About Cliff Rosa

I spent the first part of my career as a public school teacher and technology specialist. I designed a broadcast studio and video production program for my school, trained staff in cloud computing and mobile tech, and coordinated a rotating team of specialists across multiple sites. Looking back, I was basically doing project management and change management before I knew those were job titles.

What teaching gave me, more than anything else, was a deep interest in how people learn and how groups improve over time. Not in theory. In practice, in real classrooms with real constraints, figuring out what works and adjusting when it doesn't. That instinct has followed me through everything I've done since.

When I left the classroom I ran Rosa Media Productions, serving clients who needed video studios built and online training programs launched. What I noticed in that work was that the clients who struggled most weren't dealing with technical problems. They were dealing with coordination problems. Unclear scope, shifting priorities, no shared understanding of what "done" even looked like. Those are solvable problems, but you have to name them first.
That's what pulled me toward Agile. I started working inside the Agile training space with Rocket Nine Solutions in 2016, first in operations, then facilitating Scrum teams directly. Since 2021, I've been serving as a contract Agile Project Manager and Scrum Master with nimBOLD, working across multiple simultaneous teams in industries including entertainment, real estate, escrow, insurance, and food services.

My background in education turns out to be genuinely useful in this work. I'm comfortable in front of a group. I know how to build shared understanding when people are coming from different directions. And I've spent a long time thinking about how people learn and how teams improve over time.

I'm not a framework purist. Scrum is a tool, Kanban is a tool, and so is every other methodology on the shelf. What matters is whether the team is improving, whether the work is visible, and whether the people doing the work feel supported and equipped to do it well.
In practice that means paying attention to what the team actually needs, not just what the process says they should be doing. It means running retrospectives where something actually changes as a result of the conversation. It means getting into the details of the backlog early enough that nobody has to waste a sprint start figuring out what they're building. And it means watching what isn't being said in the Daily Scrum, not just what is.


The inspect-and-adapt loop is the thing I care most about. Any team can execute a plan. The teams that get better over time are the ones that build in the habit of looking honestly at how the work is going and making adjustments. That's what a learning organization looks like from the inside, and it's what I'm trying to help teams build.


I hold certifications at the professional and advanced levels including CSP-SM, A-CSM, LeSS, and Path to Agility Practitioner. I bring that framework knowledge into every engagement. But credentials are table stakes. What matters is whether the team is making progress.

I road trip and camp with my wife and five children whenever I can. I volunteer as a board member for Veritas Speech and Debate Club. My family and I are active at Vineyard Yorba Linda church.