^ LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW ABOVE ^
Welcome to a special edition of the Sixer Spotlight. This November, Agile Six celebrates its 10th anniversary, and today we reflect on a journey that’s about more than building a company; it’s about creating a community dedicated to transforming government services by putting people first. From early milestones like CEDAR to the VA’s landmark SPRUCE contract, Agile Six has remained true to its purpose-driven mission to better serve Veterans. Today, we hear from our founders and team members as they reflect on the values, challenges, and purpose that drive us forward.
The Significance of SPRUCE
Agile Six has been awarded a prime seat on the Secure, Performant, Reliable, and User-Centered Experiences (SPRUCE) Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) Contract. This award marks a pivotal moment not just for our company but for the entire digital services movement. As the follow-on to our CEDAR IDIQ, SPRUCE represents a significant leap in both scale and ambition, with the contract ceiling increasing from $248 million to $2.44 billion.
This monumental shift underscores the VA's and the broader government's commitment to more user-centered, outcomes-driven technology. We have been at the forefront of advocating for government contracts that prioritize outcomes and user needs. Our inclusion in the SPRUCE IDIQ enables us to continue this legacy and further solidify our impact at the VA.
Robert Rasmussen, Founder and CEO
Building a Collective Vision: Reflections on 10 Years of Agile Six
When we started Agile Six, the goal wasn’t just to build a company—it was about creating a community with people I cared about. I took risks with friendships and family relationships to build something meaningful, and now, 10 years later, those same people are still my closest friends. What I’m most proud of is that we’ve built something together that has lasted, that has served those relationships and sustained our families with balance.
We didn’t hold too tightly to a singular vision or push too hard on growth goals. Our purpose has always been to improve Veterans' services, but what truly drove us was the people and each other's well-being. I believe in creating space for others to bring their own ideas and passions to the table, and that's what has made Agile Six what it is today. It’s not just my vision—it’s our vision.
Winning CEDAR was a huge affirmation that we were on the right path. But now, with SPRUCE, it feels like the universe is validating our collective purpose in an even bigger way. We’ve stayed true to ourselves, and that’s why this feels so special. SPRUCE is the continuation of everything we’ve built together.
Ernie Ramirez, Founder and CFO
Reflections on Growth, Impact, and Gratitude
When we started the company, our goal was to help Veterans. CEDAR was a smaller scale of what SPRUCE is going to be. As a founder, it's a confirmation that we're on the right path. You start the company thinking you can make a big impact and want to make a big impact and help Veterans. This is just a bigger opportunity and a greater responsibility. This is what we wanted to do.
It's a lot of feelings—exciting, humbling, and gratifying—all rolled into one. It's been almost 10 years, and during some of those years, you wonder: Are you going to make it to year two? Are you going to make it to year three? Well, maybe we have a chance to make it to year 20 or 25. What can we really do?
We started the company with the idea that we could serve three groups equally well: our customers, our employees (whom we call Sixers), and our shareholders. I think part of our success has been our ability to keep those in balance.
When Robert, Brian, and I started, it felt like we were singing in a choir by ourselves, but we stayed committed and just kept at it. We never gave up on what we thought could be different. Something as validating as SPRUCE is rewarding.
Now it's not just the four of us; there are over a hundred of us. That's what I'm most proud of. If we're able to make the impact that we've made, starting with just three or four of us, how big of an impact can we make now in the next ten years with a hundred of us?
I'm so grateful for all three of the groups that we work hard to support: our investors, our Sixers for all the things they continue to do every day, and our customers who continue to show faith in us. I'm also grateful to my family, who has supported me behind the scenes when I come back to work at midnight after putting them all to bed. I feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude and I’m humbled.
Brian Derfer, Founder and COO/CTO of Agile Six
A Decade of Innovation and Culture
The main focus of the company initially was how we could serve Veterans, and it was surprisingly hard. We started winning some contracts and got on the CEDAR vehicle. That was amazing because we started this company in response to the digital services playbook, first as USDS at the VA, aligning with the digital services playbook.
Just being able to be a company that built things in that way at the VA, it was like, “Okay, we’re finally doing it. We’re finally living what we set out to do in creating this company.” And then to see SPRUCE come along, which is roughly ten times the size of CEDAR, I think that is validating that what started ten years ago as a very small niche of companies saying, “Hey, we can use Agile development practices, bring HCD (Human-Centered Design), and build software in the open using open-source software.” All that was new, and now it’s becoming very mainstream with vehicles like SPRUCE and the investment the VA is putting into that approach to building software and services.
I think creating an environment where we can build more intuitive experiences for Veterans and seeing the investment that the VA is putting into vehicles like SPRUCE is really rewarding for us.
We have an amazing group of people here at Agile Six, and I often reflect on how lucky I am to work with the people I get to work with every day. We started out talking about creating an organizational culture based on values and trust-based relationships instead of transactional ones.
I think if you can build that foundation of trust between people, then you can do really amazing things. There’s a quote by Margaret Mead: “Never underestimate the power of a few dedicated people to change the world. In fact, that’s the only thing that ever has.” In my most ambitious aspirations for the company, I’m hoping to, in some small way, realize that.
With the course set by the founders, we now turn to Sixers: Josh Quagliaroli, Jessica Miller, and Melissa Schaff, each of whom brings a wealth of experience from their long-standing careers in government. Their insights will showcase how far we’ve come—and how much more we can achieve with SPRUCE to enhance services for Veterans.
