Sally Elatta’s Endorsements

“I have had the pleasure of working with Sally at BCBSNE. She has great knowledge of team dynamics and applies them as an Agile Coach. She was able to bring order to a very complex project. Sally is a high energy person that gets results. I highly recommend Sally.” March 8, 2009

Top qualities: Great Results , Personable , Expert

Bobbi  - hired Sally as a IT Consultant in 2008

“Sally is very knowledgeable and she is not only excellent, creative sales person but she definitely “walks the talk”. She has brought the Agile world to life at Northern and she continues to coach our employees, including management, on how to be successful utilizing Agile. Sally is very energetic, enthusiastic and positive in working with her clients and business associates. She has outstanding interpersonal skills and coupled with her knowledge and enthusiasm about Agile, these traits make her an avid, dynamic trainer and coach. I would highly recommend Sally as a trainer and coach.” May 5, 2008

Top qualities: Great Results , Personable , Expert

Nancy - hired Sally as a Agile Trainer and Coach in 2007

“I had the privelege of working with Sally at a client where she initiated multiple teams into Scrum. We each held Scrum Master roles, while she additionally provided overall enterprise-level coaching. Beyond her effectiveness in coaching the team in agile practices, here deep technical expertise helped clear architectural and development practices roadblocks as well. I learned a great deal from Sally and look forward to a future opportunity to work with her again!” February 18, 2008

Alan , Senior Consultant , Velocity Partners, LLC  worked directly with Sally at Northern Natural Gas (NNG)

“Sally is a pleasure to work with and for. She has a strong grasp of Agile/Scrum Methodology and is excellent at articulating the concepts to those unfamiliar with the concepts. She is good at allowing her team to express their skill strengths. She does a good job of staying in tune with the business and “people”-side of her teams. She displays focused energy and accomplished leadership skills, She is assertive, results-oriented and willing to flex to customize Agile principles within each organization’s unique culture and needs. Sally has been successful at multi-tasking several projects at multiple companies. I would highly recommend Sally for training, team leadership or any other role that requires “soft” skills along with technical knowledge.” February 10, 2008

Jacquie, Documentation Specialist , Northern Natural Gas (NNG)
reported to Sally at Northern Natural Gas (NNG)

“I have been working with Sally as she has been coaching and mentoring me as a scrummaster in one of our pilot agile projects here at Mutual of Omaha. She really helped us get started and has enabled us to be productive with agile very quickly. She has a great deal of credibility with project managers and developers alike. She has a technical background and can understand and relate to the challenges the developers are facing and has also lead several agile projects, giving her the ability to provide real-life examples when problem-solving. The value of her advice and observations has been immeasurable and she always has a solution to offer whenever we hit a bump in the road. She has a great understanding of agile development and how to implement it in a variety of situations. Sally treats everyone with respect and makes everyone feel important. She has been such an asset to us and I would highly recommend her for any company or any project.” May 12, 2008

Top qualities: Personable , High Integrity , Creative

Melissa - hired Sally as a IT Consultant in 2007

“Sally has very effective facilitation skills that delivers the appropriate message while keeping the class on target. Her experience using Agile was a real asset in my Agile Overview class. Sally is also a great Agile coach. She is very responsive to questions and has a variety of strategies for effective implementation and support of the Agile process. Her coaching allowed me to be effective in my role as a SCRUM master. Sally continuously challenges herself to provide superior service to her customers by improving her training materials and approaches to best meet the needs of the organization. Sally also demonstrates leadership by organizing an Agile Users Group in Omaha, Nebraska and has been effective in recruiting highly respected speakers including Scott Ambler and Jean Tabaka. Sally works in a very collaborative manner and is always pleasant to work with. She is a superior Agile leader and I would highly recommend her for Certified Scrum Trainer and Certified Scrum Coach.” May 6, 2008

Top qualities: Great Results , Personable , Creative

Kathy - hired Sally as a Career Coach in 2005

“I met Sally when she came to Mutual of Omaha to do the employee assessment and training recommendation for J2EE developments and was really impressed by her breadth of knowledge and by her ability to explain things. I am one of the lucky ones who got a chance to go through her “Java journey” training program. That’s when she introduced us to the Agile development methodologies too. The training and project she provided really improved my confidence level and has helped me to excel in my career here at Mutual of Omaha. Not only she is a very good trainer in J2EE & Agile, she is also very effective in the way she provides her training. She is very passionate about her work and ideas. I strongly recommend Sally as a J2EE & Agile Trainer or Consultant and wish her all the best in her life.” May 1, 2008

Top qualities: Great Results , Expert , Creative

ajay - hired Sally as a Career Coach in 2005

“Sally is an expert at Agile methods and training. She has provided numerous training classes to scrum masters, Agile teams, and Information Services officers. She also provides coaching to new scrum masters. All of our Agile projects are running well and the staff are complete advocates of the Agile methods. Sally also helped structure and will teach classes on expert facilitation skills, with an emphasis towards Agile methods. She is professional and personable. She has been an asset to successful Agile implementation and successful projects at Mutual of Omaha.” May 1, 2008

Top qualities: Great Results , Expert , Creative

CJ - hired Sally as a Business Consultant in 2007

“My first interaction with Sally was in her role as an Agile/Scrum instructor. I attended her two-day “Applying Agile & Scrum in the Real World” workshop. In my Enterprise Project Office role, her workshop provided the information I needed to understand how Agile/Scrum could be used at Mutual of Omaha. Myself and everyone else were impressed with her facilitation abilities, knowledge of the material, and effectiveness in presenting her material. My second exposure to Sally was when she was serving as a project consultant to an Agile team at Mutual. In this situation, she was actually serving in the role of ScrumMaster to get the project started off on the right foot since the project’s actual ScrumMaster was new to the role. Once again, what impressed me most was her facilitation skills. Her intuition allowed her to ask precisely the right questions to draw information out of the group. Since that time, Sally has supported me more in an Agile Enterprise Consulting role. In this capacity, she has helped me focus on the key topics necessary to effectively roll out Agile at Mutual of Omaha. She has also helped me in my Change Management Role for our Agile Initiative by using her knowledge of the Agile/Scrum topic to address resistance from various key stakeholders. Lastly, after recognizing that in our typical “Command & Control” environment, additional emphasis on facilitation skills would benefit our project management community, I contracted with Sally to develop and deliver a two-day facilitation workshop for Mutual’s project managers. The outline of the facilitation workshop was exactly what I was wanting. While the first actual delivery of the facilitation workshop is still a few weeks away, I have every expectation that it will be as successful as Sally’s other endeavors have been at Mutual of Omaha.” May 1, 2008

Top qualities: Great Results , Personable , Creative

Ken - hired Sally as a IT Consultant in 2008 , and hired Sally more than once

“Sally, You have done an outstanding job in training and mentoring the FAIR VAL agile team. After 3 iterations, the Team implemented a reporting and analysis envirnoment into production. The Product Owner and Business Partners are thrilled with the quick results and the high quality of the software and data. We had over 30 Stakeholders at the demo who asked lots of great questions and were truely engaged. The Sr. Vice President kept saying “Great Job”. Thanks again for all your help and mentoring. We could not have had so much success without your training, coaching, and mentoring. You should be proud of your work here at Mutual of Omaha!” April 11, 2008

Top qualities: Great Results , Expert , Good Value

Kellie - hired Sally as a IT Consultant in 2007 , and hired Sally more than once