About Yeret Agility

I’m Yuval Yeret. As an agility coach/consultant/trainer, I help leaders pursue real and pragmatic agility at scale. Leaders reach out to me when looking for ways to improve product development as well as when they want to apply agile ideas towards overall operational excellence and business scaling/improvement.

The engagements I thrive in involve taking an agile, pragmatic path to an agile organization. I’m based in Boston. My clients are all over.

Back Story

I spent the first half of my career leading IT and product development – especially in teams focused on operating systems and networks.

While I half-joke that we were practicing DecSecOps in the Israeli Air Force way back in the 90s, my first formal exposure to Agile was in 2006 – when my organization was struggling to get its act together.

I learned about Scrum and Kanban, and we leveraged them to improve our ability to build a quality, valuable product and improve our time to market.

I realized that figuring out how to apply agile techniques to help stabilize and scale product/IT organizations was something I was good at and passionate about – and I essentially pivoted from the field of computer operating systems to human/organizational operating systems.

I’ve had the privilege to collaborate with world-class thought leaders in this space and helped leading technology companies, future and current unicorns, and future-leaning IT organizations improve their ability to innovate, their time to market, and the value they create for their customers.

Thought Leadership

Establishing Kanban as an alternative/complementary path towards agility at the team and organizational level (some call me “Mr Kanban Israel” due to my involvement in creating a thriving enterprise kanban ecosystem in the Israeli tech sector and for Holy Land Kanban)
Co-developing Scrum.org’s Professional Scrum with Kanban to help bring Kanban/Flow to more teams and organizations.
Bringing invitation/pull-based change into the Scaled Agile Framework world.
Co-creating the icAgile Agile Marketing curriculum and establishing best practices for applying Agile Marketing at scale.

My Current Focus

Pragmatic Scaling – Leveraging principles and practices from SAFe, Kanban, Nexus, EBM.
Fixing Agile – helping organizations evolve beyond mechanical or flailing attempts at achieving agility.
Agile Beyond Software – using agile approaches to design and bring to market physical products (think the latest Gillette razor) or cyber-physical systems combining digital and physical into one experience.
Agility for Business Challenges – leveraging agile ideas for organizational health/scaling – e.g. through frameworks such as OKRs.

Credentials

Scrum.org Professional Scrum Trainer

SAFe Fellow

SAFe SPCT

Hear from Leaders about Their Agility Journey With Me

Yuval helped me bring the science and mindset of agile into the Biotech world. He advised me and my team on how to operationalize the agile best practices and apply them pragmatically and practically to our unique context – with a focus on transparency, empiricism, shared understanding, and empowerment. Yuval brings a wealth of experience across many industries and is a real partner in our journey.

Vincenza Nigro – Global Franchise Lead – Hansa Biopharma

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 helping us through some tough issues through hands-on coaching. This makes Yuval very valuable and influential in our journey towards lean.”

Adam Magen – VP Operational Excellence – Siemens Digital Industries

Yuval is the best Lean/Agile partner I have ever worked with. Over the 2+ years of our working relationship, he has consistently brought a pragmatic and refreshingly direct approach to problem-solving, coaching, and training. He leans in, and rather than prescribing a canned academic/textbook solution, he works with us to truly understand our core problems and then prescribes a tailored solution that works best for us. We have measured significant improvements in schedule adherence, quality, and customer satisfaction. The results have been dramatic. In addition to working with our core development teams, Yuval has presented Lean/Agile fundamentals to senior executives within my organization and customers who participate in our Customer Advisory Board meetings. He is a no-nonsense straight-talker, and I unconditionally recommend him to anyone serious about agile transformation.

Steve Lizotte – VP Engineering – NEC Americas

When I asked, “Who should guide us through our Agile journey?” “Yuval” was the reply, followed by the reasons. What I have experienced has been consistent. Yuval is knowledgeable and guides you by asking the right questions at the right time to get you and your team thinking. He has a knack for identifying the missing concepts and language and getting us to talk about those in such a way that we can improve how we work together. Most consultants tell you the answer; Yuval asks the right questions so you find the answer yourself.

Tyson Bertmaring – Head of Stewardship – Dyno Therapeutics

Yuval is a highly experienced agile professional and trainer, a skilled interventionist, and an A+ team player in everything he does. He is highly skilled with clients in bringing his knowledge and intuition to help them meet their goals. Yuval is the best of the best.

Kate W. Isaacs – MIT

It was such a pleasure to work with Yuval. His attention to detail and training program were exactly what we were looking for. He has a way of communicating change in a way that is easy to understand. I absolutely loved working with Yuval and would encourage everyone to work with him. Would absolutely hire him and his company again! Thanks Yuval!

Enna Jimenez – Business Transformation and Quality Leader – IDEMIA

We wanted to explore using agile methodologies within our Biotech environment. Yuval worked with us to produce a full programme of training and implementing / adapting Scrum with Kanban across our entire ecosystem. Yuval was flexible in his approach, spent time discussing specifics and his coaching and subject matter expertise was invaluable. 18 months later and agile is a normal part of how we operate.

