Why Should You Choose LeanAgileTraining?
We believe we are well-positioned to help you achieve your goals.
We have great people who deliver great training. We have great coaches to help you. We believe the training and coaching are key elements in an lean-agile-scrum transformation. Our people have extensive experience in providing these services, in delivery, and in management. Customers like them and like what they get.
Our focus is making your products successful. We have experience in project leadership, especially Agile Project Management, Scrum and XP. We have done the work, and we have lived with many many teams. We have domain knowledge in many areas, including start-up firms, the securities industry, mortgage, credit card, telecommunications, military and government projects, universities, etc, etc.
We believe strongly in the importance of understanding the end-customer. This is often hard, but there is no substitute for it. For process improvement, Lean and Agile have impressed us. We highlight one challenge: the customer, without thinking about it, looks at the product in a holistic way, while in practice, process improvement seems to occur only after decomposing the product a level or two.
Therefore, we focus on prioritization and response in order to efficiently and effectively meet your clients' needs.
Learn About Our Trainers:
Joe is an Agile coach and Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) through Scrum Alliance. His goal is to use Lean-Agile principles and practices to help firms deliver more business value for customers, to make workers' lives better and to benefit stakeholders. Helping teams discover business value is one of his passions. And helping teams discover new avenues to greater productivity. He is proud for several people he has mentored, who now themselves are very strong in Agile.
Joe learned Scrum from Ken Schwaber and later mentored with Jeff Sutherland, with whom he continues to co-teach. He also works with several other CSTs (and friends). He produces Lean Software training with the Poppendiecks. His preference is to practice Agile as a combination of Scrum, XP and Lean principles and practices. Joe has been a speaker at many conferences, including Agile20xx and Agile Tour (several locations and years). He started Agile-Carolinas.
He has been working in software development and new product development for 20+ years. So he is probably a real geek now. He started his own firm in 1991. Many years ago, he was a Big 6 management consultant. He has been a senior business and IT consultant to a number of household names in New York, London and Charlotte. He now has worked on lean-agile-scrum in the US, Canada, France, Peru, Argentina, India and Romania. So far.
Born in Virginia, he lived in NYC for 20+ years. Joe now lives with his family in Charlotte, NC. He has a BA in English from Yale and an MBA from NYU. Joe also has the CSM, CSP and CST certifications from Scrum Alliance.
To see attendee comments on Joe's courses, please see below.
Catherine Louis is also a CST (Certified Scrum Trainer via Scrum Alliance), and an agile coach and trainer.
Catherine Louis' focus is on helping organizations transition from traditional project-driven governance to adopting Agile-Scrum in a Lean, continuous flow framework. Catherine has over 20 years of software development experience in large telecommunications firms. She led the agile transformation at one firm. She is fluent in English, French and German. She is also one of the nations top trainers of people and dogs to do search and rescue.
Catherine and Joe have co-taught many courses.
Mary Lynn Manns, PhD is on the Management
faculty at UNC Asheville.
She is the co-author of the popular book,
Fearless Change:
Patterns for Introducing New Ideas, which documents the
successful
strategies used by leaders in many different types and sizes of
organizations throughout the world.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if people who have successfully
introduced a new idea into an
organization could share their stories with you? The
Fearless Change book is
the next best thing.
Published in 2004 by Addison
Wesley Publishing Co, the book continues to receive outstanding
reviews with a “best book” award in 2004 and a place on the “12
books that changed my career” list on amazon.com.
Mary Lynn has done numerous presentations and consultations on the
topic of leading change for many organizations including Microsoft,
Avon, Proctor & Gamble, amazon.com, and Dannon Yogurt.
She continues to study and document the best practices of
successful change leaders and is working on her second book,
More Fearless Change,
scheduled to be published in 2013.
For more information:
http://www.fearlesschangepatterns.com
Chris Zarbock has over 20 years of experience in software development at large organizations. She has fulfilled roles as a developer, business analyst, project manager, ScrumMaster and Agile coach and trainer.
Chris is passionate about Agile. She successfully led an Agile transformation project at LendingTree, LLC and most recently introduced the Agile Project Framework to development groups at Bank of America Corporation.
Chris has a bachelor’s degree in Computer Information Systems from Regis University in Denver and earned her master’s degree in Technology Management from the University of Denver. She is certified by the Project Management Institute (PMI) as a Project Management Professional (PMP) and was recently one of the first people internationally to obtain PMI’s Agile certification - the Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP). She is also a Certified Scrum Master (CSM) and part of the Scrum Alliance.
