Richard Kasperowski

Profile

Richard Kasperowski is a serial product developer, innovator, teacher, speaker, author, and coach focused on team building, high-performance teams, Agile software development, and digital product development. He is the author of two books, High-Performance Teams: The Foundations and The Core Protocols: A Guide to Greatness. He leads students and clients in building great teams that get great results using the Core Protocols, Agile, and Open Space Technology. Richard created and teaches the course Agile Software Development at Harvard University, and he co-teaches the Spark! fellowship at Boston University.

Education

Harvard University – HES

BLA cum laude, field of study Computer Science, 1996

Scrum Alliance

Professional certifications: Certified Scrum Master (2009), Certified Scrum Professional - Scrum Master (2010), Certified Scrum Professional - Product Owner (2010), Certified Scrum Product Owner (2016), Certified Agile Leadership (2017), Scrum Foundations Educator (2021)

Industy Experience

Co-founder and CTO – Alli Connect – 2022-present

As the Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Alli Connect, I spearhead the technological vision of the company, leading a talented team of engineers and developers to create innovative solutions for seamless connectivity. My role encompasses strategic decision-making, overseeing R&D, and ensuring the scalability and security of our platforms. Under my leadership, the company has achieved significant milestones, including securing seed funding and the public release of our product.

Teacher, Coach, Consultant, Keynote Speaker, Author – Richard Kasperowski | Certified Agile Team Building – 2013-present

I created and teach the Certified Agile Team Building™ program to clients in industry. I coach executives and execution teams to be their best. I am a regular keynote speaker, session speaker, and organizer of regional and global conferences related to agile software development. I have written two books about high-performance teams. I publish a blog, and I am developing an interactive e-book/ self-paced online course on the same topic. Through the nearly 80 episodes of my podcast, With Great People: The Podcast for High-Performance Teams, I interview thought leaders in agility and team performance to share their knowledge with the world. My industry classes include:

For greater diversity, equity, and inclusion, all my online courses include live closed captions.

Much of the material for my technical classes is available as open source in my GitHub account.

My clients include athenahealth, Agile Alliance, Broad Institute, Harvard Library, The Hartford, MIT Career Advising and Professional Development, John Deere, RSA Security, Prezi, SkillSoft, Visa, The New York Times, Citrix, Cognex, f5, Foundation Medicine, HealthEdge, Henry Stewart Talks, IDEXX Laboratories, InterSystems, Logitrade, Meltwater, Palantir.net, WellSky, Velir, TrueVentures, C4 Media, Kelmar, WPI, and more.

Agile Coach/Manager, Senior Software Engineering Manager – Nokia – 2010-2013

I coached teams on Agile software development, and I led the software dev team for Nokia Account, one of the world’s largest social identity systems.

I was an Agile coach/manager. As a manager, I had formal responsibility and authority. I had skin in the game, so I had strong motivation to lead my team to success. But I wasn’t a traditional manager, a dictator using command-and-control to coerce and intimidate. I managed in the style of a coach, creating physical, mental, and emotional space within which my team succeeded, guiding them and giving them the skills they needed to win. I did this using Agile principles and practices. I used Agile not because it’s in fashion, but because when it’s used rigorously, teams can’t help but succeed.

I coached Agile software teams around the world, and I was the founder and leader of Nokia’s Boston-area Agile community. I contributed to the larger Agile community in the United States and elsewhere.

Director of Solutions and Services, Manager of Engineering Program Management – Nellymoser – 2006-2010

We built remarkable mobile applications, with a focus on video and music services, for companies like CBS Sports, Audible, AT&T, Virgin Mobile, and Viacom. I worked directly with our customers to make sure we mutually understood and met their goals. I ran the engineering team that built these customized mobile apps, using Scrum and other Agile practices to lead our projects and continually improve our capabilities. I also ran the IT and Operations group, making sure our hosted services stayed up and running. Our apps ran on a wide variety of mobile phones, and we used technologies like Java ME/SE/EE, BREW, WAP, MySQL, and Linux.

