Testimonials

Read what our delighted customers are saying!

Corporate IT leadership, which has been slow to embrace agile methods, would benefit immensely from giving a copy of this book to all of their project and delivery managers. Ken Rubin has laid out in this book all the pragmatic business case and process materials needed for any corporate IT shop to successfully implement Scrum.

There are lots of books on Scrum these days, but this book takes a new angle: a reality check for software practitioners. Ken uses real-world examples and clear illustrations to show what makes a solid foundation for successful agile development. Readers will understand the value of building quality in, and the reality that we can’t get everything right up front; we must work incrementally and learn as we go. It might have ‘Scrum’ in the title, but the book leverages effective practices from the larger agile universe to help managers and their teams succeed.

Felt the instructor was by far the best I have had in my career. He knew the material and explained it in a way so easy to understand and apply.

Excellent! Perhaps the best course of its type I've attended.

Great course. Very informative, even the second time. Thanks, Ken!

The book is a comprehensive overview of Scrum. It goes from the principles of agile through the mechanics of sprints to the roles on a Scrum team and all the way up to topics like technical debt and portfolio management with Scrum. A very helpful aspect of the book is the detailed "visual language," Ken created while writing the book. He created icons for every possible aspect of Scrum and these are used to make up dozens and dozens of figures to illustrate all the work and knowledge flows of a Scrum project. His diagrams definitely go well beyond the typical double-loop depiction of Scrum. (See the rest of the review at http://tinyurl.com/9rbhbph)

Excellent presentation skills with in depth knowledge made this training exceptionally worthwhile!

I can now do Agile - and I know why!

The Instructor Ken Rubin is obviously a pro. Probably one of the best instructors I have ever had -- had mastery of the material, kept it interesting, well-paced, and answered every question thoroughly and patiently.

Best course to date. Instructor had total command of material. Presented it clearly, paced the class perfectly.

Ken was great. I would recommend the class to anyone.

I thought this was a great class. It was very informative and the material was presented in a way that was easy to understand.

One of the best, most comprehensive descriptions of the core Scrum framework out there! Essential Scrum is for anyone–new to or experienced with Scrum–who’s interested in the most important aspects of the process. Ken does an excellent job of distilling the key tenets of the Scrum framework into a simple format with compelling visuals. As a Scrum coach for many teams, I continually reference the material for new ways to help teams that are learning and practicing the framework. I’ve seen Scrum continually misinterpreted and poorly implemented by big companies and tool vendors for more than ten years. Reading this book will help you get back to the basics and focus on what’s important.

It was an awesome two-day training. Ken Rubin did a great job. Thank you!!!

Amazing course...now I want more!

Great course! Would recommend to all my co-workers involved in Agile projects.

Excellent course. Gave our team excellent insight into process. More importantly the business was in the class and gained excellent insight.

Instructor (Ken) has very extensive knowledge on this and it shows. Understands our questions well and explains and justifies our concerns well.

Thanks for bringing the questions we sent into the discussion and making it even more relevant.

This was the best and most valuable course I have ever had during my 28 years of work experience. I feel very strongly that Scrum will greatly help us to develop software that will better serve and more rapidly will meet the needs of our customers.

Very good course. Excellent instructor.

Agile coaches, you’re gonna be happy with this book. Ken Rubin has created an indispensable resource for us. Do you have a manager that just doesn’t ‘get it’? Hand them this book and ask them to flip to Chapter 3 for a complete explanation of how Scrum is less risky than plan-driven management. It’s written just for them–in management-speak. Want to help the team come to a common understanding of Scrum? The visual icon language used throughout this book will help you help them. These are just two ways this book can aid you to coach Scrum teams. Use it well.

I started wondering what we could talk about for days on Scrum - I know now! This was brilliant, the two days flew by and provided great information that I'll be able to use every day. You're probably the best, most engaging trainer I've come across. Thank you!

Ken unpacks a wealth of wisdom and knowledge in Essential Scrum, providing valuable and comprehensive insights to the practical application of agile/Scrum. Whether you’re new to agile or are looking to reach a greater maturity of continuous improvement in your organization, this is a definitive handbook for your toolbox.

Extremely useful and relevant. Ken was very good at addressing questions and explaining the reasoning behind Scrum.

I loved this course and hope we can do more with Ken.

Educational and motivating, knowledge unfolds and builds in a logical manner. Instructor willing and able to modify presentation based on class needs.

Ken Rubin taught the best formal training course I have ever attended. He never let a question go unanswered and his years of experience lead to invaluable advice.

Great course. I feel like I can be an effective participant in any Scrum role today. Thanks a bunch!

Loved it. Great training style and pace, looking forward to putting this to practical use.

This class was fantastic. Mr Rubin is a fabulous instructor. He has an insightful grasp of the material and how to best teach it.

