The Company

At PEDCO, we help organizations to master the complexity of bringing a lean agile organization to life. Our Platform, Applied SAFe is the Navigation System for Scaled Agility.

We have been implementing SAFe since version 2.5 in 2013 and can even show metrics on the change and grow rates. Being one of the earliest adopters of SAFe (the first partner company of Scaled Agile Inc.) has allowed us to collect a rich set of experiences all around the world in different industries with different organizations. Working Agile is not just something we do, but it’s our bread and butter. Besides implementing our platform Applied SAFe, we recommend that our clients also train individuals to be Quality Managers and Process Engineers. This is also unique to PEDCO, we believe that for teams to not just do Agile but be Agile, the notion of quality and best practices must be embedded from the get-go. We see it every day, it’s much easier to learn and establish best practices from the start instead of having to unlearn bad ones down the road.

We support medium-sized and large enterprises in the efficient and successful implementation of demanding development plans within regulatory environments.

We help your organization in the set-up, selection, operation and further development of lean and effective development processes. The core of our services is the outsourced operation of a process framework tailored to the customer’s requirements. This allows you to direct your development projects within the regulatory environment in compliance with the rules, efficiently and with transparent costs. In addition to this, we offer a comprehensive range of support activities covering your whole process landscape. We define and improve your processes and thus simultaneously combine the requirements for compliance, efficiency, and cost transparency.

Compliance and Efficiency for your Processes.

Our experts offer the know-how and the best practice experience that they have gained in their work with process frameworks in the financial services sector, the pharmaceuticals sector, and government authorities. We have experience with various sets of regulations: From regulators like FED, FINMA or FDA towards standards such as CMMI and others.

The Founder

Peter PedrossCEO & Founder

Peter Pedross is the Founder of PEDCO and the Creator of Applied SAFe. He is a Certified Consultant in the “Scaled Agile Framework” since 2012 as well as in “Disciplined Agile Delivery”, and has a Diploma in Quality Management from EFQA. Peter was in the first ever SAFe class held in Switzerland with Dean Leffingwell as his trainer. Peter Pedross has experience in agile practices (XP) since 1999. In the course of his career, he has authored publications and given lectures on the topics of Agile, DevOps, Scaled Agility in Regulated Environments, Architecture, Process Engineering, and Lean-Agile Requirements Engineering, in the USA, Japan, and in Europe.

He has over 30 years’ experience in software development. As the architect of the process framework of one of the leading Swiss financial institutions, he was responsible for the entire set of life-cycles (including agile), processes, methods, and tools used. This process framework was then used over the years by hundreds of projects around the world, and continually improved.

Peter Pedross is the President of the board for Computer Science at the Swiss Association for Quality (SAQ), he is also a member of the board at SAQ. Peter Pedross also leads the Non-Profit special interest group on scaling agility in Switzerland.

Management & Team

Stefan KüfferPrincipal Process Engineer

Stefan has over 30 years of experience in software, systems and product development in manufacturing, logistics, and large financial institutes. He started as a mechanical engineer for grouting systems, software engineer for object-oriented technologies and launched and led a strategic IT project to establish an enterprise-wide service-oriented infrastructure.

At a large financial institute, he was a key driver in the successful realization of the innovative Java Application Platform (JAP) from a technology infrastructure bundle to a widely accepted global service offering. Later, Stefan took over responsibility for the unit Solution Delivery Process & Tool Integration where he provided an integrated ALM Tool Chain that complied to CMMI Level-3 maturity. Eventually, he was Global Head for Project, Process & Quality Management.

In between, Stefan co-founded a consulting company covering project management, technology management and architecture in industries like Automotive, Aviation, Healthcare, and Insurance.

He holds a bachelor degree in Computer Science from the University of Brugg-Windisch (CH) and a Swiss federal diploma in Business IT and Project Management. He successfully finished the MBA Program in International Supply Chain Management at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH).

Stefan is a certified SAFe Program Consultant (SPC) and was Conference Board Member for the successful launch of the International Product Management Festival and the Swiss Agile Leadership Day.

Dr. Angelina BirchlerMember of the Board

Dr. Angelina Birchler is a Member of the Board at PEDCO and is also a Professional Psychologist for Psychotherapy FSP. She has a degree in Psychology and a Doctorate degree from the University of Zurich. She is a Research Associate at the Centre for Chronobiology Psychiatric University Clinics Basel and has permanent positions as a clinical psychologist, somnologist, neuropsychologist at various psychiatric institutions.

Dr. Angelina Birchler has published 6 Medical Studies focusing on sleep and neuropsychology. She is also a speaker at conferences all around the world in regards to sleep psychology.

Advisory Board

The Advisory board provides strategic advice to steer the development of PEDCO and our product Applied SAFe. We are proud to have such outstanding individuals to advise us!

Members in alphabetical order:

Dr. Wolfgang Brandhuber is a long year and experienced consultant and coach in agile and complex environments at Accenture. Known thru-out Europe he consults top leading companies in their journeys towards scaled agility. Dr. Brandhuber is also a trainer for SAFe and holds regular classes in the field of agile methods and its application.

Dr. Brandhuber has been working as a management consultant for nearly 12 years, almost ten of which have been in agile projects. He was an agile project manager, developer, product owner, scrum master, and chief scrum master in many different companies and corporate cultures. His great passion is team play, whether in sports, in music, or in day-to-day projects.