Software Team Lead, Principal Software Engineer, Sales Engineer – CentrePath – 2003-2006

We built Magellan DataPath Manager, a network management application focused on storage and long-haul optical networks, using SNMP, TL1, command line interfaces, and proprietary APIs to monitor the network hardware. I led the software team, mentoring and managing the other software developers while making my own individual contributions to the tool’s design and implementation. I also worked as a sales engineer, demoing the product to prospects and customers and at trade shows. I made frequent site visits to help sell, install, and configure our application. I gave technical presentations to prospective customers, OEMs, and development partners, and I was the technical person of choice for presentations to potential acquirers, with audiences that ranged from individual contributors to senior VPs of Fortune 500 companies. We built the product using Java SE 5.0, C++, JESS, and Oracle.

Consultant, Founder – Altisimo Computing – 1997-2004

I worked as a consultant and contractor, helping numerous organizations achieve their technology goals. In 2003 and 2004, we refocused on mobile apps. We wrote how to articles for publication, developed a Java ME training course, and presented at conferences, user groups, and training classes. We founded Boston Mobile, the Boston-area community of mobile software developers.

As a solo consultant, I did it all, including marketing, sales, and delivery. My clients included:

CTO, Cofounder – MobiLingua – 2004

I designed and built prototypes for an English language learning mobile application. We developed a novel implementation of concatenative speech synthesis in Java ME on Nokia S60, our initial platform.

Senior Software Engineer, Quality Assurance Manager – Knowledge Technologies International (formerly ICAD, acquired by Oracle and Dassault Systemes) – 1992-1997

We built a rules-based programming language and platform to automate mechanical engineering design. The company was founded from an MIT AI project.

Quality Assurance engineer, Technical Customer Support Analyst – InterSystems – 1989-1992

I found and fixed bugs in this object and relational database system in the M (MUMPS) programming language.

Quality Assurance engineer – Spinnaker Software (acquired by broderbund) – 1988-1989

I got my start in the software industry as a professional tester.

Consulting and Product Development

Teacher, Coach, Consultant, Keynote Speaker, Author – Richard Kasperowski | With Great People – 2013-present

(See description above.)

Creator – PianoPlay.app – 2021-present

I created PianoPlay.app to help everyone become the pianist they’ve always wanted to be. PianoPlay.app uses the pedagogical theory of spaced repetition to help aspiring pianists train themselves to higher levels of musicianship. I implemented PianoPlay.app using Python, Flask, Bootstrap, and S3.

Creator – VaccinateAll.org – 2021-present

VaccinateAll.org is a website and social media presence that encourages English and Spanish speakers around the world to vaccinate themselves and their loved ones against Covid. It spreads positive messages to fight against rampant mis- and disinformation. Future iterations of VaccinateAll will generalize the message to promote vaccinations against other preventable infirmities. I publish in Spanish to ensure that the large non-English-speaking community of Spanish speakers receives all the information they need to make informed decisions to vaccinate themselves.

Creator – cv-creator – 2022-present

I created the open source project cv-creator to make it easy to maintain exactly one version of your curriculum vitae. Write your CV in Markdown, and cv-creator generates a great looking CV in HTML and PDF. The implementation is in Python and CSS. This CV was generated by cv-creator.

Creator – SpeakSpanish – 2021-present

SpeakSpanish is the missing link in foreign language acquisition applications. Its sole purpose is to teach you to speak the language, to pronounce words and phrases correctly. It is designed to be a plug-in component in language acquisition platforms that lack speaking and pronunciation practice (which is almost all of them). Implemented using Python, Flask, and Google Cloud text-to-speech.

Consultant, Founder – Altisimo Computing – 1997-2004

(See description above.)

Investing and Innovation

Angel Investor – 2021-present

I focus on health-related start-ups and underrepresented founders. My goal is to assist founders on teaming skills, product development agility, and technical implementation, so we can enjoy amazingly successful exits together. My current portfolio includes:

Mentor – TechStars Boston – 2015-present

I mentored founders at this accelerator for pre-seed-stage start-ups. My advice focused on agile software product development and high-performance team building skills.

CTO, Co-Founder – MobiLingua – 2004

(See description above.)

Community Building and Participation

In my community work, I share my skills and resources to help people have more joyful lives. Much of my community work focuses on children, women, and people of color.

Creator – VaccinateAll.org – 2021-present

(See description above.)

Cofounder – Greatness Guild – 2015-present

We wrote the Greatness Manifesto and founded Greatness Guild to help everyone in the world achieve their highest potential. Version 2 of Greatness Guild will be a registered non-profit aimed at connecting urban young people with great jobs and great health. We plan to run coding dojos to teach programming skills, hosted at the offices of Boston-area tech companies; not only will the kids learn coding skills for well paying jobs, but they’ll be connected with the hiring managers in the local tech scene. In addition, we will run a martial arts dojo to help them with physical and mental health.

