About Us
People depend on government digital services to stay healthy, pay the rent, and protect their families. But those services are often frustrating and hard to use. Agency employees do their best to help, but they may be fighting the constraints of legacy systems and years of ad hoc fixes.
Agile Six was founded to help fix this problem, one agency at a time.
Progress, not disruption
We’re not here to “save” you, blow up your current system, and leave you stranded with some off-the-shelf software your staff doesn’t understand. That’s straight-up malpractice. Instead, we’ll listen to your needs and customize a solution that staff and stakeholders can support and use.
Changing systems, changing minds
Adopting a new workflow isn’t as easy as upgrading your software — it’s a process. So we’re more than just developers, we’re guides and teachers. We lead staff trainings to answer questions and build confidence. When the project wraps up, you’ll be ready to take the reins.
Simple solutions
Sure, some projects do require an outside-the-box, high-tech solution (we’ve come up with plenty). But if a simple fix does the job, we’ll choose it every time. Why spend time and money on complexity you don’t need?
True agility
Lots of companies “do Agile” — they use the lingo, perform the ceremonies, follow the process. But that’s just the start. Agile isn’t really a system you impose. It’s more about awareness, listening and being ready to respond to change. We don’t just do Agile. We are agile.
Work that matters
We’re dedicated to purpose over profit. We’ve turned down big contracts because we didn’t believe in the work, or because we would have been forced to turn into the sort of giant, impersonal company we never want to be. Staying small and selective keeps us agile and able to do meaningful work.
In 2014, Robert Rasmussen was working as an IT contractor after having worked for a decade in the telecom sector — and before that as a network and systems engineer in the U.S. Navy. Ernie Ramirez worked as a partner in a game studio and then as a leader at Amazon Game Studios. Both were looking for something new, a way to use their expertise to create something more meaningful.
Then they got their inspiration. The newly formed U.S. Digital Service released its Playbook, which outlined 13 key plays to help governments build more successful digital services. For Robert and Ernie, that playbook was the catalyst. Within the year, they founded Agile Six — a company dedicated to helping government put those 13 plays into practice.
Our team hit some roadblocks along the way, and the biggest was recognizing that federal ecosystems just weren’t ready for digital transformation at scale. But we didn’t give up. We did what agile people do — pivoted and adapted our approach. By adding coaching to our services, we were able to help staff prepare for the changes we could create.
Since our founding, Agile Six has helped build the civic tech marketplace and grew in size to over 50 employees. We’re now the full-spectrum digital service company we envisioned at our founding, working side-by-side with our civil servant partners to build the better government we all deserve.