Andrea Nisbet – Head of People M:M Bio

Yuval led the agile training at Gillette, which was linked to a major innovation project we were working on (The Exfoliating Razor). The project was on extreme timing and we needed to rethink how to create innovation without sacrificing quality. Yuval trained us on the basics and then consulted with us to help us define the best process. His collaborative, patient, and iterative learning approach was great for our team, which was initially hesitant. His dedication and persistence paid off and enriched the team with a new way of working for future innovation projects. I highly recommend partnering with Yuval on any project where you need to identify new ways of working faster and better.

Cindy Grönberg Moldin – VP Brand – Cotopaxi | Ex P&G

Yuval helped us launch a scaled agile implementation in our group of 100 at Akamai. He ran custom in-house Leading SAFe training for us and guided a value stream identification and realization strategic workshop. Several of us also attended Yuval’s Scrum Product Owner and Scrum Master courses to improve our Agile basics. Yuval was a clear and effective instructor. He covered a lot of substantive material quickly in an interactive way that helped it make sense and stick. His tech leadership background was essential in helping us understand how to apply Agile and SAFe within our specific business and technical contexts. Always encouraging us to return to the Agile principles and think flexibly, he prepared us to embark on a successful Agile journey that involved constant inspection, reflection, and adjustment. Four years later, our implementation is tuned, allowing our teams to achieve much more than was possible before, with a higher level of transparency and collaboration with organizational and portfolio management. I highly recommend Yuval for Agile or scaled Agile teaching, coaching, or assistance anywhere on your Agile journey!

Paul Mattal – Director of Network Systems at Akamai Technologies

Agility Journey Case Studies

DIVERSE Experience

I work with diverse companies ranging from startups, incubators, accelerators, and scale-ups to some of the world’s most prominent technology and consumer brands. I leverage this diverse experience to help my clients find the right path for their agility journey. Here are some of my recent projects:

Bringing Business, Clinical Operations and IT together to deliver faster better Business Outcomes at Spectrum Healthcare

Overview Spectrum Healthcare, a multispecialty medical practice in Maine, wanted to improve operational efficiency across surgical operations, quality, marketing, clinical operations, physiotherapy champions, compliance, medical staff services, billing, and IT. IT, clinical and operational leaders aimed to enhance collaboration across departments and improve their ability to drive operational changes effectively. When/Why Spectrum was looking at …

From Fingerprints to Frameworks: NEC’s Agile Journey with Scrum and Kanban

The journey for NEC with Scrum, Kanban, and agility illustrates the effectiveness of these practices in transforming complex, real-world environments. By starting small, defining their products, having greater focus by having teams understand what their products were, and engaging leadership in transparent decision-making, NEC addressed immediate operational challenges and laid a strong foundation for sustained …

Molecule to Medicine(M2M) Bio

Applied agile / Scrum / Kanban within a Biotech ecosystem involving a platform and multiple research and clinical applications. “agile is now a normal part of how we operate.” Check out this Scrum.org podcast episode on how I helped M:M Bio use Scrum, Kanban and Agile Practices for R&D Projects in the Oncology & Immuno-oncology …

Hansa BioPharma

Coaching the leadership team of a “commercial franchise” on leveraging agile techniques and principles to improve alignment, empowerment, and risk management when introducing a new revolutionary drug to market.

Dyno Therapeutics

I helped the Dyno team evolve their approach to agility beyond mechanical agile towards principled agility applied both to the Tech organization (including Machine-learning, BigData) as well as the Biology teams (creating virus/capsids) , G&A, and the executive team. This included Professional Scrum training, workshops to agree on the next iteration of agility at Dyno …

Gillette – Designing and Productizing a New Razor with Scrum

Summary I partnered with Gillette’s R&D and Commercial leadership to leverage Scrum for designing the Gillette Exfoliating Razor. This initiative included several multi-disciplinary teams involving technical, research, and commercial teams collaborating on one scaled Scrum borrowing patterns from the Nexus framework. Using Scrum to quickly learn and validate on the key leap of faith assumptions …

Aras

Aras’ collaboration with Yuval Yeret propelled them towards agile excellence, yielding rapid innovation, enhanced collaboration, and market responsiveness. The transformation, orchestrated by Yeret, revolutionized Aras’ product development, quality, and operational efficiency.

Computer Associates – Marketing Agility at Scale

Standing up Agility at Scale for a marketing organization involving multiple marketing and sales functions organized in multi-disciplinary teams empowered to own their funnel and run fast iterative cycles to deliver and optimize marketing/sales plays. The teams collaborated as an “Agile Marketing Train” to improve alignment and synergy by marketing and selling the product portfolio …

Idemia – Using Agile to Improve Delivery

Idemia builds the systems you experience when you get your Driver’s license and go through the TSA Precheck lines. I helped Idemia leverage agile to help it deliver customer programs and build its future products. This included standing up team-level agility in several groups, standing up a lean agile center-of-excellence, organizing stable SAFe ARTs organized …

Intel

Work With Yuval

I’m based in the Boston area. My clients are all over the world.

These days I’m focusing on 1:1 leadership agility strategy coaching/mentoring, light-touch high impact strategic workshops, and a small set of fractional engagements as an agility champion / enterprise coach. If any of that sounds useful – let’s have a chat.

Schedule a Discovery Call

yuval@yeretagility.com (617) 356-7093‬