About Cesario
Cesario Ramos works on large-scale transformation all over the world in banking, insurance, and high-tech industries like AXA, NN, Thales, ING, Phillips, PANalytical, Barco, AbnAmro Bank, Independer, Tele2 and Raiffeisen bank. He is also a Certified LeSS Trainer and Professional Coach.
He started back in 1999 with eXtreme Programming and started his first Scrum Team back in 2002. Ever since he has been working with organizations adopting Scrum. In 2010 he founded AgiliX, a consulting company, that provides consulting and training worldwide.
Cesario is the author of the books 'Creating Agile Organizations', ‘EMERGENT’ and co-author of the book 'A Scrum Book’.
He is a frequently invited speaker at conferences around the world and organizes the LeSS Recap Days, Scrum BookClub meetups, and is co-organizer of the international Large Scale Scrum (LeSS) conferences.
A Selection of my papers.
Large Scale Scrum adoption at ING.
Scale Your Product Not your Scrum.
WHY ISN’T YOUR CURRENT APPROACH TO SCALING AGILITY WORKING?
Large Scale Scrum at Thales.
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What students say about Cesario
Jul 11, 2023
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Jun 30, 2023
I like Cesario’s energy!
Cesario Ramos is a very knowledged and skilled trainer. He gave us practical insights in how to handle as a Scrum Master in certain situations. I would recommend this course and especially this trainer to everyone!
Jun 30, 2023
Cesario managed to make to course fun, intriguing and informative
Cesario managed to make to course interactive and meaningfull. Even though it was in the later parts of the day (4 evenings in total) it wasnt exhausting to the point of not being able to focus. Cesario gave plenty of empirical examples that summarized the importance of segments of information of the course. Cesario made the course more fun, intriguing, and informative than i initially expected.
Jun 30, 2023
Great teacher with lots of experience
It was a very interactive course with a good and experienced teacher.
The use of real-life examples he experienced made it easier to place the theorie in practices
Apr 14, 2022
Perfect PSM training
Perfect PSM training
Great explanations, implementing methods and tools throughout the day for the course. Explanations come (mostly) from experience and not from the theory only.
Apr 13, 2020
All you need for your PSM assessment
Great class, lots of useful insights. Cesario is an amazing teacher!
Feb 3, 2020
The class given was according expectations
The class given was according expectations. Our guide throughout the course was adequate and helpful.
Only remark is that the max participants should lay around 12 +- 3.
We had a 20 person group which gave me the idea that there was little time to go deeper into SCRUM items.
An overal 8 for the course
Courses taught by Cesario
Applying Professional Scrum
Professional Agile Leadership - Essentials
Professional Scrum Master
Professional Scrum Master - Advanced
Professional Scrum Product Owner
Professional Scrum Product Owner - Advanced
Scaled Professional Scrum
Other Services by Cesario
- Coaching/Consulting
- Private Courses
Latest Blogs by Cesario
See all blogs
In my previous post on Product Definition, which you can read here, I introduced the basics of how products—both internal and external—are defined in an agile organization. Today, I’m excited to share a deeper dive into this concept through a new video, where I walk you through how we apply Systems Thinking in the Creating Agile Organizations (CAO) approach.
When designing your own Agile framework, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. The key is to find the right balance based on how work flows through your system, particularly focusing on the type and frequency of dependencies. Your framework design should prioritize eliminating the most common dependencies first.
In the late 90s, many companies adopted a 150-person rule for organizational units to maintain manageability and cohesion. However, this approach often led to fragmented products and complex management structures, making strategic execution a challenge.
Today, a new idea is emerging. Instead of splitting units by size, companies are forming dedicated product groups with full P&L responsibility, encompassing entire product families. This shift has streamlined strategic units, reduced reporting lines, and enhanced agility in responding to market changes.
As a Scrum Master, it's time to rethink our approach to agility. Instead of forcing strategies into predefined frameworks, evolve your operating model to align with unique strategies and empower your teams. This fundamental shift creates a dynamic organization that continually evolves and improves.
In this blog, I share seven steps to help you out.
In the Creating Agile Organizations prototype organization, semi-independent product groups and shared services coexist. Product groups are operationally coupled by shared services but functionally decoupled from each other, that is: actions by a product group does not negatively impact the ability of other product groups to achieve their function. This design ensures that product groups can make necessary changes without being negatively impacted by other groups.
Understanding and implementing both product-level and organizational adaptability is crucial for modern agile organizations. By balancing tight and loose coupling appropriately, organizations can remain resilient, responsive, and competitive in ever-changing markets. This dual-level adaptability allows organizations to thrive by continuously optimizing value and enhancing the customer experience.
Meet Sara, a driven product director who’s always up for a challenge. But with ambitious targets to attract 10,000 new clients, increase customer satisfaction by 35%, and keep top talents on board, she’s starting to worry if her organization is up for the task.
The Creating Agile Organizations approach is about designing your own organizational framework and coaching its adoption. It is important to note that it is different from frameworks like Scrum, LeSS or SAFe, which have specific structures, rules, events, and artefacts to build upon. Instead, Creating Agile Organizations provides none of that, but provides two sets of guidelines that draw upon decades of academic research and practical experience in organizations similar to yours.
Developing Agile capabilities within an organization requires unlearning ineffective practices and aligning the company’s structure, processes, people practices, and reward systems. The importance of these different components to reinforce each other is illustrated through the analogy of developing a healthy lifestyle.
At scale, many teams can use the shared platform functionality. When that can be done on a self-service basis, it supports autonomy and improves product delivery flow. But when the platform group holds all the power and the teams need to request the product group to develop product-specific functionality themselves, it can create a bottleneck in the development process.
By eliminating reciprocal interdependencies and creating a commodity platform, product groups can focus on their unique features and the platform can provide the necessary functionality without getting in the way. It’s a win-win situation for everyone involved, and collaboration and smart processes can keep everything running smoothly.
Designing an Agile organisation is difficult without a framework - it involves making trade-offs between various design options. But did you know that your organization's strategic focus plays a crucial role in determining the right trade-offs? By combining the traits of an Agile organization with your strategic focus, you can identify the necessary capabilities to succeed.