and meaningful case studies. These documents are carefully reviewed with feedback as to whether they are sufficient or whether a personal interview is being held for further assessment.

The entire application and selection process is intensive, not only on a professional level but also on a personal level. The decisive factor is the attitude and motivation with which someone starts and to what extent the values of ProKanBan are actually lived out. Anyone who is not convincing here — whether in terms of content or humanity — is either rejected outright or drops out in the course of the training process.

So-called professional peer reviews are a particularly demanding component. The candidate is assessed by experienced ProkanBan trainers on several levels, including in terms of moderation, didactics, expertise and methodological depth. Only when the highest quality standards have been met here too will you be invited to the next step in the certification process.

I failed the first time I tried

I can honestly say: For me, this phase was one of the deepest and at the same time most instructive experiences in the entire process. I failed on my first attempt and the feedback from the trainers was clear: I was good, but in a certain area I wasn't at the very high level that ProKanBan expects. The fact that it was just this one point and not several was decisive. Otherwise, the process might have ended for me. It was precisely this aspect that led to me getting another chance, probably my last.

The pressure was great, especially due to my own demands. But that was exactly the moment when I consciously chose an empirical approach: Inspect and Adapt. With a bit of a distance, I can say today that I am very grateful to the ProKanban experts for their honest and clear feedback. It has not only helped me to significantly improve in this critical area, but also fundamentally sharpened my understanding of excellence and genuine quality in a training context.

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What do you take away from your training for your daily work at generic.de?

A lot. The knowledge and experience that I can draw on through training actually benefits me in my work on a daily basis. It gives me great pleasure to share this knowledge and see how people and teams benefit from it and how we continuously develop as a company.

This is particularly helpful in customer projects. By working in this way, we are not only efficient, but can also validate our processes in a targeted manner and regularly review them. In this way, we achieve the best possible result for our customers with as little effort as possible and, of course, also in terms of costs. This complements our clean code requirement perfectly and enables us to offer professional and excellent services from which our customers benefit directly.

That sounds very good — thank you for the interview and continued success and enjoyment of your projects!

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