Boston University

Programme Director  -  Scaled agile delivery expert  -  Senior Programme Manager

London, London, United Kingdom

News UK

Head of Content Platforms

Responsible for delivering the bespoke programmatic advertising platform that will transform Clear Channel from a company selling print-based advertising to a leader in providing high-tech digital billboards that can geographically target out-of-home audiences.  * Transformed the programme structure from one large stream into smaller self-organising teams, enabling parallel delivery to meet key initiatives in multiple international markets  * Fostered trust with senior stakeholders through transparent communications and involvement of members of their teams  * Introduced more agile ways of working to release key requirements early so customers get value quickly and subsequent releases include their feedback  * With the latest release, customers can now buy flexible OOH advertising campaigns targeted across a number of time, geographical or audience based criteria

Equal Experts

Senior Programme Manager

As the Registration Programme Manager, I oversee the Telegraph's top strategic intiative: acquiring 3 million registrants in 2018.  * Established a Director level cross-functional team from Technology, Editorial, Marketing, Commercial and Data Science to trial and execute initiatives that would hit the target of 3 million registrants by Dec 2018. We hit the target 4 months ahead of schedule.* Serving as Delivery Lead for the My Telegraph product which will entice the 3m registrants to engage with Telegraph products, boosting partner, transactional and advertising revenue.

The Telegraph

Programme Manager - Registration Strategy

Served as the interim Global Programme Director of Content Acquisition at Springer Nature.  To see details of my role, please refer to the Springer Nature description.

Interim Global Director at Springer Nature

Responsible for setting-up the Content Acquisition line of Springer Nature’s Digital business as part of a major global IT transformation, aligning ways of working across multiple global locations, as well as working closely with executive stakeholders to interpret business strategy into customer focused, high quality digital solutions.Responsibilities include:* Re-shaping SN Digital into a new structure that establishes a global delivery capability with clearer lines of accountability.* Fostering coherent planning, strategy, vision, culture and cross-team communication by taking an eagle-eye view of the Content Acquisition space, acting as a checkpoint for teams to validate their decisions against and being the final decision point as needed.Establishing and leading the Content Acquisition Leadership team which consists of 6 cross-functional disciplines.* Accountability for overall Content Acquisition strategy, deliverables and budget.* Introducing modern Product Development practices globally to rapidly build, learn and validate through a lean continuous delivery approach.* Empowering teams to set their own goals, and make their own decisions within the context of the wider Content Acquisition strategy.  * Establishing strong relationships at CxO and VP levels to enable transformation to be carried out within an environment of trust.Key achievements:* Led the first group of teams to undergo the global restructuring, establishing an exemplary global delivery capability across the Americas, Europe and India. * Transformed ways of working from standard Scrum practices to adopt a much leaner and continuos delivery approach that enabled alignment and the flexibility to allocate project and product deliverables globally.

Springer Nature

Interim Global Director, Springer Nature Digital (via Equal Experts)

Following successful transformation achievements within the CMP department, I was asked to move to The Times to establish a continuous programme approach across the diverse product set of The Times brand. Responsibilities included:* Introducing a lean scaled agile framework to improve communication between the teams and encouraging collaboration. * Changing team culture to see The Times as one brand instead of silo-ed and separate teams.Working with Product Management and Engineering to establish a common vision and aligning the teams to achieve it.* Improving transparency of project delivery status across the Portfolio within the Technology department and throughout the Editorial and Marketing teams. * Re-establishing trust and relationships with business stakeholders as well as new governance structures. Key achievements:* Working with Product Management to establish the first cross-functional and KPI driven team within The Times.  The team tripled email registrations within a 3 month period.

Head of Delivery - The Times

Returned to News UK as interim Head of Customer Portfolio to assess the current CMP product portfolio, streamline development teams' focus, advise on ways of improving delivery and coach a permanent member of staff to fulfil the role in 6 months.Responsibilities included:* Assessing demand on 5 development teams within the Customer Portfolio and working with Product Managers to set quarterly goals that aligned with the company’s overall objectives.  * Coaching business stakeholders on benefits of data driven decision making and prioritisation.* Establishing new governance models that brought stakeholders and development teams together, moving away from a customer vs. client relationship with the Technology department.* Mentoring a permanent member of staff to take-on the position over 6 months. * Accountable for delivery of all projects and products within the CMP Portfolio.Key achievements:* Implemented a lean scaled agile framework planning and scheduling projects that encompassed Executive Board, Portfolio, Programme and Development team levels.* Performed advisory role to assist other Technology programmes with adopting similar lean scaled agile frameworks based on the success demonstrated by CMP’s model.

Head of Customer Portfolio

Served as Delivery Lead consultant at HMRC for the Making Tax Digital programme.  Details of the role are included below in the HMRC position.

