Scaled Agile Development Training

Essence can truly help enable Agility beyond the framework currently being used. What I found striking, even after the first exercise, is how effective the games are in ensuring that everyone in the room goes through the same journey of realization. And this is extremely powerful.

Agile Coaches often clearly see organizations on verge of making poor decisions but find it challenging to articulate what’s necessary to their clients. What Essence can contribute here is to de-focus the coach and convert him into a true facilitator, so the group in question can reach the conclusion on their own. We should never underestimate the power of allowing people to reach that Aha! moment on their own.

Another challenge is when you feel that something is rotten, but you can’t exactly pinpoint what. I think Essence would be perfect for flushing it out. The approach is easily applicable on scale.

It was truly eye opening and mind growing. I am going to apply what I learnt in my organization immediately. I strongly recommend the course.

Paula Novokmet, TTTech Auto, Serbia

I was excited attending Keith’s and Brian’s class. It was simply nothing less than great, based on huge experience, explanation of all the framework elements and, mostly important, the reasons standing behind them.

Gareev, Marat, Fujitsu

Though at the time we started attending Better Scrum through Essence class, I was not familiar with Essence, the class, with international participation and collaboration, was fabulous. It gave me a great overview on the topic. I especially liked the many use-cases / real examples that were presented and discussed. Additionally, I love to share Better Scrum through Essence knowledge and help building a community around that.’

Tomaž Aljaž, SPAR Slovenia

I found the Better Scrum through Essence course very interesting. The trainers were excellent in their delivery and facilitation of the class. I especially enjoyed the games in the Scrum Essentials and Scrum Accelerator modules and will be introducing some of these to the leaders and teams I coach.

Uloaku (Ula) Ojiaku, Agile Innovation Leaders podcast, UK

The content was adequate, informative and practical. I can readily claim that as I am a SAFe leader for more than 3 years. The lecturers are both top trainers, knowledgeable, fun and engaging

Overall, I found it very useful and I have found many answers to things that were bugging me about implementing SAFe. Because of the demonstrated competency and relevance, we engaged with your company for hiring some of your people as coaches, which should speak for our satisfaction from the course.’

Nikola Gjeorgjiev, Product Manager, Digital Platform, formerly, within a top Aviation Industry enterprise, USA

The teachers contributed their knowledge on various topics using ‘stories / experience’, which made the class interesting and gave practical insight. Examples of organisations applying SAFe was helpful and gave confidence that the presenters were not just teachers but working practitioners – exactly what was wanted. I have no hesitation in recommending Ivar Jacobson International.

Stuart Lothianious, Lothianious Limited

The course has been well prepared and executed. I really enjoyed the whole week – especially the simulations.

Both Keith and Brian have done excellent work. They’ve shared a lot of experiences and had practically answered all of our questions. Although this was a remote training I had a feeling I am sitting together with everybody in the same room. Things have been running very smooth.

Thanks again for an excellent training experience.

Gregor Kaluža, HYCU

I liked the course very much! All information has a clear structure, and examples are straightforward. I’m very grateful to you for such an interesting and useful course and the ideas that it brought to my head!

Nataliya Dovgopol, Business Solution Architect, NIX

While at the beginning it can be confusing as one has to learn a ‘new language’, that sentiment is soon overcomed as we get to play the the various games such as ‘How well do you do Scrum’, ‘Contract Bridge’ and ‘Pattern Adoption Plan’. Then, one starts to get a better grasp of its benefits such as knowing where we are in our current way of working, building a shared understanding of the process we are using and designing steps to improve.

There’s an impressive library of games available that can be easily put to practice. Essence and the games taught in this course can help organizations in their quest to reaping all the promised benefits of Agile frameworks for Software Development.

Orlando Costa, Scrum Master at Nokia, Portugal

I attended the course ‘Use Cases for Agile at Scale’ in Autumn 2020. My intent was to step out from the often too operational viewpoint of agile development and to incorporate a holistic view of the developed product. Such view is necessary to embrace the full software development lifecycle.

It turned out that the course helped me not only with my intent, but brought a set of tools to improve development at scale, team alignment and backlog management. I gained much more clarity in next steps of our agile journey, quality control and continuous improvement, and I’m looking forward to discussing and implementing it with our agile teams peers at home base.

