Rodger Koopman | SpeakerHub

Personal Details

Bio

Rodger Koopman has a diverse background and a career that spans over 35 years in technology across multiple domains, including defense, satellite and terrestrial data communication, energy, fintech, aggregates, healthcare and insurance. He's co-author of two software patents. Rodger is a retired Air Force officer. While in the Air Force, among other things, he served on an AWACS air combat crew for three years, served on a deception team and later was assigned to a counter-terrorism unit at the joint DoD level. After the Air Force Rodger was an early employee in two successful startups where he built new, high-performing engineering teams from the ground up. He was a key participant in two mergers & acquisitions. As a VP and director he led multiple successful agile transformations of engineering and product organizations at several Fortune 500 companies. Rodger has interviewed thousands of candidates and hired hundreds; he's proud of an above-average employee retention rate. He also architected, implemented and helped sell several commercial enterprise software solutions. Rodger has been a Senior Enterprise Agile Coach starting in 2017. He's worked across entire companies, from the C-suite down to teams. As he sees it, a successful transformation requires an organization to completely align both horizontally as well as vertically. That is, business, back office, and technology partner and align, and from the C-suite down to the teams there's complete transparency to ensure everyone can make their unique contribution towards a successful, scaled agile transformation. Rodger has a master's degree in Computer Information Systems from Boston University, and a second master's in Public Administration from the U. of Oklahoma. He taught Computer Science for three years as adjunct faculty at the U. of Maryland. His wife is a former Army Lieutenant Colonel and veterinarian (she's a vet and a vet). Rodger has two awesome children. He's also a instrument-rated private pilot and a former Raleigh city councilor.

Current position (9)

Senior Enterprise Agile Coach

Allstate

Senior Enterprise Agile Coach

American Family Insurance

Senior Enterprise Agile Coach

Spire Energy

Director of Technology

Ipreo

Director of Software Development

Martin Marietta Materials

VP Software Product Development

Power Analytics Corp.

Director Software Product Development

Itron

Director of Software Development

Silicon Energy

Officer

United States Air Force

Degrees (3)

MS, Computer Information Systems

Boston University

1992 to 1994

Master of Public Administration (MPA)

University of Oklahoma

1988 to 1990

BS, Industrial Technology

Southern Illinois University-Carbondale

1984 to 1986

Presentations

Presentations (5)

The Productivity Paradox

Many company leaders ignore decades of study and resulting freely available knowledge and thus lose out on potentially tremendous gains in productivity. It's not rocket science, yet surprisingly difficult for many senior leaders to simply follow what collective knowledge and wisdom has told us for decades. Yet, they cling to managing instead of leading using a century old industrial paradigm that completely mismatched to the new dynamic of the information age.

Agile Without Lean is Lame

Many companies focus on Agile and miss out on the tremendous value of combining Lean with Agile. Lean focuses on continuous improvement (Kaizen), waste reduction, small batches and flow optimization. Leaders can get their arms around that, yet completely ignore the huge benefits they could realize from following both sound Agile AND Lean practices. In other words, don't "just" do an Agile transformation. Instead, do a Lean-Agile transformation. When Lean and Agile are combined you truly have a winning formula. A formula which can accelerate the clip and cadence at which your organization or company will scale and transform. Don't play Agile theater. Get real about Lean too.

The History and Basis of Product Management

History matters. Context matters. Yet, surprisingly few product managers know the history of their craft. Where it began, how it evolved, and who the major players and contributors were. Yet, the story is fascinating and worth telling. Furthermore, the feedback from all PMs that have attended this presentation was positive and appreciative. All of them learned something; it widened their perspective and created new opportunities for growing as a professional. We include some nuggets that many times are overlooked, yet add tremendous value when included in a PM's toolkit.

Does Lean-Agile Really Work?

This is a relatively short presentation, but runs down the numbers and helps establish that, Yes, there are real, quantifiable benefits when a transformation is even moderately successful.

How Military Doctrine Helps You Increase Your Chances for a Successful Agile Transformation

Many leaders quote Sun Tzu and love to talk about their support of the troops and the number of veterans they've hired. All those things are good, of course. But sadly, what is often missed is that a review of the many aspects of military doctrine, built on centuries of suffering through warfare, can often be your best guide to both inform how to lead as well as how to empower "your troops." This presentation is a review of some of the ideas coming out of the military that are highly relevant for most leaders. Many companies try to roll their own transformation out of some misperceived need to preserve their uniqueness. Yet, unsurprisingly, by doing so they actually wind up slowing down a transformation because of getting mired in semantics and what is known as "Agile Theater." When you study military doctrine it reminds you to be laser focused on the priorities; what is the 20% that drives 80% of the value. It's a great reminder of how successful leaders think and act.