Ken France

VP Scaled Agility, SAFe Fellow

Cprime

Management and Executive Coach & Trainer with over 25+ years’ experience in agile development. Ken helps large-scale organizations adopt iterative and incremental development practices such as Agile & SAFe. He fosters constructive culture change and leadership enablement and is focused on evolving Portfolio and Program Management & Governance processes. Much of his career has been spent directly coaching Agile teams and their management chain on how to drive the change necessary to become successful at the enterprise level. As Vice President of Scaled Agility and SAFe Fellow, Ken helps develop and implement corporate strategy, provides executive-level coaching for clients, and works with his team to ensure overall Client Success.

Scott Frost

Sr. SAFe Fellow & Agile Coach

Accenture | SolutionsIQ

Scott Frost is a SAFe® Fellow, SPCT & Global Enterprise Business Agility Coach.  He leads the Accenture|SolutionsIQ Scaled Agile Program Consultant Trainer (SPCT) program working closely with Scaled Agile, Inc. and Accenture to develop our scaling platforms for employees and our customers. Scott brings Lean-Agile transformations beyond academic discussion into real-world implementation success stories.

He has 30 years of industry experience with 20 years in traditional IT global delivery in large-scale portfolios from coder to executive roles and 10 years in consulting dedicated to business agility. He has worked in many industries including Global Resources/Energy, Telecom, Financial Services, Retail, Supply Chain Services and Health Care.

Scott is also an Advisory Board member at Univ. of Texas at Dallas (Center for Intelligent Supply Networks) and speaks locally and globally on Business Agility, Transformation Services, and Lean-Agile Best Practice.  Scott holds a degree in Music and a Master’s of Science in Total Quality Management (TQM).

Rainer Grau

Managing Director at:

pragmatic solutions gmbh

For more than 20 years, Rainer Grau has accompanied companies on their agile path in their quest to continuously develop organizations and create sustainable value for customers and employees. His work is based on Lean Startup principles, Business Agility approaches and Lean Leadership. Before he joined pragmatic solutions gmbh, he was director and partner of Zühlke responsible for the consultancy services related to Agility, Lean Management, Requirements Engineering, and Product Management. Rainer was the driving force to transform Digitec Galaxus completely and very successfully toward scaled agility and is now one of the landmarks in applied scaled agility in Europe. The business grows steadily each year. Rainer publishes regularly about their experience in his well-known blog: http://rainergrau.com.

Rainer is a founding member of the „IREB e.V.“, member of the board at „ISPMA.e.V“ and founding member of the „Swiss Agile Leaders Circle“ (http://www.swissagileleaders.org). In addition, Rainer Grau teaches at various universities of applied science in Switzerland.

Prof. Dr. Bernd Hindel studied computer science in Erlangen and Green Bay (USA). After his doctorate at the University of Erlangen in 1991, he worked for the Central Research Department of Siemens in Erlangen. From 1995 to 2000 he was Managing Director of 3SOFT. In 2001 Prof. Hindel founded Method Park. Under his leadership Method Park received several prices i.e.: TOP JOB (2004, 2008, and 2011), IHK Founders Award 2005, Bavaria’s Best 50 (2006, 2007, and 2009), Great Place to Work (2009).

In addition, Prof. Hindel is a Lecturer for Software Engineering at the University of Erlangen and the University of Augsburg. Bernd Hindel is the founder of the ASQF e.V. (Association for Software Quality and Training). He was President of the ASQF from 1996 to 2007. Prof. Hindel is the founder of iNTACS e.V. (international Assessor Certification Scheme for SPICE Assessors). He was President of iNTACS from 2003 to 2005. As a member of DIN Institute, Prof. Hindel was the chairman for Software and System-Engineering Standards and the head of the German Delegation to ISO/IEC JTC1 SC7. From 2006 to 2009 he was the German representative at the Working Group responsible for the definition of SPICE (ISO/IEC 15504). Prof. Hindel has been Keynote Speaker and/or Organizing Chair of many international Conferences on Software Quality, including the “World Congress on Software Quality”, Munich, 2005 and Shanghai, 2011. Prof. Hindel published numerous papers and books on software engineering.

Dr. Jochen Jäger

Quality functional lead at:

Roche Diagnostics

Dr. Jochen Jäger graduated from the University of Washington, Seattle in computer science in 2002 and obtained a PhD in computational molecular biology from the FU Berlin and the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics, Berlin in 2006. He has more than fifteen years experience in the medical device industry and currently supports IT and pre/post analytical devices as a quality functional lead.

Dr. Jäger is also a co-author of the ‘Technical Information Report’ TIR45 with the title ‘Guidance on the use of AGILE practices in the development of medical device software’. The paper is published by AAMI (Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation) see more: https://www.pedco.eu/2.0/tir45-agile-in-medical

Michael Stump

SAFe Fellow, SPCT

Michael Stump is a SAFe Fellow and a SAFe Program Consultant Trainer (SPCT) for SAFe®, the Scaled Agile Framework®. He is a Lean-Agile Leader and mentor to executives on state-of-the-art SAFe practices in and beyond the software industry. His consulting and management experience enables him to lead, manage, and advise companies through great organizational change. As an advisory board member to technology companies, his specialty is Lean and Agile transitions within highly distributed, multi-cultural enterprises.

Mr. Stump has been involved for many years in the development of Applied SAFe® in his role as product owner for the SAFe-Part of our implementation of the Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®)

Michael is also a passionate helicopter pilot. A Zurich, Switzerland native, he regularly travels the globe and currently lives in New York City.