Scrum Team COBOL Demand

Project overview

TEAM DEMAND COBOL

Introduction

The Collection and Payment Traffic department handles collection, recovery, and payment traffic for almost all tax resources and allowances in the Netherlands. The department is in the process of modernizing its (outdated) IT landscape. The first phase of this is almost complete. Now for the continuation. This will be a multi-year project. Extensive consideration has been given to how this project should be shaped. Essential to this is the strategic choice to shape part of the mass processes in Cobol.

The Cobol application COA-s, for which a solid foundation was laid in the first phase of modernization, forms the core of this choice. The strategic choice for Cobol also means that the Cobol pipeline will be further modernized, and that new people will be brought in where possible. The work on COA-s is on the critical path of modernization in the coming years.

Challenges

The team will be asked, in close collaboration with 2 existing COA-s teams (and with a number of other (existing) teams that will further advance the modernization), to further expand COA-s with new functionality. Important in this context (and therefore also for the team to be offered): COA-s strives for a high degree of test automation; great strides have already been made in this. Within COA-s, we want to explicitly incorporate AI into our development process. A number of people within COA-s have licenses for an advanced coding assistant with which rudimentary agents have been built.

The modernization project has been prioritized within the Tax Administration for the further rollout of AI.

The COA-s people are on average 2 days a week at the office (Monday and Thursday).

Expectations Tax Administration

After an onboarding period of approximately two months, the team is expected to independently develop the necessary features under the guidance of the product owner (from their own CAP organization) and the scrum master. The 2 existing COA-s teams have a Velocity of between 20 and 25 feature points per month; the expectation is that the new team will also achieve this after six months.

Team requirements and conditions

Individual hiring prefers 36-40 hours per week per team member.

It is a plus if we can have 1 or two employees function T-shaped.

The team must be eager to learn, but also willing to share their knowledge. Because the features are complex in the sense that they must connect to multiple other applications, we expect all team members, for their expertise, to proactively align in content and approach with peers from various other teams. Outgoing mindset.

The team consists of:

Once a month, an evaluation will take place with the supplier and team manager, RTE, and the Product Owner to be appointed.

The offer

The offer is aimed at hiring a scrum team, preferably already trained and coordinated. The entire team speaks Dutch. It describes how the requirements and conditions of the team are met (see previous paragraph). The offer includes:

It is up to the supplier to determine the composition of the team regarding the expertise of the team members.

The work will be carried out at the WBC Apeldoorn location, with office days being Monday and Thursday. If necessary for collaboration, the team must be willing to come to the office for an extra day occasionally. However, physical presence at SAFe events, such as Inspect & Adapt and PI events, is also a requirement. Within six months, excluding the departure of an employee from the company, it is not permitted to deploy other team members within the team. This applies to the initial hiring period as well as the extension period.

A plan of approach for the execution of the assignment.

Required profiles

The most important aspect of these profiles is that they have extensive experience in complex COBOL environments and can work in a scrum/agile organization. Therefore, they must all be seniors. You need time to get acquainted, and to keep this time realistic, you must be experienced and senior. It is understandable if there is a medior, but that can only be the case for the testers; preferably seniors again. There are only a few years to realize this plan, which is why the desire is to keep the onboarding period as short as possible.

Designer (1 FTE)

You ensure good and intensive alignment with the business, developers, product owner, business analyst, architect, and users. You build new functionality, resolve incidents and problems with existing functionality, and contribute ideas and advice on the design and architecture of the application. You monitor the realization of the service-oriented architecture together with the solution architect. You support testers where necessary with performing tests and maintaining and expanding testware. In sprints of 2 weeks, we work closely with the product owner on new functionality that we then bring to production.

• Product Owner (from own organization)
• Scrum Master
• Designer
• Developers (3)
• Testers (3)
• what the experience of this team is;
• which team members have worked together before (including duration);
• at which client(s) the team members have worked before;
• how the collaboration between the existing employees (product owner, product management, RTE, fellow development teams, etc.) and the team to be delivered is viewed;
• what is expected from the Tax Administration related to the above collaboration;
• whether the team can start as soon as possible, with flexible onboarding of team members possible.

Requirements

Competencies:

Scrum Master (1 FTE)

In your role as scrum master, you are involved in the entire development process of our services. You connect the different disciplines in the team by promoting agile principles and applying scrum in daily practice. For your team, you are an easily approachable sounding board and you facilitate effective communication between the team and stakeholders. You work with two other scrum masters who each guide a service team.

Senior Developer (3 FTE)

You work in a scrum team that builds and renews services. You develop in COBOL and work according to established guidelines. You investigate complex issues and translate them into clear solutions. You work together with your colleagues in the scrum team. You help renew a large and important system that processes more than 1 billion euros daily. You are a senior developer because you deal with a complex environment. Your experience and knowledge help you gain knowledge of this complex environment in a short time.

Senior Tester (3 FTE)

You work in a scrum team that builds and renews services. You test in COBOL and work according to established guidelines. You investigate complex issues and translate them into clear solutions. You work together with your colleagues in the scrum team. You help renew a large and important system that processes more than 1 billion euros daily. You are a senior tester because you deal with a complex environment. Your experience and knowledge help you gain knowledge of this complex environment in a short time.

Your competencies:

• Elaborate on features and user stories
• Align with architects, stakeholders, and interfaces
• Update documentation and use cases
• Translate business needs into concrete functionality
• Support developers and testers during realization
• Planning and organizing
• Organizational sensitivity
• Collaboration
• Analyzing
• You have a higher professional education (HBO) work and thinking level.
• You have at least 5 years of work experience in a similar role.
• You have experience with coaching and with agile, scrum, and SAFe.
• You are a reliable and sensitive point of contact.
• You enjoy helping your colleagues develop themselves and achieve team goals.
• You recognize bottlenecks, both in terms of content and personal matters, and are able to resolve them in a pleasant and positive manner.
• You have experience with agile, scrum, and SAFe.
• Result-oriented
• Environmental awareness

Project details

Number of FTE: 8

Desired start date: January 1, 2027

Initial end date: December 31, 2027 (12 months), with an option to extend until June 30, 2030 at the latest

Hours per week: 36; part-timers not allowed

WBC Walterbos, 7314 PS Apeldoorn

Hybrid working: negotiable

Screening: VOG with screening items 11, 12, 13, and 41, present before the start of deployment

Security investigation: not required

Irregular shifts and on-call duties: no

• Start: 2026-12-31T23:00:00
• Location: Apeldoorn Gelderland, NL
• Languages: Dutch