I did enjoy the content and presentation style of Ian and Brian. Their rich experience and easy language made almost all of my questions too easy for them, and I appreciate their overtime hours to discuss the difficult ones. The tools of their choice broke the invisible walls of remote training that we all face during COVID times.

All together it was a superb course, which I have enjoyed thoroughly and find as useful as I hoped.

Arseny Krasikov, Quality Assurance Manager, IT platform, global corporation in machinery industry, 10000+ employees

Marika and Brian run an absolutely amazing course. Their energy levels, wealth of knowledge and practical experience really made this course come alive and beyond a static training. I could take things back into my workplace and put them to use right away and at varying level of the organisation. I shall be recommending Ivar Jacobson International to my colleagues and fellow agile coaches.

Manoj Ramchandani

I participated mainly to learn more about Essence.

The course is an excellent introduction to Essence and the Scrum topics went well beyond the basics, e.g., covering Scrum accelerator practices and Scrum@Scale.

It is based on a playful and easily digestible way of approaching Essence, filled with exercises to allow participants to learn-by-doing/ experience.

I was really impressed by the work put in to create so many useful games/exercises where working with simple cards can produce such engagement and value. I’m even more impressed by the work done to create really useful digital versions as well. The digital resources you receive as a participant are really useful. Several of the exercises were so good it both made me want to introduce them to scrum teams right away and got me inspired to copy and tweak them for my own workshops.

The course also gave me insights to how a larger organization can use Essence cards and the exercises provided to balance the need for shared work beliefs & practices (alignment) with the need for individual teams to own their way of working and to be able to adapt it to their specific context (empowerment / autonomy).

I can really recommend the course for anyone interested in these topics

Joakim Sundén, co-creator of the Spotify Model, Sweden

There was no doubt in my mind that, for SAFe SPC Training, I wanted to be coached by the best. IJI has been in the industry since before Agile was a word, and the two trainers, Ian Spence and Brian Tucker, are among the most experienced consultants in this domain. No doubt Scaled Agile takes the standard of training seriously, but Ian and Brian’s credentials are so strong that I elected to participate in UK training that was six hours adrift from my regular ‘daytime timezone’ (3am starts for me on Zoom !), despite the local choice options in the USA.

The training itself was exceptionally well run - and certainly exceeded my expectations of an online course. The preparation and thought that had gone into this actually made it feel better suited to a remote method. Zoom breakout rooms were used to good effect, as were the white-boarding tools and their pre-class setup/design. The course made great use of the Scaled Agile ‘standard material’ but I felt that we all got very valuable bonus material from the presenters’ and IJI’s own arsenal of slides, exercises and media. The IJI Scaled Agile ‘playing cards’ are a particularly helpful addition to the SAFe program. Thanks also to the right mix of lecture, exercise, breaks and open conversation, the seven hours a day were full, educational and engaging - and above all…. enjoyable. I would have no hesitation in going back to IJI and Ian/Brian for the next wave of training for my organization.

Siôn Roberts, Glory

The course was great, Keith and Marika are excellent trainers, who really brought the subject matter alive with examples, really encouraging the discussions between attendees and genuinely taking the time to thoroughly answer all questions. Having recently attended SAFe certification course from another provider, you can see the quality of the prep work that has gone into the Mural Boards and content from Keith and Marika - the quality does really show through.

Simon Taylor, Salesforce

It’s a great learning tool for teachers to help explain the concepts and also for teams to facilitate inspecting & adapting their ways of working. Essence also provides ways to review the health of projects or endeavours, which I found particularly interesting.

Nabil Zawadi, Agile coach and delivery consultant, UK

Better Scrum through Essence was a great class. It had loads of great information brought together in well written and extensive set of cards, and with the games to help everyone along the way to engage with the cards.

The Essence based Scrum cards are immensely valuable in helping Scrum Masters or Agile Coaches to bring Scrum into practical application with the teams or companies. A very useful workshop to teach scrum coaches.

Vik Tailor, UK

Thank you so much for providing an opportunity to go through an immersive training experience with such highly professional SAFe consultants as Brian and Keith! To be honest, I spent quite some time on the SAFe training schedule webpage figuring out which course will give me the most added value besides just preparing myself for the SPC certification. Somehow your ad and Brian and Keith’s credentials stood out of the pack there for me. Well, and the timings were right for us as well…

I will just highlight the things that shone brightly in the training for me.