Founding Advisor – Agile Arizona conference – 2016-present

I advised the founders of Agile Arizona on overall conference management, including the importance of insuring diversity, equity, and inclusion in the speaker roster.

Lender – Kiva – 2015-present

I make micro-loans to women in developing countries. As of 2022, I have made 17 loans focusing on issues like food availability and security, potable water, family health, sanitation, education, childbirth and other medical services, entrepreneurship and financial independence, Covid mitigation. I don’t care whether borrowers repay me – the point is to help loan recipients have better lives.

Lead Mentor, Organizer – Charles River CoderDojo – 2014-present

(See description above.)

President, board member, conference organizer, volunteer – Agile New England – 2011-2021

As president and event organizer, I made sure our roster of speakers was at least 50% women. I mentored first-time speakers to help them feel comfortable on stage as they shared amazingly engaging sessions.

Donor – Black Girls Code - 2020

I was a leader of the Agile NYC community open space conference day. We donated 100% of proceeds to Black Girls Code, a non-profit that provides programming classes for young Black women.

Founder, Chief Organizer – Epic Agile Party – 2017-present

I organize and pay for this annual party for members of the Agile community. We plan to restart the annual event post-Covid.

“Judge” – TechTogether – 2019-2020

TechTogether is a hackathon focused on budding software developers who are women and non-binary. As a “judge,” I simply ask for a demo of teams’ work and then give them encouragement and fresh ideas.

Founding Advisor – Greater Boston Coding Dojo (merged into Boston Software Crafters) – 2017

I advised the founder of this monthly meet-up on overall meet-up management and how to run educational coding dojos.

Primary Organizers Circle, Volunteer – Agile Boston – 2009-20013

I helped lead this community group, spreading Agile knowledge and skills throughout the area via monthly meet-ups and annual conferences.

Founder, Chief Organizer – Nokia Boston Agile Community – 2011-2013

I organized a monthly meet-up and consulted to everyone within the company who wanted to know more about agile software product development.

Cofounder – Boston Mobile Java Software Developers – 2003-2004

At this monthly meet-up, we taught first-wave mobile software application developers their craft.

Teaching and Training

Instructor – Harvard University – 2015-present

I created and teach the course CSCI E-71/S-71 Agile Software Development. The purpose of the course is to make sure all CS graduates have real-world skills to build and deliver great software products that people love.

Students love the course. In the most recent semester (Fall 2021), students rated the course 4.8 out of 5.0, significantly higher than the mean course review. Sample student reviews include:

I hire and manage my own teaching assistants. To ensure all students feel welcome and can succeed in the course, my teaching assistants are typically women and people of color.

The course itself is an immersive experience in Agile software development. We study the technical, business innovation, and people-dynamics aspects of Agile, including:

By the end of the course, students understand Agile software development so thoroughly that they can effectively lead or participate as a member of a great software product development team.

Instructor – Boston University – 2018-present

I co-teach the Spark! fellowishp, where I serve as the team lead for software engineering, agile software development, and high-performance teams. My teaching topics include team building, interpersonal dynamics, agile software development, and technical skills.

Teacher, Coach, Consultant, Keynote Speaker, Author – Richard Kasperowski | With Great People – 2013-present

(See description above.)

Instructor – LinkedIn Learning – 2018-present

I created two popular self-paced courses, Extreme Programming and Refactoring. These courses share the elements of technical agility, such as test-driven development, continuous integration, measuring code coverage and code quality, and more, using Java as the learning language.

Lead Mentor, Organizer – Charles River CoderDojo – 2014-present

We teach kids ages 8-15 how to write code. I focus on helping girls and kids of color learning and succeeding as budding programmers. I use Harvard’s CS-50 Introduction to Computer Science open-source curriculum to introduce kids to the foundations of computer science and application development. In my sessions, kids learn the techniques of pair- and mob-programming and test-driven development in programming languages including Python, Java, C, C++, Ruby, and Scratch.

Teaching Assistant – Harvard University – 1997-2000

I assisted the course CSCI E-124 Data Structures and Algorithms. I taught weekly section groups, reinforcing important class topics.

Publications

Presentations

Awards

Languages