Chris Nicol
Verified Expert in Product Management
Product Manager
London, United Kingdom
Toptal member since November 8, 2018
Chris is a VP of product at Hubble, with a 17-year industry tenure. With experience and strategic, data-driven decision-making skills, Chris has propelled growth in numerous sectors, including marketplaces, fintech, and SaaS. His strength is shaping high-performing teams and crafting transformative customer experiences aligned with business objectives. His strategic vision has led to significant results, including improved team performance and business growth.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- Design Sprints
- Product Delivery
- Product Discovery
- Product Leadership
- Product Roadmaps
- Product Strategy
- Research
- User Research
Work Experience
VP of Product
Hubble
- Created a clear product strategy and turned the product and engineering teams around to have focus, direction, and engagement.
- Introduced continuous discovery and research operations.
- Introduced outcome-focused strategy for the team to create measurable change in customer behavior. This has led to hiring engagement from the product and engineering teams while creating better buy-in and alignment across the organization.
Head of Product
Omnipresent
- Led several teams in completely turning around the compensation portfolio of Omnipresent. That portfolio included the global payroll, financial operations, and benefits.
- Hired most of the product management team and built out key product operations across the organization.
- Created the product vision and strategy for the compensation portfolio, aligning with the CFO, VP of product, CEOs, and other key leaders for the most critical area of the business.
- Created the competency and career growth framework for the product management team.
Group Product Manager
15Five
- Built out a high-performing team of 10 product managers, including the other group project manager I was collaborating with.
- Coached product managers, which resulted in them having significant promotions and increases in responsibility and performance.
- Led the building out of our career growth strategy, including competencies, career ladder, and job descriptions to promote growth within the team.
- Led the team that launched a significant new product, engagement surveys, allowing the company to move from a pure performance management vertical into the people management vertical. The initial launch exceeded adoption goals by 110%.
- Supported the initial rollout of our R&D department after raising our series B with a heavy focus on teams, and then led our restructuring into persona-focused portfolios that allowed teams to work more closely together, solving the highest priority.
Senior Product Manager
Charitable Impact
- Researched the platform capabilities of partners and competitors in the charitable donation space.
- Produced strategic plan for the transition from monolith application to platform-based omnichannel.
- Reorganized two platform-based cross-functional development teams that failed to ship into three cross-functional development teams that shipped features every 2-3 weeks.
- Mentored three junior product owners and help them implement a transparent priority matrix to ensure educated and researched prioritization of feature development.
- Worked remotely from Spain with teams in India and Canada.
Product Manager
iQmetrix
- Researched and identified opportunities in the wireless retail market for a dropship solution.
- Worked with COO and business development to come up with a pricing model and go to market strategy for dropshipping.
- Worked with partner suppliers to define integration flows and system to support real-time dropship ordering across a network of 15,000 retail locations and seven suppliers.
- Led four teams in developing end-to-end solution that integrated iQmetrix POS, eCommerce, in-store digital solutions with the iQmetrix Platform to provide an omnichannel experience for consumers.
- Drove growth and adoption of dropship solution throughout the iQmetrix customer base.
Front-end Developer (Contract)
Chris Nicol Consulting
- Worked remotely on a number of contracts as a front-end developer.
- Worked with distributed teams in North America, Europe, and Asia.
- Worked on WPF and ASP.NET technologies, including Silverlight and more.
Project History
Building a Product Team
Along with another group product manager, I hired, developed and organized a high-performing team of 10 product managers.
After raising a Series B, 15Five invested heavily in building out our R&D team. I was the second product manager hired and, together with my partner, we hired 10 product managers. We built out a structure that served us well for a year and a half with feature-based squads along with our engineering and design partners. I then transformed our R&D structure into persona-based portfolios allowing more collaboration and effectiveness within our product teams.
Dropship
http://www.iqmetrix.com/products/dropshipGenerated the first transactional revenue stream for iQmetrix by providing a valuable and profitable solution to clients.
Dropship provides real-time supply chain order directly from the retail location to the supplier. Providing a seamless process for retailers.
Clear ROI for clients, partners, and iQmetrix; we exceeded forecasts in the first six months.
Nimble - An Internal Communication Tool
Took an overly featured R&D prototype and turned it into a focused product that provided actual value to internal staff.
The R&D team had created an internal product meant to solve the problems of communication, transparency, productivity, and focus. The product had tons of features and was trying to solve too many vague problems.
I came in and refocused the entire product. Completed internal interviews and research to define the actual problem that existed for internal communication and transparency. Threw out the existing prototype and within five weeks had shipped a refocused product that solved the real problem.
CHIMP Platform
Produced strategic and tactical plans to transition CHIMP from a monolith application to an extensible platform.
Developed a strategic plan to transition CHIMP from a monolith application to a microservice platform capable of supporting partners and multiple applications. Transformed underperforming development teams that were failing to ship into cross-functional teams that were shipping every 2-3 weeks.
Skills
Tools
Jira, Confluence, Trello, Zoom, Slack
Paradigms
Agile Product Management, Agile, Scrum, Agile Workflow, Kanban, B2B2C
Platforms
Coda
Industry Expertise
Banking & Finance
Other
Brainstorming, Lean Canvas, Product Management, Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO), Leadership, Freelancing, Business Analysis, Product Owner, Virtual Work, Contract, Growth, Requirements, Product Strategy, Product Roadmaps, Go-to-market Plans, User Research, Business Models, Product Design, Product Marketing, Product Frameworks, Innovation, Product Ownership, Product Discovery, Product Delivery, Outsourced Product Management Professional, Product Leadership, Scrum Product Owner Contractor, Coaching, Product Vision, POS, Retail & Wholesale, Performance Management, Employee Engagement, B2B Partnerships, Partnerships, Business Strategy, Wireless, Product Research, Research, Fintech, Design Sprints, Startups, HRIS, Continuous Discovery, APIs, Charity, Management, Notion, Strategy, Social Media Marketing (SMM), Human Resource Management Systems (HRMS), B2B, Hiring, Recruitment, Service Design, UX Research, Product-market Fit, Objectives & Key Results (OKRs), Product Operations, Roadmaps, ASP.NET, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)
How to Work with Toptal
Toptal matches you directly with global industry experts from our network in hours—not weeks or months.
Share your needs
Choose your talent
Start your risk-free talent trial
Top talent is in high demand.
Start hiring