Highly recommend to teams using an Agile (Scrum) development process.

Best training I've had in this company.

Great teaching ability, lots of interesting training techniques. Handles class with ease, confident, expert in his field. Thanks!

Ken Rubin managed to write the book that I want everyone associated with Scrum development to read! He covers everything you’ll need to know about Scrum and more!

Really appreciated your willingness to go off the "prepared" materials to answer questions and clarify points.

I generally don't give out all high marks - the class was outstanding. Best class I have ever attended.

Very well paced and informative. Put a lot of different aspects of Scrum into better perspective for me.

Really outstanding class.

Ken did an excellent job in providing a sound Scrum foundation with real life experiences and examples. Great class!

Wish we could have had one more day! Such a great, thorough introduction to Scrum. I will buy the book and start using it right away.

Very comfortable with the training. Ken has an entire career to pull from, so the material was relevant and real. Felt like he was consulting, not just training.

First rate knowledge in a first rate presentation. Great exercises. and Best agile training I have ever taken. Thank you so much, you've helped a lot.

It’s therefore good to have Ken Rubin’s new book Essential Scrum: A Practical Guide to the Most Popular Agile Process (Addison-Wesley, 2012). It explains in clear and simple terms what exactly is Scrum, how and why it works and where and how to implement it. The book is well-written and engaging. What I particularly like are the many illuminating and elegant images. (from Forbes http://t.co/1jVE9B8x)

Really enjoyed. Presented in a very accessible manner. Good fun - nice venue. Would happily recommend.

The course provided me with helpful and applicable knowledge that I feel comfortable applying to my project almost immediately.

The class is three days but it felt like 6 hours. I love it. This class is the best of the best. Max value for the money.

Thank you so much! Your class was fun, interesting and practical!

The instructor was terrific. Very knowledgeable about the subject matter and a great teaching style. We had a tough and rather rowdy team, the instructor was able to field tough questions and bring everyone to a high level of understanding and acceptance.

I have taken several Scrum courses. The material has never been as clear as it is to me now. Ken is very natural and engaging, and is a very talented speaker and teacher. He also contextualized the material very well to my industry.

Excellent class overall, one of the best I've taken. Perfect length and depth.

This is one of the best investments I have made for my team as we transition to Scrum. I now know what we have to do.

Ken has an amazing presence and world-class presentation skills.

I really enjoyed this course. Ken did a great job - always had great stories to relate to every piece of information. Great job! I would recommend to others.

A decade after publication of the first Scrum books, it is time to combine the essential aspects of the Scrum framework with the practical experiences and approaches of the last ten years. Ken Rubin does so in a satisfying and nondogmatic way. The reader gets a pragmatic look at Scrum and learns when and how to best apply Scrum to achieve business benefits.

I was very impressed with how competently the instructor applied Agile within real-life, practical contexts. His experience and knowledge were evident.

Extremely helpful and informative. Loved your easygoing yet firm presentation style and the way you let us know our problems are not unique. The practical explanations and exercises really helped bring the points home.

Excellent course. Gave our team excellent insight into process. More importantly, the business was in the class and gained excellent insight.

This was an extraordinarily well moderated class. Ken got through a significant amount of material, kept us focused, was entertaining, and adapted to our (gaming) industry.

Ken's well-structured explanations have a clarity to them that echoes the sensibilities of Smalltalk—the development environment with which he worked for years and from which both Scrum and Extreme Programming were born. This book pulls together a thorough set of agile management principles that really hit the mark and will no doubt guide you toward a more effective agile approach.

Ken was very impressive and a great instructor. There was a ton of information presented and he did a fabulous job with it.

Fast pace, excellent pacing!

I definitely think the content and the discussion will help me be a better Product Owner, help me support my teams better, and ultimately produce better products for our customers.

If you’re new to agile development or to Scrum, this book will give you a flying start. The examples and descriptions are clear and vivid, and you’ll often find yourself asking a question just before the book addresses that very topic.

Ken Rubin continues to provide clarity and insight into adopting agile in a pragmatic way. In one hand he holds the formal or ideal Scrum definition, and in the other, the pragmatic application of it. He brings the wisdom of his workshops and years of experience to the table for you to read in his latest book. If you are about to start out on your agile adoption journey or are seeking guidance midcourse, grab a copy.

This has been the most useful, well paced course I have taken outside of an academic setting.

Wish I had this course when I first went to Agile. The course taken when I was first trained on Agile was no where near as good as this course. Excellent presentation and materials.

Probably the best and most well presented training course I've attended in my career.

I am convinced that Essential Scrum will become the foundation reference for the next generation of Scrum practitioners. Not only is it the most comprehensive introduction to Scrum available today, but it is also extremely well written and easy on the eye with its fantastic new visual Scrum language. If that isn’t enough, Ken shares a range of his valuable personal insights and experiences that we can all certainly learn from.

