Achieving Real Agility Through Agile Coaching/Consulting With AgileSparks

"Yael is one of those people who manage to be at the same time part of the team and a consultant to the team. She constructed the change process in a way that allowed practices to stick by helping people to adopt them as their own."    

"Yael's ability to quickly understand the organization, the product and our specific needs was a key factor in helping us become agile  and to better react to the needs/requirements of Clarizen's SaaS customers."  

"By having Yuval on board, we found not just an experienced professional but also a partner in our lean journey with a passion and commitment to coach and guide us until we achieve our goals. Yuval’s vast knowledge and experience along with keen analytical skills enable him to fit the lean principles into our organization’s DNA and to help us overcome difficulties and constraints without risking our short-term business targets. Yuval has many capabilities which make him highly versatile. He can swiftly move from strategy/blueprints to training a class, implementing methods/processes all the way to one on-one-coaching for tough cases. This makes Yuval very valuable and very influential in our journey towards lean."  

"With the help of AgileSparks (Yuval Yeret), we implemented a Kanban system at NICE that enabled us to achieve significant improvement in efficiency, winning together, work atmosphere, quality, and client focus. Yuval and everyone at AgileSparks are professionals of the highest standard, and I strongly recommend anybody considering Agile/Lean to work with them."

"There's much more to Agile implementation than what the textbooks say. Yael has done wonderful and thoughtful work with Leverate, helping us to adopt Agile principles but also reminding us to take a different, pragmatic approach when it serves the grand plan. She quickly became part of the R&D family, helping us solve tough problems and making us more aware of both the good and the bad, always with a positive attitude. Leverate's R&D department more than doubled itself in the last year, and the challenges were countless, but our Agile approach worked like magic. We learned how to insist on sky-high quality and grew a dream team of Agile people who love what they do."

"Our organization (about 100 people) moved to Agile in late 2010. Yael from AgileSparks joined our implementation team as an Agile consultant a few months after we started the implementation. Yael quickly got to know our employees and key players, as well as our unique business environment. Yael successfully delivered theoretical sessions to different groups: Scrum Masters, Developers and Testers, and followed them up by guiding the different Scrum Teams in their day-to-day challenges. She also met the unit's management on a weekly basis to monitor the entire implementation process and conduct learning and fine-tuning on the run. Thanks to her deep professionalism in Agile and her great personality, Yael was accepted by all parties and helped us push forward the complex assimilation of Agile in our organization significantly while handling resistances and instilling the right mindset. After completing the initial phase of implementing the basic Agile practices, we will continue to work with Yael to get to the next level of agility and to ensure that a continuous improvement mindset becomes part of our DNA. I would recommend any organization that is in the process of moving to Agile work with Yael."

"Elad from AgileSparks had a pivotal role in the Galor R&D team's successful Scrum adoption. He led the process starting with the objectives definition through the tedious cross-company negotiations and implementation, ending with a constructive follow-up. Elad is a mentor by nature. He encourages you to find the right solution rather than forcing his own opinions on your needs. Elad also demonstrates a wide scope of knowledge with software engineering processes, practices and history, which contributes to placing the adoption process in the right context. I strongly recommend Elad as mentor and coach for Scrum adoption."

"In June 2011 we successfully released HP UCMDB-CM 9.10, which was the result of the combined effort of approximately 50 people, most of them working together for the first time. In less than six months, Elad from AgileSparks helped my staff and the entire group shape the right process, create the right procedures, put the visibility into the important decision-supporting information, make the right trade-offs, and manage risk resulting in this great achievement. I have a hard time imagining the group making such dramatic changes in so little time without Elad's guidance. Thank you!"

"AgileSparks has great Agile consultants. We hired AgileSparks, and specifically Yuval Yeret, to support our transition to an Agile development model. AgileSparks started working with us very early in the process. They assisted in identifying and focusing on the goals we wanted to achieve, helped us choose the Agile method that best suited our needs, and guided us through the different implementation phases. Yuval balances a down-to-earth, practical style, with deep knowledge of various Agile approaches and methods. Throughout our entire project, AgileSparks consistently reflected on what we had accomplished so far, and what we could do more effectively. In a very short time, Yuval acquainted himself with the team, the environment, and the technology in a way that allowed him to give relevant advice in different phases of the implementation. Finally, throughout the entire process, Yuval constantly demonstrated passion, enthusiasm, and dedication to the success of our transition to Agile."