Brian and Keith tend to deliver the bits in a nutshell rather than just going by the slides… and that’s great for structuring and summarizing my previous knowledge and experience. I really felt like I’ve had my head straight on the concepts behind SAFe after the sessions

Breakout rooms and group exercises – those were fun and useful.

A plethora of real-world examples – at the time it felt like Brian has been in every imaginable situation with SAFe implementation ..lol…

Additional materials like guides and templates that I will surely use while managing a large program later this year.

Once again, thank you all at IJI so much for this excellent training event!

Alexey Shipov, Fujitsu

I want to thank Averil for the Leading SAFe course. I enjoyed every minute of being on the course, a new level of teaching and training for future SAFe professionals. And I’m ready for the exam after training!

Averil, thank you very much!

Senior Development Lead- Budapest

I’ve been to a lot of different training events so my main requirement when selecting a course was to find inspirational / entertaining speakers. I chose Brian and Keith after simply googling them and by looking at some Youtube videos, where they talk. That was a good choice because they certainly know what they are talking about.

I think it is impossible to implement SAFe just based on training, but I’ve met my criteria and I have got a good understanding of what was taught and a direction on how to proceed – a good starting point.

Martin Kottisse

As a Lean/Agile consultant I needed to brush up on my existing experience of working with partners and suppliers, now in a fully agile context.

The course gave me a lot of useful tools, and I will put it to test very soon with customer(s).

In essence course was great, thanks a lot!

Robert Ramirez, Spain

This course helped me to understand how to proceed with SAFe transition, what are the crucial success factors, and how to complete this transition successfully. Our trainers were honest and shared their issues and pitfalls on the road to SAFe implementation. Implementing SAFe - is a long journey but now I’ve got a map and a couple of handy tips on how to make it easier and reach the final destination.

Anna Kalminus

I wish we have had this training earlier, about a year or two ago.

If we had this training before we started on our large project, we would have avoided a lot of challenges we are dealing with today.

I would recommend this kind of training to others in the company/business (of course not to our competitors)

Wim Verdonck, TBA - Software Solutions & Services for ports, terminals & warehouses

The trainers did a great job, and I am very happy to have taken this course. It was very engaging. Everyone joined in and we all agreed that it was the best investment in time we could have made!

Paula Rosu, Sweden

Be agnostic and free yourself from the Framework. With gamification, this will take you from inspect and adapt your current framework to assemble your independent reference model for your scaling.

Pruth Udompruge, Agile Coach & Agile Practitioner

The Implementing SAFe course was excellent. The teachers were fantastic. They clearly really understood the material and, most importantly, were able to give clear practical real-world examples to back up the theory. Both guys came across in a friendly and helpful manner and were on hand outside of the core class hours to answer further questions. Fantastic! I’d definitely recommend your organisation to my colleagues for their SAFe training needs.

James Gray, Programme Manager, Leidos Innovations UK Ltd, UK

Brian and Marika were fantastic. Very professional and knowledgeable, gave lots of practical examples and made the course fun. The remote experience was as good as face-to-face.

Wanda Marginean

The course was excellent and both Brian and Marika were great instructors. They were able to inject first hand real life experience into the course which brought the theory to life. Something which always makes for a good outcome!.

Chris Brooks, BAE Systems

I found the course extremely beneficial, and very well run. While I appreciate that some aspects of the course are harder to run and visualize while working remotely, I feel little if anything was lost in the translation, and it remained extremely effective.

It was especially refreshing to have two trainers who are themselves consultants. I recently went on a similar course at another company. I was disappointed to find that the instructor was simply a personable, confidently spoken, ‘professional trainer’, who delivered the material set out before him but with no real world experience of its application. This is the exact opposite of my experience with Brian and Keith, who very clearly not only knew their subject but were able to draw on extensive case studies and experiences, thus bringing the material to life.

Something that really impressed me was the quality of the ‘parking lot’ experience at the end of the structured course. I do not recall seeing anything like this before. Naturally, things are taken ‘off line’ to be picked up later, but the depth to which Brian and Keith went at the end of the course in exploring topics that people had flagged was really very impressive. Rather than simply reiterating or qualifying the materials already shown – which lazier instructors might have done – they really went into detail on topics, some that might even have been seen as periphery. The fact this was on a Friday afternoon(!) also shows a real passion.