Delivery Lead

Responsible for delivering Making Tax Digital for Businesses, HMRC’s multi-million pound investment to transform to a fully digital tax system whereby customers never have to tell HMRC the same information twice, can report tax information on a real-time basis and have full visibility of their tax liability through a digital tax account.Responsibilities included:* Building and leading a scaled agile development team to eradicate the need for tax returns by building API’s for Income Tax Self Assessment, VAT and Corporation Tax regimes.* Working with senior HMRC staff to develop a programme roadmap  that will transition 9 million businesses to digital tax accounting by 2020.* Leading scrum teams through the Discovery, Alpha, Beta and Live GDS Service Design phases, whilst ensuring service standards are upheld to pass GDS assessments.Key achievement:* Awarded Digital Project of the Year at the 2015 UK IT Industry Awards

HM Revenue & Customs

Responsible for planning and managing all technology projects for News UK’s largest technology portfolio, CMP.  CMP manages all subscription packages, customer information and billing for The Times, The Sunday Times and The Sun digital and print products.Responsibilities included:• Planning and resourcing all incoming projects and changes using a scaled-agile framework todistribute work across 5 scrum teams within CMP.• Project managing all large scale projects with cross-team, cross-departmental and/or 3rd party dependencies averaging a budget of £5 million annually.• Provided Agile coaching and mentorship to the Junior Project Management community at News UK.Projects included:• Re-designing the acquisition journey of the Dream Team Fantasy Football game for the World Cup and UEFA Champions League, resulting in 1.1 million new registrations for The Sun.• Launch of The Irish Edition of The Times and Sunday Times for Web, Tablet and Smartphone apps.• Re-architecture of News UK’s subscription model to enable product bundling and seamless upgrade and downgrades of products and packages• Acquisition journey and partner API implementations to support promotions such as:   - Spotify Premium with The Times  - Sky Sports customers receiving free access to the Sun Goals app for UEFA Champions LeagueKey achievements:• Implemented a scaled-agile framework for planning and scheduling projects that encompassed Executive Board, Portfolio, Programme and Scrum Team levels.• Performing advisory role to assist other technology departments with adopting a scaled-agileframework based on the success demonstrated by CMP’s model.

Senior Agile Project Manager

Served as Delivery Manager & Scrum Master within the Cabinet Office's Technology Transformation programme.  The COTT programme aims to replace the Cabinet Office's legacy devices, applications, and infrastructure with a new set of user-centric technology services that suit a modern workplace.Responsibilities included:- Overall responsibility of delivering user testing, solution selection, product development, system testing & migration for over 100+ products and services currently utilised by the Cabinet Office. - Planning and dependency mapping with 5 product owners to roll-out IT devices across the Cabinet Office.- Ensured solution prioritisation aligned with the IT transition teams’ plans for delivering IT equipment to varying user groups. - Owned, created and prioritised user stories for multiple product backlogs- Facilitated scrum master ceremonies: roadmap & sprint planning, estimation, stand-ups and retrospectivesKey achievements:One of three Delivery Managers tasked with leading this exemplar government project to replace incumbent IT systems using Agile.

Government Digital Service

Delivery Manager

- Served as the lead PM responsible for planning and delivering the implementation of Adobe CQ5 for the European and American PlayStation regions using a scaled Agile framework. Programme valued at £20 million.- Directed all onshore & offshore scrum teams of 50+ staff by leading daily ‘scrum of scrums’.- Responsible for programme tracking and reporting to the Programme Manager and Senior Executives through fortnightly board meetings with the American & European head offices.- Coached scrum teams on agile principles and ways of working to encourage self-organising and highly collaborative delivery workstreams.  Project scope included:- Business Transformation and re-platforming of PlayStation Europe & America web publishing, marketing and CRM systems to Adobe CQ5.- Responsive site design for HDTV, PC, Tablet and Mobile sites.  (<a href="http://us.playstation.com)-">http://us.playstation.com)-</a> Implementation of a scaled agile framework to deliver multiple work streams including HTML5 front-end designs, 50+ Adobe CQ5 customised components, ~20 Sony system integrations, content migration from 4 legacy systems, and the transfer of hosting services for all Sony regions to the Adobe Managed Services cloud.Senior Scrum Master / Agile Coach- Transformed team of 18 from a traditional waterfall approach to Agile (Scrum), evolving the release cycle from once every 3 months to releasing every other week.- Provided Agile coaching for the IT PMO, rolling-out Agile across the department within 6 months.- Served as Scrum Master for a team of 18 in the delivery of web projects valued at £2-5 million for the PlayStation brand.  Projects included:    - Redesign of European <a href="http://PlayStation.com">PlayStation.com</a> on PCs, mobiles and tablets for the PS4 launch         - Development of the Official PlayStation App for iPhone & Android    - Development of the PlayStation App for PSVita    - Adaptive sites for <a href="http://PlayStation.com">PlayStation.com</a> on iPhone, Android, tablet devices, plus PS3 & PSVita consoles

PlayStation

Senior Transformation Manager

- Project managed redesign and re-engineering of Which’s price comparison web site.  Project involved ingestion of multiple 3rd party pricing APIs and feeds.- Implemented change to the DSDM agile project methodology & development approach.- implemented user generated content functionality (UGC) on which.co.uk using Pluck.

