Top Team’s strategic breakthrough in One Month

Dmytro and his team were able to effectively lead this exercise and, in a very short time, establish the foundations of a goal-setting framework that emphasises outcome-based result evaluation. This has been quickly and relatively easily adopted by everyone within the company. Overall, Dmytro took away the complexity and made it easy for everyone to understand and subsequently “get onboard” with OKRs.

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We have tried several times to introduce OKRs in the company and at the end the result was more like a todo list. Dmytro helped us to look at OKRs from alignment perspective, and we have started from articulating the company objectives which helped to bring everyone on board. Our teams enjoyed to work with Dmytro and discuss how to address different challenges, whether this is an improvement of the process or establishing new ways of working.

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The software development team at Gubra had the pleasure of being coached in agile and scrum methodologies by Dmytro Yarmak from Uphill Partners. During the day Dmytro did an excellent job in communicating the values and pitfalls of doing scrum in a complete non-digital format. He had control of time and content from start to end and during the course the agenda was elegant adjusted based on discussion with the team. If your team is starting scrum and you are looking for a coach Dmytro has my recommendations.

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Strategy session with Uphill Partners was the best start to 2024 for the EdEra team. Our OKRs are as specific as ever, project performance remains consistently high, and the energy within the team's leadership is exactly what is needed! Uphill Partners proved to be the top performers in the market based on benchmarking of providers and confirmed this by 100% with the results of the strategy session. Sincere thanks to the team; everything was great from the first Zoom call with account manager Alexander to the follow-up session with our consultants Dmitriy and Oksana. We highly recommend Uphill Partners for teams undergoing transformations or actively scaling; it was powerful teamwork!🔥

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The expectations from the preparation and conduct of the strategic session have been met, and thanks to it, we are developing our system and confidently moving forward. Now we have a clear action plan that leads us towards our common goal, and we know the endpoint. Even if circumstances change, we are ready to adapt and achieve success. It was not just a strategic session, as the specificity of the business had to be taken into account. But Dmitry handled this excellently. A regular facilitator would hardly cope with leading the session, as besides us, there were subcontractors involved, and it was important to come up with an agreed goal. This task was successfully accomplished within the session. I am truly satisfied with the conduct of the strategic session and working with Uphill Partners. I highly recommend them!

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The coaching team effectively worked with our top managers, giving their full commitment. They understood our request, proposed a plan, and adjusted it according to our comments. I recommend Uphill Partners (formerly agiledrive).

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In the past, we tried to plan on our own — we had lots of great ideas, but often lacked a system to hold everything together and guide us toward clear execution. During 'StratMonth', the team helped us organize our thoughts, focus on priorities, distribute roles and focus groups, and define specific steps and deadlines. We gained clarity, a sense of structure, and felt supported at every stage. Everything became transparent, understandable — and most importantly — implemented. For the first time, it truly feels like strategy is not just a bunch of slides, but a functional tool the team uses and lives by every day. It genuinely helped us move from talk to action. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants not just to 'talk strategy', but to actually mobilize their team and make things happen.

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You don't need an advisor, teacher, assistant or coach. In transformation, you need a partner. Uphill Partners is your "partner in crime" in the product transformation of your business. Uphill Partners measures your success with customer success, so it's always about partnership, about finding joint solutions and opportunities. For us — 7 teams in just 11 months: new products, new real income. And new, qualitatively new people!

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The coaches helped us to go all the way as comfortable as possible for the team. And where we would be much more direct and tough, they were able to convey the importance of focusing on the team. We are very happy with what we have in the end! Separately, I would like to mention the Uphill Partners's ability to manage the process and teams, involve and transfer knowledge so that everyone is high and feels heard.

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We worked with Uphill Partners for six months, and the results fully justify the effort. We developed an understanding of the essence of each role in the team and started rotating roles, identifying the most effective people for each. The main thing we expected from our cooperation was to test whether cross-functional teams on different projects would apply Agile with equal success. But we got more than that: we worked out a system of interaction in our teams that significantly sped up work on two critical projects. For IDS Borjomi Ukraine, it’s not just the metrics that are important — we also want a comfortable environment where employees can grow and be proactive. I can say that introducing Agile under Yura’s mentorship has made interactions in several teams more comfortable and our work more transparent and predictable.

