Category: Agile and Scrum Reviews

As documented by Srinath V 

I always strive to improve my skills to remain relevant and valuable to my organisation. Upgrading myself according to technological advancements is one aspect of this. I wanted to join the product owner role to accomplish more challenging tasks and increase my worth and get promotions.

My Journey

I started my career with TCS, and later I shifted to Cognizant. Here I was a part of the Business Development Group. After working at Cognizant for four years, I felt the need to change my domain to a Product Owner role. For this, I decided to pursue CSPO certification from Simplilearn to gain knowledge on the Product Owner profile and the Agile concepts. Eventually, I got an offer for the PO’e position at Cognizant, which helped me gain recognition.

The Challenges I was Facing

I loved working as a business analyst at Cognizant. All the projects were interesting, and the pay was also good. However, I always felt something was missing. At the same time, product management kept attracting me. Therefore, I wanted to learn more about working in this domain. The best way to shift to this area was to earn a professional certification so I could demonstrate the skills and earn the trust of my seniors in Cognizant. Therefore, I decided to upskill myself with the CSPO offered by Simplilearn.

Simplilearn Solution

The Simplilearn course helped me realise my dream of working as a product manager at Cognizant. The instructors of this course explained every topic and its principles very clearly, and their guidance helped me understand what are the responsibilities and roles of a product manager. This was possible because they knew what challenges a product manager had to face and accordingly provided tried and tested solutions.

As documented by Balazs Sebok 

The thought of changing domains in my organization led me to pursue the Agile Scrum Master course by Simplilearn, and after completing the program, I got a salary increment!

My Career Journey So Far

I am currently working as a Senior Banking Manager at Intesa Sanpaolo. I am a senior financial professional with 13+ years of experience establishing Strategic Partnerships within International Banking and Financial Services. I have coordinated, supported, and provided leadership and strategic direction in Product, Process & Project Management, Digital Transformation, Corporate & Transaction Banking, Business Development, National & International Negotiations of Banks, and Leasing and Factoring companies in 12 countries.

The Challenge

I wanted to explore and enhance my understanding of the Agile Scrum areas and wanted to go for a domain change in my professional career. I decided to look for an online professional certification in Agile Scrum when I came across Simplilearn. After going through the numerous Simplilearn reviews and the high Simplilearn rating, I decided to continue with the course to upskill myself.    

The Simplilearn Solution

The program provided by Simplilearn was well structured and formulated. The industry experts were knowledgeable and provided me with deep hands-on experience in every topic. It also helped me learn and understand the concepts with practical implementation. My learning journey with Simplilearn was great. It helped me greatly upskill and get certified.

All About My Professional Background

As documented by Samuel Soper

I’m an Army veteran from Wisconsin, U.S.A. While serving back in 1982, I became interested in Satellite Communications as a Senior Instructor/Curriculum Writer. I moved into the private sector in 1994 and worked as a Communications and Systems manager for a while. In my 40-year career span, I have served many companies as a consultant and a Director of Technology.

Due to so many years of experience and newly learned skills, I could change my domain to Solutions Architect within my company in 2020. Then, in January 2022, I joined a new company as a Technical Solutions Architect. My role here focuses on analysis and solution architecture, assisting development and providing configuration while extending D365 Customer Engagement capabilities throughout the Accounting, Architecture/Engineering/Construction, Legal and Consulting industries. Our teams design and deliver a range of solutions to client problems, process gaps, and inefficiencies by providing the skills and knowledge to create solutions that fit in their business strategies.

My Desire to Stay Current Kicks In

I worked as the Enterprise and Application Architecture Director with a company when the global pandemic hit. Although I am on the verge of retirement, I didn’t want to retire. I wanted to retain a youthful perspective regarding skills and mindset at my job. Today’s young people are technically more literate than me. My desire to maintain relevancy in both my position and in the marketplace became my chief incentive to upskill.

How I Chose Simplilearn as My Go-To Upskill Resource

I began my journey by taking some free Simplilearn courses through Skilllup, focusing on business analysis and project management. I really liked the courses and the structure they provided, so I enrolled in Simplilearn and started taking other courses. So, I began with PMI-ACP and PMI-RMP certifications and then moved on to ITIL 4 and TOGAF 9.2 certifications. I took all four of them in 2020. I took the courses to streamline my work. I was looking for courses that would give me practical knowledge and clarify all theoretical aspects. Finally, I wanted to understand how I could use these technologies as a technical architect and help develop business solutions.

I added to my skill set this year by taking certificate courses in Business Analysis and Digital Transformation.

With already working as a technology leader, I wanted to do something bigger and better. I was looking for ways to expand my knowledge in the software industry and also grow as a person. Upskilling to learn about project management, definitely did the trick for me and even resulted in a new job.

Background 

I’m a software professional with over 15 years of experience in software industry. I was working as a technology leader in my last company, which was a product company in the Telecom and Healthcare domain.

Looking to grow in my career, I started looking for learning new things and came across Agile and Scrum as the most demanded in the project management field. I came across couple of articles on Agile methodology on internet. With Agile methodology in particular scrum methodology is the most effective methodology for developing complex software product in complex environment, I wanted to go into software project management. So I decided to take up a course in Agile Scrum methodology.

As documented by Namrata Mishra

My career mantra is to always keep looking up and keep moving forward. I am constantly looking at how I can improve myself and how I can attain my next career goal. This is exactly how when I was faced with the opportunity of becoming a Scrum Master, I took it and haven’t looked back since. Here’s my journey of how I became a Scrum Master.

I have worked my way up ever since I began my professional career, starting as an SAP trainee with SoftSpin Services in Mumbai nearly 20 years ago. Learning on the job came naturally to me. I always make a conscious effort to learn something of value from everyone I encounter—not just at work, but in daily life. This spirit of lifelong learning is exactly how I came into contact with Simplilearn.

I believe a lot can be learned just by doing it in your regular course of work, but sometimes it’s necessary to take a more structured approach to learn, especially when it involves a standardized methodology such as Agile Scrum. For an agile organization to run like a well-oiled machine, you can’t simply wing it. Everyone needs to be on the same page to reap its many benefits.

That is why Simplilearn was the answer to all my problems. A two-day Certified ScrumMaster® (CSM) Certification training course gave me the confidence to excel in my career and that was just the beginning. 

The Challenge: Taking On the Role of ScrumMaster

With my mantra in mind, I have advanced through the ranks as a professional software engineer to become a program manager since graduating in 2001 with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering. I worked with SAP software (and the ABAP programming language specifically) at SoftSpin for a couple of years before moving on to a series of senior-level software engineer and management-level jobs. 

I joined Mercedes-Benz R&D India as a Program Manager for the Service Operation team. My work focused on SAP and financial services, which was my forte, but my manager knew I wanted to keep growing and taking on more ambitious roles. She asked me whether I wanted to take on the role of ScrumMaster. 

ScrumMasters have a lot of responsibility. They coordinate the various activities comprising a given project with business objectives (bringing a new software release to market, for example), ensuring the project is done right and delivered on time. They host meetings and maintain multiple lines of communication to make sure everyone has the information and resources they need—when they need it. It’s similar to the role of a movie director, although it’s typically applied to technology projects that involve large, multidisciplinary teams.

I was awed by my manager’s confidence in me but I was a little skeptical about making the transition right away, as I only knew the basics of the Agile methodology. So, I decided that the best option for me was to pursue formal certification as a ScrumMaster. After extensive research and multiple recommendations, I found Simplilearn. They had exactly what I had been looking for to help me become a ScrumMaster.