Our Team

The Agile Cooperative

The Agile Cooperative was formed in April, 2009 to give members the ability to offer one-stop shopping for all things agile. The cooperative was started with six members, including Agile For All, LLC. Each member brings unique skills to agile assessments, training and coaching. Some are excellent at helping organizations through agile transformations. Others have skills in more technical areas like continuous integration, agile testing, test-driven development, agile architecture and more. Still others primarily train and coach specific roles such as business analysts, project managers and product managers. All are world-class in their respective areas of expertise which is why Agile For All is proud to be a member of this elite group.

This broad range of agile knowledge allows member companies to work together to not only provide agile one-stop shopping, but to engage clients in a different way. The Agile Cooperative will assign each client a client advocate to make sure the best possible program is put together to meet the realities of budget constraints, expectations and results. With the ability to provide many different services the client advocate is not limited to just a few possibilities, but has access to more types of assessments, training and coaching than any other single organization can provide. Agile For All believes having access to this model is perfectly aligned with our desire to provide exceptional value to each client.

Each of the people listed below is a principal of one of the Agile Cooperative founding organizations. Each individual has made a name in the agile industry for themselves and based on their results we believe they are among the top few percent of agile change agents in the world.

Richard Lawrence of Humanizing Work

Richard Lawrence is Founder and Principal Consultant of Humanizing Work. He is an experienced software developer, agile coach, and technical leader with deep expertise in Extreme Programming (XP), Scrum, Lean, and the Theory of Constraints (TOC) as well as tools such as NUnit, CruiseControl.NET, and Watir/WatiN. He combines that expertise with a unique and varied background including engineering, anthropology, and political philosophy to find new ways to make software teams happier and more productive. Since adopting agile in 2001, Richard has led and coached numerous teams to successfully deliver software projects using an agile approach. He is passionate about and effective at building wildly productive, humanizing software teams. One of only a handful of Scrum Alliance Certified Scrum Coaches, Richard regularly speaks at user groups and conferences, including Agile 2006 and 2007.

Agile Bob’s take on Richard: Richard’s status as a Certified Scrum Coach (CSC) has put him into a unique class of agile coaches. It requires documenting 1500 hours of coaching in order to even be considered for the certification! While that is impressive, it is not as impressive as Richard’s ability to draw upon all of that experience when he trains or coaches agile teams. He is truly a master of his craft.

Rob Myers of Agile Institute

Rob Myers is lead instructor and co-founder of Agile Institute. Rob has been training and coaching teams in Agile practices and object-oriented programming since 1999. During his more than 20 years in various software development roles, Rob has enjoyed consulting for leading companies in the aerospace, pharmaceutical, medical, software, and financial sectors. For Agile Institute and other training organizations, Rob teaches a variety of courses, including Test-Driven Development, and Real World Agile Testing with Fit. Every course is infused with a blend of highly technical experience and techniques for preserving sanity in the workplace.

Agile Bob’s take on Rob: Rob is a great instructor and coach. I’m not sure what else you can say when someone is just flat out good at what they do! Rob and I met a couple of years ago and now we partner to deliver various courses in order to give our clients a wider range of agile process and technical practices training options than most agile training companies can offer.

David Bernstein of Techniques of Design

David Bernstein, founder of Techniques of Design has been writing software for over a quarter of a century. A noted speaker and presenter, David has been responsible for successfully delivering systems that drive leading econometric and financial firms as well as helping to develop application and operating system software. He has nearly two decades of experience “preaching what he practices” as one of IBM’s top technical instructors and then at Net Objectives as a Senior Consultant and Design Patterns Instructor. David has personally trained over 6,000 developers on how to improve the design and construction of software.

In addition to his deep technical knowledge and passion for software development, David has experience running all aspects of a startup software company and is also an award-winning video producer.

Agile Bob’s take on David: David is an amazing trainer and coach. His ability to break complex concepts into digestable chunks make his classes a joy to attend. The skills he has honed over nearly 20 years as a presenter are obvious to all attendees when David leads a course. Because of his experience in dealing with all types of situations no one ever leaves his courses even the least bit disappointed.

Rod Claar of Effective Agile Development

Rod Claar, founder of Effective Agile Development, is a software development coach and instructor with broad experience in Design Patterns, Test Driven Development, Scrum and Agile methodologies and how to use them effectively with Microsoft Visual Studio and other tools. He can speak to all levels of organizations clearly and focus on the needs and expectations of the audience. Rod has extensive experience teaching and coaching teams to achieve their goals and believes team building is at the heart of this success.

Agile Bob’s take on Rod: Rod is an agile coach that has the client’s best interests in mind at all times. He has a way to make lemonade out of lemons no matter the situation. One particular area where this is clear is in his use of unconventional tools for agile project management. Many in the agile community would say that using Visual Studio Team System as an agile project management system is impossible. For Rod it is not only possible, but he has created a complete course around it! It is creativity like this which makes Rod such a practical and effective agile coach.

Jake Calabrese of Vimstreet

Jake Calabrese founded VimStreet in 1994 to help companies slice through the typical confusion surrounding process improvement and technology projects. Focusing on actual stakeholder needs and business goals has been critical to delivering successful projects. Jake believes that all projects need to have direct customer involvement and focus – and because of that, project are more successful when utilizing agile approaches such as Scrum. Jake’s experience includes leading projects and teams on a range of successful endeavors such as business process improvements, enterprise system replacements, mergers and acquisitions, Internet initiatives, and team development. Jake is the President of the Denver Chapter of the International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA), has a BS in Management Information Systems from Penn State University , and is a Certified Business Analysis Professional (CBAP©) as well as a Certified Scrum Master (CSM).

Agile Bob’s take on Jake: Jake has a breadth and depth of business analysis, project management and business process improvement knowledge which is unrivaled. His ability to help organizations get past analysis paralysis sets him apart from other trainers and coaches. Having Jake as a resource allows Agile for All to address the unique needs of business analysts and other business stakeholders during agile transitions.