The Professional Agile Leadership Essentials ™ Training (PAL-E)

The Professional Agile Leadership ™ Essentials class is a 2-day official Scrum.org training by Berlin Product People GmbH. Public PAL-E training classes are offered in English, while private PAL-E courses are also available in German upon request.

Our Professional Agile Leadership Essentials classes include two attempts to accomplish the industry-acknowledged PAL-E certification:

“The Professional Agile LeadershipTM (PAL I) assessment is available to anyone who wishes to validate that you are a leader who understands that being Agile adds value to your business, and why leadership understanding, sponsorship, and support of Agile practices are essential to an organization becoming more agile. Those who pass receive the industry-recognized certification as a PAL I from Scrum.org; demonstrating a fundamental level of understanding about how agility adds value to an organization, why leadership support of agile teams is essential to achieving organizational agility, and what leaders can do to support their teams to help them achieve higher performance.”

Source: Scrum.org.

📈 PAL I Certification Results 2021: While the focus of any class is on lifting your professional skills to the next level, we are not sidelining the certification. In 2021:

• 97% of course participants took the included PAL I certification.
• 77% of exam takers passed PAL I certification with an average score of 95%. (Required: 85%.)

➕ Refresher Classes: Attend a free refresher class as a former student upon arrangement and availability. Here, a former student may attend a (public) course for a second time to revisit practices and principles. (Attendance does not include recertification, however.)

📅 Please find all of our upcoming Professional Scrum training dates here.

🎓 This class is also available as a private or corporate class. Please consult Training Rates for further information.

If the procurement process of your organization requires a different purchasing process, please feel free to contact your Professional Scrum Trainer:

Customer Reviews

“Stefan’s class was outstanding. Not only is Stefan an extremely knowledgable and experienced Scrum expert but also a very calm and nice instructor with very competent use of tools for remote learning. Additionally, we had a very focused and determined group of people attending this online course. If I ever consider doing another Scrum-related course, it will surely be with Stefan.”

“A highly informative series of classes that naturally built upon what it promised ie – in preparing attendees to become Scrum Masters. Classes had a perfect balance of instructor-led and working group sessions. @Stefan Wolpers – GREAT job at being our instructor.”

“Outstanding PSM II experience: Having looked forward to attending this class, literally for years, it was everything I expected, hoped for and then some. I am so grateful that this was an online virtual class, as it added an additional dimension to the learning, and was incredibly insightful. The trainer did an outstanding job of taking us through the learning plan, facilitating discussions, guiding the outcome and believing in the structures. Whether the learning was tangible curriculum, or intangible observation, it was excellent – made even more solid by the open sharing from my classmates and willingness from everyone to participate.”

“The class with Stefan was very well structured, delivering a helpful hands-on approach to all the Scrum basics. He managed to cover participants with different levels of expertise and from various fields easily and delivered knew knowledge and value to all of them from my point of view. The culture during these four days was excellent, so that everyone felt capable to speak up. Very much worth the invested time and money!”

Read all customer feedback on our training classes.

Who Should Attend the PAL-E Training?

This training is designed for all leadership and management members responsible for introducing and establishing Agile practices and techniques in an organization or division. Agile Transformations are complex endeavors, and moving from traditional management practices to a servant leadership approach is anything but self-explanatory. If you are working with Scrum teams daily, this class will support your path to mastering agile leadership.

The lessons of this Professional Agile Leadership ™ Essentials class are industry-agnostic and applicable to a wide range of industries—from engineering to finance to transportation to pharmaceuticals, to name a few.

Professional Scrum Trainer Stefan Wolpers will facilitate the class. Stefan has extensive experience both in startups as well as in established, stock-listed corporations. He is also an active contributor to the international Agile community, a licensed Agile Fluency™ facilitator, and an XSCALE Alliance Business Agility coach.

