Define Agile

Anatoly and I worked together on a team that wrote APIs to connect our website with legacy services deep in TELUS. Anatoly joined us in a time of crisis: we had no Scrum Master, no Product Owner, and only a team of developers and QA. We had just doubled our developer count and we had a hard time keeping track of what work was happening as well as what the most important work was.

Thanks to Anatoly's hard work and diligence to keep us inline, we went from a disaster to a properly functioning team. Suddenly we had stories with actual Acceptance Criteria, all work was being done through Jira issues, we split the team in two to keep our standups focused, and we started to get trust from other teams. This is basics for a lot of teams but without someone who had the experience, I don't think we would have got here in a timely fashion.

Not only did Anatoly get us working together, he was an advocate for our needs. He was able to get our team a Product Owner as well as more developers. He worked behind the scenes to keep the chaos at bay for our team and he made sure we had the necessary information. Anatoly is the driving force behind a number of promotions that have occurred in the past year, my own included. Without his support, I don't believe I would have taken the risk to try something new and really push outside my boundaries. He regularly had one-on-ones with all team members to get a health check and to provide anonymous feedback from our peers, if necessary.

Keep in mind, this is just my experience with Anatoly on one team. While at TELUS, he simultaneously supported two other teams who were in a similar or worse state. Working with Anatoly has been one of the best experiences in my career and I am sad to see him leave our team.

I had the privilege of working in the same team as David for about 6 months. His energy, positivity,
knowledge and eagerness were the main characteristics that stood out for me. He is always looking for
ways to improve and help others around him.
Being new to my role when we started working together, I learned a lot from David. He always took the
time to teach and walk me through key aspects of Agile, somehow always making it super interesting
and funny. He's helped our team with best practices, story pointing workshops, health checks and
ensured we were always working in the most effective manner.
Although we no longer work directly together in the same team anymore, David continues to be an
awesome colleague, mentor and friend. David is one of a kind - any company would be lucky to have
him!

I have had the privilege of working with Dave throughout his journey from Software Developer, to
Scrum Master, and now to Agile Coach. In each of these roles Dave brought positivity, passion, and
genuine care to his work and to the teams of people around him. As an Agile Coach, Dave's belief in
empowered, autonomous teams is obvious. He teaches agile practices as tools rather than dogma, and
helps teams build the muscles of delivery and self-organization. Add to this that Dave always finds a
way to build positive (and fun) relationships with everyone he works with, and you have a powerful
morale-boosting change agent on your hands. I sincerely hope I get more opportunities to work with
Dave in the future!

I have a huge amount of respect for Anatoly, and his approach to working with agile teams. I had the pleasure of coaching alongside him, as we supported a number of teams through large organisational change. He is an incredibly focussed, observant, intelligent coach - who would continually & positively challenge the way I see the world. Really enjoyed our time working together, and look forward to collaborating again one day.