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The Epicur team included both Scrum adherents and skeptics. But even the adepts had questions — how can Agile work in an offline project? I am grateful that the team accepted Scrum and agile approaches! Easy clarification, gentle and at the same time persistent influence on changes in my and other managers' behaviour. Personal positive attitude of trainers. I think that was a great key to success! Now, after months of independent swimming, I dare say — Scrum has taken root and the Epicurus team has moved to relationship version 2.0!

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By introducing Agile, we received a template that helps us to form teams for the development of new products. And implementing tools like grooming, planning, and retrospectives helps us to avoid situations where a task’s completion depends on a single employee. The team has learned to think differently — bugs are no longer the result of poorly formed requirements. Each member of a project is accountable because they are all involved in the process from the very beginning. I’d like to thank Yura for the emotional support — he saw the overload and burnout coming and helped me to prevent it. The results of our work with Uphill Partners are something I feel inside: “We didn’t mess anything up, we added new tools, and we are moving faster and more comfortably. Now, our team and I are ready to create better products.

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Our transformation has brought about a lot of changes. A focus on the client has become our primary concern; each new development starts with interviews, testing hypotheses, and testing possible solutions. We discuss it extensively; we analyze. And our analysis is based on real samples, trends, and patterns rather than on the feedback from a single client. There is a feedback loop – we release something and get immediate feedback on whether it works, what our clients think of it. The role of IT at the bank has changed fundamentally. Now, IT is a business enabler. Compared to what we had before, this is an entirely different focus and understanding of the needs of the business. Our transformation was a large-scale effort: work is organized toward collaboration between IT and business, and we have maximally focused dedicated teams and approaches to planning and evaluating results. The concept of a ‘product’ has a new, real meaning for us.

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We are very satisfied with how the strategic session was held. Thanks to the session, they felt like a team. Huge thanks to Yuriy for the professional facilitation.

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Over three months of expert work with the coaches from Uphill Partners, our team mastered the tools and the philosophy of Agile. My takeaway was seeing how project management becomes a system – and how from there a company culture is born. The transformation taught us to consider job candidates through the prism of roles and be agile and flexible with people. We saw the strong sides of each team member and formed a core of top experts. Having responsible leaders in each direction gets rid of project bottlenecks and helps teams to communicate more transparently. This was a leap forward for baza19 in terms of growth and management.

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The main value of Uphill Partners Coaches is ability to challenge at the right time. And help us in commitment to work on the challenge, strive to achieve it and do not give up. This is especially important at the beginning of the journey when not everyone believes in the change and the values of Agile are put into question. Coaches' support, experience and knowledge helps you to have foundation to drive the change.

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I came to Uphill Partners for help in implementing changes that would help turn our project teams into independent decision-making centers and avoid bottlenecks in transferring accountability. They offered us a complete transformational solution with wonderful tools like Scrum (roles, areas of responsibility, a system for meetings, and distribution of tasks), coaching for top managers, facilitation of audits, and forming a development strategy for the company. Over three months of work, we developed a map of zones for team growth as well as important frameworks: effective project starts and quality client interaction, transparent and comfortable interaction within the team, synchronization of our work, and fast pace. The transformation gave us not only speed and transparency — it also freed up my time for strategic tasks.

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The session was highly productive and exceptionally beneficial. Yura invested in thorough preparation, conducting interviews with me and participants to precisely understand expectations. During the session, we worked intensively, assuming new roles for ourselves. The result was the initiation of our transformation – the systematization of business processes while preserving space for creativity. Currently, we are actively developing this aspect together with the team. The future holds a lot of work, and to successfully achieve our business transformation goals in the face of growth, we have enlisted the support of the Uphill Partners team. I highly recommend collaborating with Yura and the Uphill Partners team.

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