Hi, I'm Erik. I'm a proud member of the JDriven company. My interests and knowledge focus on architecture, development and people. I love to combine my passion for technique with the more personal side of our line of work. In my spare time I love to run.
People need not only to obtain things; they need above all the freedom to make things among which they can live, to give shape to them according to their own tastes.
In the previous part, I discussed how AI impacts learning and team effectiveness, highlighting the tension between speed and deeper understanding. While AI offers clear advantages, it also introduces new risks for long-term team health.
In this final part, I focus on how teams can consciously integrate AI while preserving collaboration, psychological safety, and strong team dynamics.
In part one, I explored how AI is subtly changing team dynamics through isolation and echo chamber effects. While AI makes individual developers more productive, it can also reduce the natural collaboration that strengthens teams.
In this part, we take a closer look at what this means for learning, knowledge transfer, and the balance between speed and depth in software development.
This blog kicks off a three-part series based on my article “AI’s Impact on Team Dynamics,” originally published in a special edition of JavaPro magazine for JCON Europe 2026, titled Java in the Age of AI. You can find the full magazine here.
In this first part, I explore how AI is already reshaping the way we collaborate as teams and the less visible effects that come with it.
If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it." — Michael Jordan
Dutch companies find themselves in an uncomfortable position. Their data flows through AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. Their productivity tools are Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace. Their AI capabilities depend on OpenAI or Anthropic. The convenience is undeniable, but so is the dependency.
Digital sovereignty isn’t just a buzzword, it’s about control. Control over your data, your operations, and ultimately, your business continuity when geopolitical winds shift.
In the lead-up to today’s Dutch parliamentary elections, we continually witness how political parties defend their own positions, often at the expense of constructive collaboration. This dynamic is surprisingly familiar to anyone who has worked in a large organization. The parallels between election campaigns and organizational silos are striking, and both can be damaging to the broader mission.
Just as political parties prioritize their own agendas over national unity, departments within organizations often pursue isolated goals, leading to fragmentation, inefficiency, and missed opportunities. In both cases, the absence of a shared vision undermines progress. The way forward lies in working together toward a shared goal, aligning diverse perspectives around a common purpose to create meaningful impact.
After 25 years in software engineering, I’ve witnessed many projects, from great success stories to those that never quite lived up to their promise. In our profession, success is not just about technology. Sure, we love our frameworks, CI/CD pipelines, and microservices. But the real power of a high-performing team lies in something much deeper: team dynamics.
In this blog I want to dive into the why, how and what of team dynamics and why it’s such a crucial element in the success of your project or organization.
You’re coding late at night. The lights are low. Your favorite playlist is playing, maybe something only you would call “focus music.” Your IDE is set to a theme that feels just right. You’re not rushing. You’re not distracted. You’re in the zone.
This is vibe coding.
In my previous blog post Prompt Engineering: Tool or Threat to Software Engineering?, I discussed what Prompt Engineering is and how it can be used to help us as software engineers. In this follow-up blog I will dive into Claude 3, the latest AI from Anthropic, and how it can impact us as software engineers.
In our day to day work we are always striving to innovate and deliver high-quality software. One technique that could help you be more successful in achieving these goals is inner source. Inner source refers to applying open source principles within an organization. It is about adopting the collaborative, transparent, and decentralized approach commonly seen in open source projects and applying it to the organization’s internal software development.
As software engineers, we are constantly looking for ways to build faster, more scalable, and more efficient systems. But we often overlook one critical aspect: sustainability. Just as in sports, where long-term success comes from balancing peak performance with endurance, sustainable software engineering is about creating systems that not only perform well today but also remain viable and efficient in the future.
When we think of greatness in the world of sports, one name that immediately pops in my mind is Michael Jordan. Widely regarded as the greatest basketball player of all time, Jordan’s approach to his craft is legendary. While the world of software engineering might seem miles apart from the basketball court, there are valuable lessons we as software engineers can learn from the Michael Jordan approach and apply them to our work as software engineers.