Which?

Senior Project Manager

- Collaborated with steering board to forward plan and prioritise projects on <a href="http://PlayStation.com">PlayStation.com</a> and its 38 territory sites.- Led development and IS teams to quickly resolve all web site incidents and outages.- Provided resource planning for the Consumer Systems Development department (25+ team consisting of developers, testers, project managers and business analysts)- Project managed overhaul of <a href="http://playstation.com">playstation.com</a>'s server configuration to enable 300% efficiency in handling traffic loads.

Sony Computer Entertainment Europe

Interim Programme Manager

- Managed new site and CMS implementation for Mother & Baby Magazine, Yours magazine and Pets magazines as part of a 9 market global roll-out.- Led print and web magazine teams through strategic inception, design, content preparation, website launch and post-launch user support on a 12 to 14 week project cycle.- Successfully liaised with large project teams spread across multiple London and Peterborough offices by acting as central communication and reporting point from project team to financial board levels.- (Parallel projects over 6 months / 45+ people)

Emap

One of three Project Managers on the redevelopment of <a href="http://PlayStation.com">PlayStation.com</a> and implementation of the VYRE CMS for the  PlayStation®3 console launch in Europe.Responsible for successfully delivering all content aspects of <a href="http://PlayStation.com">PlayStation.com</a>, including:- Led content audit and consolidation from existing PS2, PSP and PSOne web sites in preparation for relaunch on a single portal for all PlayStation® consoles.- Managed content and game record migration from two legacy CMS systems. Required extensive script testing and thorough documentation for release management procedures.- Implemented new content upload and approval process for head office and 23 territories. - Managed requirements gathering, user acceptance testing and training for the VYRE content management system.- (Parallel projects over 10 months / 60+ people)

Project Manager

- Managed development of Reckitt Benckiser websites for Nurofen, Cillit Bang, Optrex, Clearasil and Strepsils brands. (Approx. 6 weeks each / 2 developers)- Programme managed website localisation roll-outs for 5 FMCG brands to 26 countries in Europe, Latin America and Africa. (Parallel projects over 3 months / 7 people)- Led development team of 7 and served as Programme Manager for 50+ client project members.

FullSIX

Senior Consultant

- Scoped and planned redevelopment of guardianunlimited.co.uk to implement Web 2.0 features such as keyword tagging, blogs and an open API to freely distribute content as part of 6 month tendering process. Short-listed to final three agencies. (6 months / 8people)- Provided consultancy services to differentiate web offerings for Royal Bank of Scotland, Standard Chartered Bank, Times Online, <a href="http://U2.com">U2.com</a> and Sport England. (Averaged 1-3 months / 2 people)- Analysed applications and platforms to identify risks by researching issue logs, change requests and various tracking statistics for the Department of Trade & Industry. (3 months)

Web Technology Group, Cable & Wireless

Consultant

- Developed and implemented telecoms strategy, rolling out VoIP network upgrade to over 65 remote sites. Project valued at $2 million NZD.- Other projects included Microsoft Office XP upgrade, Cisco IP telephony installation, and PC upgrade at over 35 branch sites throughout New Zealand.

Wrightson Corporation

- implemented Bravanta's web-based HR software for Fortune 500 clients including British Airways, L'Oreal, Levi Strauss and Fujitsu.- Planned data integrations using PeopleSoft, SQL Server, Siebel & Oracle. Improved efficiency of data upload process by 130%, saving $700K USD annually.

Bravanta

Implementation Manager

- Assisted with marketing strategy and business plans to secure funding from venture capitalists.

euroffice.co.uk

Strategic Analyst

- Created the functional specification for Everdream’s Control Centre™, a web-based PC Management solution that automates asset tracking, software distribution, user support, and virus protection.- The Control Centre™ was awarded “Best of Show Innovation™ Award Winner” at Gartner Midsize Enterprise Summit, Orlando, Florida in 2003.

Everdream Corp.

Business Analyst

- Created press releases and marketing materials for Silicon Valley start-up clients including <a href="http://wine.com">wine.com</a>, Napster and eCircles- Generated mentions in technical publications such as Wired and Red Herring.

Hillary Tidy

Hillary Tidy