The training activities will comprise of interactive exploration, discussions, and exercises, for example, based on Liberating Structures or short teachings. The techniques that you will learn are also immediately applicable after the class in your environment.

PAL-E Learning Objectives

The Professional Agile Leadership Essentials ™ class covers the following leadership topics related to agile transformations and working with self-managed Scrum Teams:

• An understanding of the benefits of agile organizations in a VUCA world
• How the role of the management and the leadership changes in an agile organization
• How managers and leaders can support Scrum teams in creating value for customers
• An understanding of how culture and values drive agile transformations—or not
• How to develop people within the agile organization
• Learning hands-on advice and skills on how to support Scrum teams in their daily work
• Lastly, preparing for the PAL-E certification.

Focus of the Professional Agile Leadership Essentials Training

The PAL-E training class will focus on:

• Theory and Principles of agile leadership
• How to improve value delivery
• What constitutes value—the “What”
• How an agile culture is created—the “Who”
• How we redefine professionalism in agile organizations—the “How”
• How to measure agility
• Lastly, how we can “scale” agility within the organization.

Why You Don’t Want to Miss this PAL-E Class

There are several reasons why you would want to join Stefan’s Professional Agile Leadership ™ Essentials class:

• All work will be done in small groups, using Liberating Structures extensively
• You will meet up to twelve peers
• Up to two attempts for PAL-E certification are included in the course free
• You will receive an additional 14 PMI PDUs by attending
• It is a hands-on, practical learning experience
• You will be invited to a quarterly retrospective exclusively available to Professional Scrum class alumni
• You will gain access to the Hands-on Agile Slack community and continue the exchange with your trainer as a class alumni
• You will receive a discount of 20 percent on any other of our classes.

What Will You Take Home with You from the Professional Agile Leadership Class?

This Professional Agile Leadership training will provide both the PAL-E class manual and the PAL-E certification code. (Including an additional complimentary code within the first 14 days after completing the class if a participant does not achieve 85 percent the first time.) Additionally, you will also receive several ebooks from Stefan that provide proven hands-on tactics to excel at your agile leader position, thus furthering your career potential.

Also, students of PAL-E classes are eligible to claim Project Management Institute (PMI) PDU credits. Here, 14 PDUs are available after attending a two-day Professional Agile Leadership (PAL) Essentials course. Please note that PMI PDUs are earned for course attendance and not for passing a Scrum.org certification. Students can claim PDUs under PMI’s “Education courses provided by other third-party providers” category. You can claim your PDUs online via the PMI website; find instructions here.

How to Prepare Yourself for Professional Agile Leadership Class?

You will experience this PAL-E class even better if you invest in familiarizing yourself with some of the following articles, guides, ebooks, and assessments:

• The New, New Product Development Game
• The Agile Manifesto
• The Scrum Guide
• The Scrum Guide Reordered
• The Agile Leadership Open assessment on Scrum.org.

(Of course, we will support your preparation efforts by providing access to the before-mentioned sources.)

Tools Used in Public Live Virtual Classes

We use Zoom, Mural, and Google Apps in public training classes—such as the Professional Agile Leadership class—to ensure the best learning experience. If you are required to use other applications, for example, Microsoft Teams, please reach out to us for other options.

Your Professional Scrum Trainer Stefan Wolpers

Meet your Professional Scrum Trainer and agile coach Stefan Wolpers. Stefan has more than fifteen years of experience in agile product development. During this time, Stefan has been working as an agile coach, Scrum Master, or Product Owner in different organizations: from startups to a Google subsidiary to corporations.

Stefan is specializing in coaching agile practices for change, for example, agile software development with Scrum, LeSS, Kanban, Lean Startup, and product management. He has served in senior leadership positions several times throughout his career. His agile coaching expertise focuses on scaling product delivery organizations of fast-growing, venture-capital funded startups and transitioning existing product teams in established enterprise organizations.

Learn more about your Professional Scrum Trainer Stefan Wolpers.