This was an extraordinarily well-moderated course. Ken got through a significant amount of material, kept us focused, was entertaining, and adapted to our industry.

Your slides were excellent and laid out in a very digestible, intuitive fashion. Great job!

While this is classroom training, Ken keeps things engaging and interactive and it feels more like a conversation. This is highly useful training that can make a real difference to a team. You'll want to show up for these classes!

This was the most valuable training I've had since completing my Certified BA course at Villanova University.

The class is a perfect mix of theoretical, by-the-book instruction and real world, knee-deep-in-the-mud examples. Relevant and concise insights abound.

Fantastic course & instructor - excellent presentation skills, really "sold" people on Agile.

Wow!

As a professional trainer, I am rarely impressed with other trainers. In this case, I was blown away. Great job!

The course was excellent. The subject matter directly applied to our business and sparked engaging discussions.

Very good course for the team; detailed and very useful strategies which the team can use right away. Thanks Ken - really great experience.

Very professional, thorough, and pragmatic approach that helps motivate team to adopt and adapt while making Scrum doable.

We thought we knew Scrum, but this class was an eye-opener.

Excellent balance of theory and hands-on activities. A non-IT person will understand Agile/Scrum at end of this course and his/her role in it.

Ken's development background proved to bring a needed credibility to this topic as well as his real life experiences.

This class greatly exceeded my expectations, and I feel like I have so much practical knowledge to implement.

Great knowledge of the subject and teaching skills. Best I've seen!

Ken Rubin provided Scrum and Agile related coaching and training for more than two hundreds companies ranging from startups to Fortune 10. He wrote Essential Scrum book with an intention to provide a common understanding of Scrum for every team member involved with Scrum. The new book is very comprehensive and covers just about everything about Scrum for beginner and expert. The book take a new angle on Scrum and uses real-world examples to show what makes a reliable foundation for successful Agile development. It is extremely well written and most likely will become the base reference for future Scrum practitioners. I strongly recommend Ken Rubin’s book to anyone who wants to start using Scrum or wants to improve their software development process.

I’ve reviewed a number of agile books in the past few years, so the question of ‘Do we really need another one?’ always comes to my mind. In the case of Ken's book, I very much believe the answer is ‘yes.’ Getting the benefit of different, experienced perspectives on commonly encountered and needed material is valuable. Ken has one of those valuable perspectives. One unique aspect of the book is an interesting ‘iconography’—a new icon language for Scrum and agile that Ken has created. I believe you’ll find value-added material in this book to expand your ideas for how Scrum can be applied.

Excellent course. I really feel that I strongly understand Agile and Scrum now and can now effectively put it in practise.

I really appreciated that Ken swapped out a couple of topics in response to class discussion. The planning poker demo was really helpful.

One of the best courses I have ever attended. The instructor had a wonderful knowledge base and used very relevant examples from his personal experience.

Adoption of Scrum is most successful when everyone involved—even peripherally—with product development has a good understanding of the fundamentals. Essential Scrum provides an ideal overview of both the big picture and the details in an accessible style. It is sure to become a standard reference.”

Ken's course was an excellent, comprehensive view into the practices of Scrum. I wish we had taken this class sooner.

Developing software is hard. Adopting a new way of working while in a project is even harder. This book offers a bypass of many of the pitfalls and will accelerate a team’s ability to produce business value and become successful with Scrum. I wish I had this kind of book when I started using Scrum.

“Anyone who has had Scrum training or has been part of a Scrum team will find Essential Scrum to be a great follow-up read. It dives into the details of how to become more agile through implementing Scrum processes, and it explains exactly how to break down complex projects into manageable initiatives (or ‘sprints’). Ken Rubin provides a wealth of relevant case studies on what worked—or what didn’t—in a variety of organizations. The simple layout and businesslike graphics make it easy to scan quickly and find specific topics. Any organization that is seeking to evolve from a traditional waterfall approach toward a more agile methodology will find Essential Scrum a definitive guidebook for the journey.

Very nice job. I really appreciate the stories about what other companies and teams face and their problems.

I was very impressed with this course. Very, very practical and well done.

Scrum is elegantly simple, yet deceptively complex. In Essential Scrum, Ken Rubin provides us with a step-by-step guide to those complexities while retaining the essential simplicity. Real-world experiences coupled with enlightening illustrations make Scrum come to life. For senior managers and team members alike, this is a must-read book if you are starting or considering whether to implement Scrum in your organization. This will certainly be a book recommended to my students.

Great class, and I would definitely like to take additional classes led by Ken.

An excellent course, loaded with great practical advice on doing Scrum in the real world.