Thank you for a job extremely well done.

Matthew Robertson, Consultancy Services Director, The Lymden Group

I really enjoyed the course. I selected the course because Keith’s bio seemed to indicate that he was experienced and knowledgeable in this area. I was not disappointed and I’m glad I chose to study through yourselves.

The course was well structured, the right pace, and I appreciated the remote learning method as this works well since I am not close to London and have children. I probably would not have got around to the course otherwise.

Helen Gerling

The Essence-based Scrum cards were great tools, used to introduce us into several scenarios employing the cards. I liked the combination of theory & practice, in particular the interactive exercises.

I learnt a lot (!). My main takeaways are:

– using a set of essence cards provides an excellent, systematic analysis of a given Scrum situation

– the results of such an analysis are intensified by visual representations (e.g., position of the cards).

Silvia von Stackelberg, Product Owner, Karlsruhe Germany

I found the course truly amazing.

I learned a lot; the presentation was spot on and you could clearly tell that the teachers have a huge amount of experience in that area.

I’m glad I did the course with your company which was by sheer coincidence to be honest.

Steffen Schluff, Team Leader, Large consulting company, Germany

I had attended several information sessions about Essence cards and liked the idea, but was struggling to understand how to leverage the tool especially in a remote environment. The Better Scrum Through Essence course provided me with the insight to see the value of this tool. I look forward to leveraging the Essence Mural boards shared in the training, to help our teams to continuously improve our delivery.

Christie, SPC, US

This course was well-worth the $$ and getting up at 2:30 AM due to time zones. I would do it again in heartbeat.

Tim Stamper

Better Scrum through Essence was a great course for both validating knowledge and learning tools to support others on their learning and / or transition journey. I’m already looking at using some of the games to help reinforce people’s knowledge during training sessions and provide tools to scrum teams that they can use in their retrospectives.

Jane Gough, UK

It was a great course and well executed. Considering the need to do this remotely, which is never easy in a training environment, the course went very well. You came highly recommended to me and that recommendation was well founded. The content was what I was looking for to help with my interactions I have daily with all my own clients.

Julian Rhodes, JMRIT Consulting, UK

First of foremost, such a pleasure and honor to have had the opportunity to meet you virtually and gather rich insights directly.

I loved every aspect of the course, even though I joined from Toronto, Canada each day around 4am my time!. I came in looking for deeper perspective on leveraging use case model with agile @scale in complex environment and I got valuable nuggets. The course is pragmatic and I am looking forward to applying the learning right away. Ian and team have been amazing!

Gagan Marwaha

I selected Ivar Jacobson International for my SAFe Program Consultant Certification online course and was delighted with the quality, delivery, and experience. The trainers’ (Brian and Keith) competence, expertise, and hands-on case experience shined throughout the course.

Wilton Hinds

Fantastic [use case] course material - brilliantly delivered - and an outstanding web-based online course as an add-on.

What more to ask for?

I especially appreciated the constant sharing of the instructors vast topic-related and real-life knowledge.

THANKS again Ian for yet another gem of a course!

Gerd Wessling, Dipl. Physicist

I loved attending the course! It was a lot of fun and a great opportunity for sharing and learning. I especially appreciated having two teachers/facilitators online with us. It made discussions flow naturally and gave some different points of views to consider. I hope to come back for more trainings with Ian and Keith!

Christine Sjölander, Tetra Pak

Highly recommendable for anyone who has been struggling in building a bridge between use cases and user stories. It reminds us to focus on the big picture first and to have a more user centric approach than a technical approach when defining and writing use cases. It is also for everyone who just loves use cases, believes it is a powerful tool and cannot understand why it has been put aside in the last couple of years.

Sandra K

I found the course very insightful, it was well paced and the trainers really brought the content to life. I’d happily recommend this course to others within the industry.

Desmond Blackburn, BAE Systems

The Better Scrum with Essence cards and pointers are food for thought, and something I can carry into our improvement dialogues in the company. I liked that both SAFe and other frameworks were referenced and compared, providing some inspiration for new avenues of learning. I would recommend the course to my RTEs and SMs without hesitation.

