about RippleRock
RippleRock is expressly set up to assist customers drive dramatic improvements in their software development capability. We apply our expertise across the full lifecycle; facilitating organisational transformation to enable Agile practices, all the way through to improving engineering practices within the teams.
The team at RippleRock have a strong track record in the Agile space, providing access to some of the leading exponents of Lean and Agile thinking in the UK, US and India, with the particular blend of skills required to work with people, process, organisations and tools.
RippleRock was founded in 2009 by Colin Bird, formerly CTO of Conchango and later the Global Head of Agile for EMC Consulting.
RippleRock is engaged with customers in Europe, USA and Asia with offices in UK, USA and India.
RippleRock leadership team
Colin Bird, Founder
Colin is an experienced technical and commercial leader with over 20 years in the IT industry, including the development of many high profile multichannel ecommerce systems. He is passionate about improving software delivery right across the lifecycle, from business idea through to production quality code. This passion has driven him to be an active member of the Agile movement since 2004, helping teams of all sizes adopt Agile techniques to dramatically improve their performance. As Conchango's CTO and later Global Head of Agile for EMC's consulting division, he was responsible for Agile consulting services and tools, including Conchango's Scrum for Team System.
As an active member of the Agile community Colin has built close associations with other thought leaders and contributed new thinking in areas such as scaling Agile techniques to support large programmes.
"When the Agile movement was starting, Colin was there. He understood what it meant. He understood how to help others with it. Then he did something few others did. He put in the hard work to make it within the reach of everyone. We all owe Colin a debt of gratitude."
Ken Schwaber, co-founder of Scrum.
See more: Colin's Scrum Alliance profile.
Thomas Reinsel, CEO
Since 1992, Tom has maintained a leadership position as a strategist and visionary in the information technology industry. Beginning in the summer of 2007, Tom worked for Sewickley Oak Capital, advising early stage start-up companies with financing, strategy, and temporary executive management. It was here that Tom discovered Scrum, a powerful framework for managing iterative-incremental software projects.
From July 1997 through May 2007, Tom founded, organically grew, and sold a $30MM technology consulting firm (Pepperweed) that achieved the number one position with Hewlett-Packard as a software VAR in North America by hitting record sales, number of certified consultants and successful service deliveries. The company earned multiple awards and recognition for their model of professional services, culture, and virtual office systems including ranking number 229 on the INC 500 in 2003.
From January 1992 through July 1997, Tom worked for Eli Lilly and Company in Indianapolis. During that time, he held various analyst roles and team leader positions focusing on process alignment and IT infrastructure management decisions.
Stuart Preston, CTO
Stuart has worked with many well-respected organisations, helping them deliver technical solutions or improve their software quality through better agile engineering practices, processes and tools. His background in platform architecture and systems development gives him a great breadth and depth of architectural experience.
During Stuart's time at Conchango and EMC he delivered solutions on predominantly Microsoft .NET and Java application stacks with Agile methodologies and helped customers adopt solid ALM practices. He was the technical lead for the team that created the popular Scrum for Team System process template for Visual Studio, demonstrating commitment to Agile engineering practices and the Visual Studio ALM platform.
Stuart steers our work with Application Lifecycle Management tools and is the founder of the UK ALM User Group.
See more: Stuart's blog.
Rod Claar, Agile Practice Leader - North America
Rod is an internationally recognized leader in the area of software development. His special focus is on large teams and projects to increase the velocity of software development through coaching, training, and consulting. He has spent considerable time in the classroom training on Design Patterns, Test Driven Development, Scrum, and Agile Methodologies.
Not only does Rod speak to all levels of an organization effectively, he also spans many technologies in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) space to take advantage of software tools to increase visibility and productivity of teams. By combining methodologies and tools along with world-class training, Rod is a powerhouse of experience and wisdom. His witty sense of humor and gaming theory is also a pleasure to work with. Rod is leading the Agile Practice Team in North America for RippleRock and is a member of the Global Leadership Team.
See more: Rod's blog. Rod's Scrum Alliance profile.
Jesse Fewell, Managing Director - India
Jesse is an innovative leader in the business of technology. In addition to speaking for Agile, Scrum, and PMI conferences, he has collected a broad array of experiences in several sectors such as National Security, Aerospace, GIS, Stock Media, Telecom, and hospitality. Recently, he founded the PMI Agile Community of Practice; PMI's component dedicated to Agile Project Management. Jesse will focus on RippleRock's multinational clients in India as well as the broader practitioner market in South Asia. A graduate of John Hopkins University, he is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) and a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST).
See more: Jesse's blog. Jesse's Scrum Alliance profile.
Virginia Becker, VP of Sales - Americas
Virginia comes to RippleRock with over 20 years of Sales and Business Development experience. At Hewlett-Packard, she opened a new three state Software Sales territory in 1997 while managing Beta programs, VAR programs, and partner sales channels for the territory consistently delivering over quota results - doubling the revenue every year for 4 years running. Virginia also worked with Tom Reinsel at Pepperweed, introducing Pepperweed services to a nine state upper Midwest territory, and increasing sales from $150K to $3 million in 2 years. Virginia was one of the early ITSMF members promoting ITIL concepts to clients. Most recently Virginia was at CA Technologies responsible for developing business in "Greenfield" accounts, achieving revenue goals by creating relationships with "C" level executives, being an escalation point for customer satisfaction, and introducing new technology solutions.