Take a step closer to where you want to be

Last week I completed my ICAgile Agile Product Ownership Certification, delivered remotely by the team at Elabor8. Although some may question how effective training can be when delivered completely online (I also had my reservations), the team nailed it with brilliant facilitation supported by a few collaborative online tools. Thanks Nish Malik and Sarah Rose for a great 3 days, I'm looking forward to using these skills and techniques in my future roles!

I attended the Agile training at Elabor8 through my work, and expected just that... to learn about a tool and experience to use at work. With the excellent Sarah leading us, I was able to explore other areas of my life that could benefit from using the Kanban board. My partner is a musician and songwriter, starting out on his first solo album. At that time, he had about 9 songs, in various stages of completion and no clear way of working out which one to work on next!. I created a very simple Kanban board for him, with sticky notes. At first he was confused about what help this would be, but once I explained it, told him he could change any of the columns if it made more sense to him, he was hooked!. So at a much faster pace, not only did he stop berating himself for not getting anything done, quite the opposite, he focused on how far he'd come and how much needed to be worked on to finish each song. Pleased to say, that that first album "One" by Woody! is due to be released at the end of May 2020. Thanks Sarah!

Thank you for a most instructive and entertaining course. It must have been entertaining because it seemed we barely started each session, before I found myself again on a break, overindulging in the delicious catering. I’ve just finished (literally this minute) reviewing my 2019 Performance Plan with my Manager, she’s agreed that our Organisational Vision needs to inform my Role Objectives, and will work with me on linking them. Thanks again for a great course.

Agile has worked really well within our context and we are confident it will continue to help us grow and improve. The idea that Agile is a mindset has resonated for us, and we can use aspects of the framework depending on the project.  Ultimately, it has helped us to foster a positive team culture and the benefits of that cannot be underestimated.   We were also really impressed with the Elabor8 training and Sarah’s ability to contextualise the principles to our experience. Her understanding of our journey so far and ability to remember individual conversations over the past 12 months was noticeable.

Elabor8 were able to tailor their course during a period when our workforce (among many others around the globe) had moved to remote work. They maintained their usual high level of engagement with our audiences and were able to accommodate not just our IT teams but a team from our Theatre who were keen on learning about Agile Ways of Working. I was impressed as I listened in, as our teams developed new skills and interacted throughout the day and how they came away with the ability to start practicing what they had learnt. I am looking forward to working with Elabor8 in the future to role out Agile and Scrum to even more people in the organisation.

Elabor8’s training courses are an excellent balance between theory and practice – providing a solid understanding of Scrum with a strong focus on how it applies in the real world, with practical examples and discussions around specific scenarios. One benefit was the new insights, tools and language that were useful the next day in the office and continue to be today. Highly recommended.

I'd already been working in an agile project, but the course provided a lot of theory to explain the practise and fill in the gaps. The course was very well organised and run, with a good mix of practical exercises to complement the topics discussed and presented by people who have worked in an agile environment. Whether you're completely new to agile, or already have some experience working in an agile environment, there will be a lot of things for you to take away from the course.

Elabor8's Kanban System Design course was a great opportunity to delve deeper into Kanban. This is a great hands on course that arms you with tools to take back to the office and implement the next day.

The PSM course run by Elabor8 was excellent. A great cross-section of participants from different industries and a really engaging facilitation style by Erwin Van Der Koogh and the Elabor8 team. I was able to validate my practical experience throughout the 2 days but also picked up so much more knowledge and practical advice on the application of Scrum in the workplace. I would highly recommend the course to others who are looking to develop in or move into Scrum Master roles and wanting to prepare themselves well for their PSM certification

Jurgen Appelo’s Management 3.0 helps to address a significant gap in the Agile space by providing a framework to lead, manage, and organise Agile individuals, teams and enterprises. The uniquely developed Elabor8 Academy Management 3.0 course, which in my case was skilfully led by Catherine Hill, combines an excellent combination of relevant theory, practices (exercises) and discussion. The course is complemented and supported by Jugen’s Management 3.0 book and website. I highly recommend the course to anyone looking to improve their Agile management practises.

Recently I undertook the Agile Fundamental two day course led by Elabor8. There were 20 team members on the course, at all levels of understanding of Agile and I can honestly say, the delivery of the course was fresh, interactive and not your standard ‘death by powerpoint’ some of use may have seen with some course delivery. Rebecca delivered in such a way, we were all very much engaged, and such, we were able to understand the content, enabled everyone to interact, and most importantly, it was a fun way to understand the fundamentals of ‘Agile’. I would very much recommend anyone who wishes to explore this subject, to engage with Rebecca and her team at Elabor8.

Loved the sessions, you are both wonderful trainers and people. I had a blast and learnt a lot I can take forward.

I enjoyed the fact that the course was not focused on memorising slides of information, but rather relevant discussion. Erwin was great at relating course content back to real-life examples from his previous industry experience in other large financial institutions. The course not only taught us about Agile (Scrum), but also how the role of the Scrum Master works together with the rest of the team. We learnt about the change in mind-set that organisations like NAB will require to fully adopt Agile.

Within 20 minutes of being in the office today I’d already sold our Program Manager on rolling CD3 into our prioritisation of all things (it might take us a while longer to figure out how exactly), and had a good chat with our CEO about both the cost of delay & how we currently measure “success” of our projects, and about planning around value rather than focusing too much on big waterfall projects. I came for inspiration, and I found it. Thanks Sarah, Steph & all the crew that helped bring the course together behind the scenes. Next step, new story maps to help us decide as a team on the MVP for a new target customer to determine what on our roadmap we really need to focus on for our next release. I hope it’s not too long before I have the pleasure of picking your brains again!

Elabor8 facilitated a full-day workshop for our whole team, bringing together project managers, designers and developers. Our group was skilfully lead through an exploration of Agile methodology by Cath, who challenged and engaged us all with structured exercises and tasks. Cath was very practical with her recommendations for change within our business; advocating for a gradual roll out of Agile processes. We are already seeing positive changes as a result of the inspiring session.

Elabor8 were great to work with, they listen to your needs and work through training options to match. We ran three waves of the Agile Fundamentals course with three different flavours based on each group. It gave our leaders and squads a perfect benchmark to launch into our new way of working.

The course was an excellent grounding in all aspects of agile, with a good balance between theory and practice across the two days. The group activities gave us the opportunity to both learn and practise the concepts we were introduced to and kept the energy high in the room. Overall it was a really engaging course with plenty of practical frameworks, tools and ways of working to take back to our workplaces.

Elabor8 worked closely with us to design a tailored full day workshop for our whole continuous delivery team, to help them better understand how to write great User Stories. The workshops were led by a range of Elabor8 trainers who made them informative, fun and participatory and we received very positive feedback from all who attended. Nish, Sarah and Juan from Elabor8 were able to use practical examples from their experience to help bring the theory to life and embed the practices with the teams. We are seeing improvements in our User Stories already as the teams now try and use what they have learnt.