With the professional work of AgileSparks and especially the work done by Ofer we were able to Shorten time-to-market of our project by 20% Increase the quality of the delivery to our customers (significantly fewer product issues during customer ATP and rollout of the product at the customer site), Reduce the cost of projects by 20% and Increase the cooperation among development, QA and integration that contributed to the above. Many thanks! Hope we can take it to the next level!

"We decided to take the next step in our Agile development with the help of Yuval and Elad from AgileSparks. After a three-month project working closely together we can see the following results: - Much closer work between QA and Dev, along with good cooperation allows us to find problems at a much earlier stage in the release. - Planning is much better. Breaking the tasks into smaller, measurable parts, provides improved tracking and visibility. We will certainly keep the momentum and take this to our next releases."

We are very pleased with our implementation of the Scrum framework, which Yuval Yeret and the other able AgileSparks coaches led for us. The AgileSparks team understood our unique challenges and working environment and effectively addressed both. We began the implementation of Scrum within a disaster recovery and business continuity project and continued with other projects. The benefits we achieved as the result of the Scrum implementation included Improved working relations between the teams, Significantly reduced escalations and the need for crisis management, Project timetable shortened by 20%, Improved the quality of the deliverables, Minimized the surprise elements in the project and had ample time to deal with the risks.  Following the successful results achieved within this project, we decided to adopt the Scrum methodology within many other project teams.

"Our engineering organization transitioned from quarterly releases to two-week releases using Scrum and Kanban. We've switched from using a complex, obscure, inefficient and difficult Gantt chart system into a highly visual Kanban board that allows us to instantly understand our project status and even more important to see our development process challenges. This has contributed to a culture of continuous improvement. Our journey from waterfall to Agile has helped to surface all of our development deficiencies/improvement opportunities and with courage, we handled those and continue to do so after five months / 10 sprints. Through the transition, from Sprint #1 until the present date, we've deployed on our production site new user stories with true business value to a very complex platform and also scaled up the R&D team significantly. In addition to the obvious benefits of the R&D improvements, our business can react much faster than before to market needs and to internal organization needs as our business continues to grow. I would like to thank the incredible highly professional team in AgileSparks and specifically, our great Agile coach, Yuval Yeret, who guided, trained us and took us through this journey."

"I would like to thank the incredible highly professional team at AgileSparks and specifically, our great Agile coach, Yuval Yeret, who guided, trained us and took us through this journey."

"ECtel decided to use Scrum to improve its development. After intensive research, and learning from other companies, we understood that to increase the probability of success we need expert help. From searching the market, it was clear AgileSparks is the most experienced company in training and assisting with such a process. Working with AgileSparks was productive and fun from day one. Because Scrum implementation requires changing the mindset of the entire company, introducing it in the right way and harnessing widespread support is crucial, and AgileSparks did a great job at all levels of the company. Now after several sprints, the change is dramatic. From individuals working indpendently, we now see great communication between teams and between the engineers themselves. The level of commitment from the employees has increased significantly. The progress of tasks and emerging difficulties are presented clearly and in real time for all stakeholders to see. Cooperation and involvement from marketing have been a huge benefit for all sides. I have no hesitation in recommending the services of AgileSparks to any company considering Scrum or Agile."

We accelerated time-to-market by 20%, increased delivery quality (dramatically fewer product issues during customer acceptance and production rollout) and reduced cost by 20% through better cooperation that was enabled through professional Agile consulting work by Ofer from AgileSparks.

"After three months of working closely with Yuval and Elad from AgileSparks, we are seeing much closer work between QA and Dev that enables us to find problems much earlier in the release. Our planning has improved dramatically providing us with better tracking and visibility. We look forward to continuing the momentum and taking agility to a higher level in our next releases."  

I would like to express my deep appreciation for the contribution that Elad has provided over the last months to our projects in AT&T Israel. He is very professional, learnt very fast our projects and our needs, he takes full responsibility for every task and gets a long with the whole team. It is a real pleasure to work with him!