John Skov, Nordea

All agile practitioners can benefit from applying Essence and from taking the session’

You can use what you learn to ‘better understand frameworks, compare frameworks, gauge how effective your process is, improve your process, create your own process, etc’

The course provides ‘differentiated learning strategies that engage those with little experience as well as experienced individuals

David Bulkin, Certified Scrum Trainer, Agile Coach, Grow Lean, USA

Maybe it’s because of the philosophy of Essence, but combining the content you learn with the method you teach was a very unique way of attending / hosting a training

Niklas Heimbokel, IT Director, Hapag-Lloyd, Germany

This was a great training showing what a powerful tool use cases are. I recommend it to all analysts and architects who are looking for scalable techniques for different types of projects.

Paweł Cyzman

I truly enjoyed the ‘Better Scrum through Essence’ course: it has been complete and really meaningful.

I can’t wait to attend the exam to be awarded with the prestigious ‘Essence Scrum Gamemasters’ badge.

Michael Forni, professional Agile Coach, London, UK

Improving my understanding of Scrum and Scrum@Scale through games was not what I expected but it really works’

‘… a great tool for Agile coaches to educate and work with organisations, Scrum Masters to work and improve their teams … I have good answers available and I am addressing the same problems as those I work with.

Andreas Castol Sörlin, Team Manager Scrum Masters, SwedBank, Sweden

The course was very informative, while keeping what could become a dry subject interesting with good real-world examples/experiences to apply to the model as we learned each aspect.

I feel the course has opened my eyes into new ways we can work and improve our performance and traceability in the development cycle and offer a more unified approach for the team.

Jago Marris

Both Keith and Brian are clearly very knowledgeable on SAFe and presented the course clearly with good material. I was impressed with the online element, I did initially doubt how a course like this could be held online. However, I came away from the course with the opposite opinion wondering why we would have classroom-based classes again as it worked very well, in fact, I ended up preferring it.

Martin Kennelly, Fujitsu

The online form was working very well – much better than expected. Our trainers (Keith and Marika) were great

Brian Nørgaard Poulsen, NNIT Solutions

It was a great course. I am amazed about the way that the online tools is used. A really good job by Keith and Marika.

Brian Høj Andersen, Sopra Sterea

The course was great, I felt an online course can be more effective in terms of engagement than a traditional live class. I attended the class from India, thanks to the remote set up. The trainers were great too, with all their experience sharing from the ground. Hope to be in contact with them.

Bhaskar Majumder, Deloitte

Overall, it was great training and Brian and Keith were outstanding. The content was explained very well and the examples were spot on for my questions and queries.

Thus, overall, excellent delivery!

Lyubomir Mihaylov

The course is awesome! Starting from the introduction to the context and well-paced dive-in, shifting to the evolution of Use Cases and practical Use Case Modeling (guided step-by-step with well-prepared Mural boards and great timing), toward more complex concepts.

Ian Spence delivered a superb workshop. I received a lot of new information, insights, and thoughts for further research and experiments. Highly recommend this workshop for requirements engineers and business analysts to understand how they could apply well-defined techniques and updated approaches for scope modeling on pre-sales / discovery phases and further transition to project execution.

Ivar, appreciate your input and impact on the IT industry!

Taras Zakharkiv, Head of Business Analysis Office, ELEKS

I enjoyed the classes with Richard Cook and Keith Mendonca and found that they did a really great job with the course. I attended SAFe training and did my SAFe 4.0 certification back in South Africa in 2018 and I was actually dreading the training now again and even wondered what I could still learn but I was pleasantly surprised. Richard and Keith were able to give actual work insight and experience to the content that they were teaching. The pace of the course was good, the way the presentation was done was engaging and overall I really did enjoy the three days learning with them.

Charlotte Lubbe

I very much enjoyed this course. It gave me a recap of most of the SAFe framework content I had already studied and worked with since 2016. It was all presented and discussed in an inspiring and motivating manner.