Attendee Comments:
"I and 13 others from my group attended last July and it was a career changing event for me. With the knowledge and confidence we gained in that course, we were able to transform how our division of [major] Bank managed projects. It is quite amazing to see how effective Scrum is when you do it right. Jeff and Joe will teach you not only the day to day business processes and techniques you need to know, they also instill the spirit of Scrum, which to me was almost more important than the techniques. I left that course wondering why anyone would manage a project any other way - it just makes so much sense. If you attend, I'm sure you will hear Jeff say 'to manage a project any other way is just illogical.' That quote will stick with you. ...Enjoy the course - it's well worth the $$." - Roy Maines, PMP, CSM, Charleston, SC
"It was a pleasure to be a part of the CSM course and workshop last week in Halifax. You are a great trainer!" - Stefan, March 2013
"I definitely got a ton of value from the course this week!" - Howard, Charleston, March 2013
Great job! I hope we'll get to learn from you more in the future!" Mark, Charlotte, February 2013
"Joe's enthusiam and real world experience helped to bring the method to life." Ben, Charlotte, January 2013
"I enjoyed the hands-on activities to really learn the processes. It was very informative, and Joe was able to thoroughly answer and explain questions." Kristine, Montreal, November 2012
"Thanks again for the course. It was incredibly helpful and very practical for the work I am doing." Jonathan, Toronto, August 2012
"It was indeed a fun and insightful experience learning Scrum and its application from you. CSPO course truly exceeded my expectations. Thank you!" Anand, Winston-Salem, March 2012
"I was blown away by what I learned in the course, in addition to the reading materials prior to the course. I have no doubt that, once management embraces Scrum, we will become a much more efficient development department." Matt, New York, January 2012
"Joe did a great job of taking complicated subjects and being patient to help us understand them. His training was intellectually stimulating and still FUN! You SOLD me!" Brent, Knoxville, June 2011
"The class was great. I thought I knew so much from the book but you added a ton more. I am ready to apply the knowledge and get started with Scrum." Shanda, Knoxville, June 2011
"I enjoyed the energy and exploration/knowledge displayed by Joe." George, Charlotte, May 2011
"I was amazed at how quickly you were able to grasp key concepts of our product and then take those ideas and expand on them. With little or no previous domain knowledge our class team was able to take half a day and produce as much or more effort as we have seen done in several weeks!
"
"Joe had a good knowledge on practical application of Scrum. He was able to answer questions that applied to real life problems." - Sandesh, March 2011
"I love Agile because it provides real world solutions to real problems faced by companies today." - Chris, February 2011
"I'll never forget the course. You are a great speaker! You have developed a very engaging and worthwhile course." Monica, Bucharest, February 2011
"Amazing coaches with tons of knowledge. Proved my assumptions wrong countless times. (A good thing!)" Martin, Ottawa, January 2011
"Two-day workshop at the end was the most valuable time. I got a real sense of how to work in a SCRUM project." Jason, Ottawa, January 2011
"It's funny how true the statement, 'The biggest impediment is to accept Agile.' is. I stole some of the charts from the presentation, and my cube is all Agile now." - Imran, Dec 2010
"Thanks again for the great course. It was just what the doctor ordered." Joe, October 2010
"This was a life changing event." Product Owner Attendee, Atlanta, GA
"Thanks for the great course and the great preparation for the Evaluation. I just scored 100%. It took less than 30 minutes." Bill, Atlanta, Oct 2010
"Two full days of lots of knowledge and info. I'm very excited to start to get others enthused about Scrum..." (Course rated 9 on a scale of 1 to 9) Blair, Microsoft, July 1, 2009
"The Hands-on exercises illustrated key ideas very well. Joe was an engaging instructor and responded well to questions." Douglas, Rochester, Mar 2009
"Just wanted to let you know that I really enjoyed the class. The whole
time I was thinking to myself how much better life would have been had I
used Scrum on my projects. Well, now, ...I’ll know better. The
interesting thing I found - some of what was taught will be possible to
put into practice in my real estate development company [too]." Ross,
Oct 2008
"We’re just finishing up our first sprints on two projects, so I’m fortunate to have had the opportunity to learn directly from you early in the process so we can fix things that were wrong and build on the things we’re doing right."
"The hands-on activities were a little uncomfortable at first, but became the best learning tool of the class. The instructors were passionate and it shows. Building the Scrum backlog was very insightful." Debbie, May 2008
"I really enjoyed the training. I think many of the ideas I learned are
going to improve the relationship[s] I have with product owners &
stakeholders." Matthew, June 2008
"Many thanks for all the information sharing, guidance and tips from you
during the course. The course was really great. Both Steve [and I] are
very energized. We strongly feel that within 1 month we can make huge
improvements to our SCRUM process and make wheels spin a lot faster and
cleaner." Peter, July 2008