Josh Quagliaroli, Chief Delivery Officer
A Decade of Improving Veterans' Outcomes
I started at the VA in the spring of 2010. We still had paper files in the Regional Offices. This was before they scanned all of the Veterans' paper files. In 2010, everyone was in an office because everything was a physical file. It was very rare for somebody to be working from home.
Having worked with people at the VA, with Veterans, and with family members of Veterans, it became something that I actually wanted to do more of. Even during COVID, after I left the VA, I became an accredited claims agent to try to help Veterans outside of the work that I was doing here at Agile Six.
The hope was always to have that larger impact, and I’m excited to have the opportunity to actually work directly on these systems and programs, working with stakeholders at a higher level at the VA and having a larger impact there. As we move forward and Agile Six grows, we have an opportunity to provide a more direct impact through the work that we're doing on VA systems with Veterans and employees at the VA to make those systems better and easier to use.
We will actually be able to help a lot with the modernization of different technologies and services. Just having the opportunity to work on SPRUCE and on larger systems and programs is really exciting for me because it’s not something I necessarily saw myself doing when I left the VA six and a half years ago. So it's been great for me to have been able to stay in that environment and continue to make that work better.
Jessica Miller, Director of Contracts
Planting the Seeds: How CEDAR Laid the Foundation for SPRUCE
CEDAR and SPRUCE are like silent babies that I feel I planted a seed for, and now oak trees are growing, honestly. When I was at USDS and working at the VA, I was their only procurement person. The Digital Service at the Department of Veterans Affairs (DSVA) had no budget and no contracts. The very first thing I recommended was that they needed to create a contract. You need to create a vehicle so you can establish a community of partners that you can engage with—like-minded organizations. You're going to have to think of barriers that other agencies aren't; they should be service-disabled, Veteran-owned small businesses. Then we had partner organizations like Agile Six. These were the types of small businesses that were coming out; many had even come from the U.S. Digital Service and said, "Yeah, I want to give back to the government space now on the outside in a different way." We needed to think about how we could work together.
That’s where I think the beauty of CEDAR lies: the experiment proved to be successful. Personally, I take a lot of pride in that, even though I know I was just a small piece in the wheel that came up with the idea, and someone else executed it fully. It was not me who did CEDAR or SPRUCE, and I take no credit for that. But just to know I had a thought exercise of laying the groundwork for something much bigger and successful makes me incredibly proud I did something positive in that engagement.
To me, it’s an amazing story—especially for government, it happened so incredibly quickly on government timeframes. Everything from the seed that was planted for how we needed to do it to CEDAR and now SPRUCE has been really successful, and I’m glad I got to be a part of that.
Melissa Schaff, Digital Services Strategist
SPRUCE: A Shift Toward Agile Practices in Government Contracting
The VA wouldn't have done SPRUCE if CEDAR hadn't been effective. Seeing how CEDAR turned out opened the doors for SPRUCE and it demonstrates agile thinking in the contracting space. Now, the contracts in the government are starting to reflect how the work is done; it's less of a waterfall mentality. Recognizing this shift in the contracting space is crucial because contracts are essentially the keys to the city—you can't do anything without the right contracts in place in government.
This shift reflects how agile practices and methodologies work in delivering projects, and that influence is bleeding into the contracting space. I think that’s huge. I hope this model is recognized by other government agencies and adopted by more of them.
This is an exciting way for the government to do business, as it showcases a smarter approach to spending and diversifying contractors. It also reflects the agile methodology that agencies are now embracing. Moving away from the waterfall model and purchasing services in an agile manner introduces a product mentality to the procurement of solutions.
Delivering products in a more iterative manner results in better solutions for the end users. This approach allows for smaller, more flexible chunks of work, enabling the delivery of minimum viable products (MVPs). Over the same timeframe typically used for larger projects, you can deliver multiple smaller products, leading to improved human-centered product delivery for those using these services—whether they are Veterans, individuals seeking healthcare, or anyone interacting with government services.
Dan Levenson, President
Vision for the Future: Building a Sustainable Ecosystem
As the president of Agile Six, the founding president of the Digital Services Coalition, and a former contracting officer as part of the civic tech movement, SPRUCE represents everything that I've been working towards in my career. It's being able to fundamentally shift the incentives of how government buys and delivers services, and really put the people we're serving first.
Having been in this space for a long time, SPRUCE gets us closer to realizing what's really been my vision for the future of government digital services. That's the time when people can actually be excited to interact with government services and no longer dread them, or have to think this is just good enough for government, or treating users and Veterans like a captive audience.
By unlocking and realizing the potential of what government can do, and trying to rebuild that trust so people can believe in government and know government will be there for them, Agile Six is really focused on the long-term sustainability of this movement. We have three small service-disabled Veteran-owned small businesses (SDVOSBs) on our SPRUCE team because we know how important it is for there to be a continued pipeline of strong and autonomous small businesses, specifically SDVOSBs, who can continue delivering for Veterans way into the future. Because as proud as we are of Agile Six and our role in this movement, it's not enough. One company will never be enough. It's about building this ecosystem that can continue to build better for Veterans; Agile Six strives to be a catalyst that always puts that first and helps drive things forward.
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As Agile Six embarks on its next chapter, the SPRUCE contract is not just a milestone—it’s a launching point for even greater impact. With a continued focus on putting people first, Agile Six remains dedicated to delivering innovative, user-centered solutions that improve the lives of Veterans and shape the future of government services. This is just the beginning of our journey as we continue to build better together—guided by the values that have driven us for the past decade and will carry us forward for years to come.
If this story piqued your interest in a career with Agile Six, explore our open roles.