Lennart Frost Larsen

I found the SPC course very valuable because it covers the topics of leading and implementing SAFe, but what makes this training special is how the teachers demonstrate and share SPC craft such as how to teach, create simulation, how to adapt materials or events to a hybrid world and pace training to bring everyone on board. This is directly applicable to my day to day job as I work with an array of customer profiles. The IJI teachers are very attuned to reading the people attending the course, even remotely, and that is inspirational. The post course email has so many relevant assets, it is a substantial bonus that will take time to explore.

Hearing about experience sharing from the class was valuable and rebooted my motivation to evangelize the Lean-agile principles.

In my role, I have to be a trusted advisor to my customers, Ivar Jacobson is my trusted training resource for business agility.

LPM is where I am trying to grow both customers’ practice and will turn to IJI when I have a group ready to commit.

Isabelle Lehodey, Enterprise Agile Consultant for Jira Align, Atlassian, UK

How do I really thank you for having me on this amazing experience.

This two-day training has just been a gift of the time. Attending it just flourished my agile journey by many beautiful learning gifts

I completely loved the cards, they have become my companion now. Additionally, the discussion on patterns that make scrum teams successful was phenomenal. The formation of Alphas, Activity Spaces and Competencies, Games and Activities looks very exciting and promising.

I can now channel my efforts to create a common ground, running experiments along with others to leverage the ground with greater visibility of where the team(s) are headed

Mahesh Jade, Change Agent, Mumbai, India.

I found the course very valuable and useful. I had expected a course more solely focused on SAFe. Instead, I got a fabulous end to end course on Use Cases in an agile environment. I also found Ian Spence’s guidance during the exercises very positive.

Gruenhut Steven

I am honored of having the opportunity to collaborate with the experts such as Keith and Brian who possess vast knowledge and skillset, not only on the subject of the course but even wider. I am amazed by the course execution, and both Keith and Brian have made the course an amazing adventure of constant learning opportunities.

Lessons are okay, but the story that the guys told us were detailly explained, most of them covered by real-life examples – which made this experience even more exciting!

Facilitation skills are at a very high level. Guys are on point, very concise and supportive, they challenge and encourage participants to interact and they are very successful at doing it. Plus, they are really funny, positive, and pleasant to listen to. :-)

Great job with the practical games, they are really fun to play.

I love how they organized everything and covered every little detail – organizing breaks very good, explaining the tools we’re going to use, tasks, sequences of coaching lessons were smooth… All in all – they are phenomenal. I am one delighted customer! :-)

Keith and Brian, thanks for motivating me by unselfishly sharing knowledge and advices with us, and coaching us how to implement the acquired knowledge on the practical examples.

I enjoyed every second of the course.

Nevena Samailović, Hycu

The course was excellent: well presented, thoroughly detailed and making use of excellent remote tools. Outstanding trainers with a wealth of knowledge and experience.

Victor Pena, Agile Coach, Fortune 500 Logistics & Supply Chain firm, USA

I really enjoyed the course. The course was very interesting and efficient, despite being online, and I learned a lot from both the trainers way of presenting as well as the collaborative exercises with my fellow students. Can’t wait to put what I learned into practice.

Þórdís Reynisdóttir

Thank you for an excellent course. I got the suggestion to do my SPC with you guys and I am so glad I did.

I have attended many courses, as one does in IT, and I have to say the way you presented the course was exceptional. The content was good but Brian and Keith made it so much more interesting to the point I found myself glued to the screen listening intently to your examples and stories and extras tit bits.

Really a huge thank you! Hope one day to have the privilege of working with you guys.

Karen Nel, Creative Technologies

I have been extremely pleased with this course, both from a content point of view and also from the view of the Instructors. Their excellent use of the technology, aligned with their superb knowledge of SAFe have provided me with a great platform to move forwards.

I will highly recommend this course and Ivar Jacobson to others.

Richard Osborne, Fujitsu UK

I thoroughly enjoyed the 2-day Agile Contracting live virtual course led by Ian Spence. It exceeded my expectations and I feel like I now have some foundational knowledge on the topic to start building upon.

Overall, I had a great experience. I’m glad I invested the time and money to attend. I plan to attend your Use Case Modelling course in the near future and I look forward to being part of the Scrum Essence pilot in April.

Uloaku Ojiaku, Mezahab Group

Better Scrum through Essence for me was very much an eyeopener! Really loved the gamification aspect of tackling some of the problems one can face when transforming / working in an agile organization.

To me the agile way of working is not rocket-science, but transforming a traditional organization into the agile way of working sometimes seems like rocket-science. Essence and its cards help to provide clarity and structure, helping everyone to understand status-quo, focus points and next steps!

Really grateful for being able to attend the course. I think it was hosted very well and I look forward to any future courses.

Pier van Zonneveld, VCSB, Sweden

The Better Scrum through Essence course is great! I had never heard about the Essence Kernel before. This framework will definitely help me and my team check our Scrum and tune our working processes.

Particularly, I liked the games we played, since they provide a very simple and interesting way to work with teams.

Alexey Usachou, Profitero

Thanks Keith. This course has been so inspirational. I had nearly forgotten how useful they are. I recalled a Use Case diagram I created a few years ago which I now know how to improve :-)

System Architect, Hewlett Packard Enterprise

I left the class greatly encouraged and highly motivated to play the games/exercises with my teams

Thomas Jacobson, Agile Transformation Coach, Volvo Group, Sweden

I thought the course was excellent. I had previously done the Leading SAFe course so was expecting the first half to be a repeat of what I had done before, but ended up learning more. I also think that it helped that I had some prior knowledge as I was totally new to SAFe when I did the Leading SAFe course. The Implementing SAFe portion is very relevant to my current role. I now understand more about what my manager is asking me to do (she has already done the Implementing SAFe course). I look forward to applying the new knowledge I have learned. Given that we had to face the fact that the course was on-line rather than in a room it worked pretty well with the technology used. On balance I really enjoyed the course and would recommend it to other colleagues.

Olivia Hawthorne

I had the opportunity to participate in the course this week and can confirm that it is in fact a game changer (like Essence itself). After attending this course, you will see the software engineering method industry with different eyes. Essence puts Scrum (and any other practice/ method) into perspective. Existing software development frameworks and methods are suddenly dwarfed. They are just one piece of the puzzle. Thus, there is a necessity for an ecosystem of software engineering practices which includes the practices from nearly all frameworks and can be used to select and adopt the practices needed for a specific software development endeavor. Eventually you will see that single and isolated methods/ frameworks guarded by individual persons/ organizations do not make sense.

Stefan Malich, Architectural Change Management, Germany

The course was very interesting and covered many topics. The content was fantastic and delivered so well by the trainers. I really enjoyed the interactivity of the course and very much appreciated the effort put into the breakout sessions by the trainers. Definitely a valuable course!!

Angharad Vaughan, Agile Transformation Manager, BT, UK

Better Scrum through Essence was a very useful course for me. As an agile coach I found it difficult to explain the similarities and differences between traditional project management and Scrum. Now I can explain Scrum to project managers in terms of Essence card games.

Toru Takeuchi, IBM Japan ltd., Japan

I am a Management Consultant at one of the Big 4 with a specific focus in operations consulting. The reason for attending the Leading SAFe Agile course was due to more and more of our clients adopting Agile principles in their ways of work. Although the course is focussed around the foundations of Agile in the IT / Tech, product development space. I found the 3 day course really interesting and applicable in my line of work.

Averil Stewart was a fantastic facilitator who has a deep technical knowledge of SAFe Agile, throughout the sessions she kept the energy up and flexed the course to fit the needs of her attendees. I would highly recommend the course to anyone wanting to better their understanding of SAFe Agile, if you can also request Averil as your facilitator - you won’t be disappointed.

PWC Senior Manager- Operational Excellence. South Africa

The course is extremely engaging, a treasure of simulations, analyses, games and assessments. It contains a wealth of innovative formats to guide you into the depths of a practical understanding and mastery of SCRUM, as well as and its implications on teams, systems and organizations. I enjoyed these engaging 2 full days so much that I requested to be included in the further community efforts to develop this fascinating approach to SCRUM. Do yourself a favor, take the essence training. Getting beyond SCRUM pathologies like zombie or cargo cult and others, is going to be so much easier once you have engaged with this fascinating thing that is Essence of SCRUM.

Marwane El Kharbili, Ph. D., WOMAT, France

The course was great. The cards and topics were very useful, hands-on and I can use the content immediately in my assignments. Bottomline, I recommend this course to people who want to know more on agile contracts.

I loved it.

Danny Dujardin, INNOCOM