Dan Allen
Verified Expert in Product Management
Product Manager
Marshall, VA, United States
Toptal member since June 13, 2019
Dan has over 30 years of technology leadership experience in product management, agile coaching, agile project management, software/systems engineering, cloud transformation, and management consulting. Dan is a proven change agent and thought leader with real-world expertise in the application of product management and agile methods for startups as well as large scale enterprises.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- Agile Product Management
- Agile Project Management
- New Business Ventures
- Product Delivery
- Product Management
- Project Management
- Startups
- Technical Product Management
Work Experience
Senior Project and Product Manager | Agile Coach | Scrum Master
Toptal Projects
- Project-managed the design and development, including DevOps of a product that allows high net worth individuals to build and optimize investment portfolios using machine learning.
- Served as the product and project manager for three financial data services products: a data services platform, a mobile app for investors, and plugins for customer websites.
- Acted as the project manager and scrum master to develop an ATM and branch locator service for a large bank holding company. The locator service conforms to the JSON API standard.
Executive Consultant
Alakai Solutions, LLC
- Provided strategic go-to-market leadership, agile coaching, and agile project and DevOps management of the product team and an outsourced international development team (product and project manager, scrum master).
- Provided technical leadership in selecting a new hosting platform and hybrid offshore development vendor for a custom home builder co-op portal solution.
- Led the agile transformation initiative as an agile coach to implement agile processes for platform renovation and business transformation.
- Served as a member of the board and chair of the technology committee for a privately-funded online builder-supplier eCommerce venture.
Executive Consultant
Newbold Advisors, LLC
- Performed an IT service delivery assessment to improve client demand management, stakeholder engagement, and service quality. Integrated findings into recommendations for metrics and KPIs for inclusion in an executive-level monthly business report.
- Worked with the technology leadership team to create a comprehensive strategic plan and roadmap in support of its wholesale banking and mortgage sub-servicing business.
- Implemented a program and project portfolio management framework and tool using Innotas to facilitate portfolio management, resource management, and status reporting on roadmap execution. Established standardized tracking and reporting processes.
- Developed a change management plan and target state design to restructure operational service delivery processes to drive the transformation of its technology platform, effectively respond to market demands, and rapidly increase business volume.
- Provided virtual CIO, CTO, and CISO technology leadership for a startup venture providing oversight and guidance for IT strategy and planning, systems and software architecture, technology selection, information security, and program management.
- Analyzed business processes, created a SWOT analysis, and provided observations and recommendations for process improvements and organizational redesign to improve quality, performance, and manage complexity for mid-Atlantic health insurance provider.
- Provided multiple clients with advisory services related to the analysis of regulatory compliance issues to develop technical requirements, plans, and measures for IT solutions and compliance management.
Vice President for Enterprise Architecture
Fannie Mae
- Established an enterprise architecture organization of 145 people with an annual operating budget of $24 million to drive target state architectures, technology standards, application rationalization, and IT roadmaps.
- Worked with FHFA, enterprise risk, and leadership to remediate regulatory fundings (matters requiring attention) for enterprise architecture deficiencies in less than 12 months.
- Secured $20 million of strategic funding to build centers of excellence for five enterprise shared platforms: business process management, business rules management, service-oriented architectures, enterprise architecture, and reconciliation.
- Established a portfolio rationalization framework for applications and technology across the enterprise to prioritize investments, reduce costs, and drive architecture alignment, saving $15 million over three years.
- Drove technical enterprise program governance to provide project assessments, enforce prescriptive guidance, evaluate technology construction permit criteria, and drive technology mandates.
- Briefed the board of directors, senior executives, and regulators on portfolio rationalization, target state architecture, and infrastructure complexity.
CTO | Vice President of Technology Services
InterImage, Inc.
- Transformed a technology organization from a low-margin tech staffing business with modest projects ($100,000 to $300,000 range) into an enterprise solutions provider with multimillion-dollar projects.
- Grew the backlog from $8 million to more than $75 million through successful technical proposals, competitive pricing, and successful program execution–on schedule, in scope, and at or above target margins.
- Improved profitability, increased annual revenue by 300%, and managed a 34-member technology team across five concurrent programs.
- Created the vision, strategy, and tactics to align capabilities with current and future business opportunities.
- Determined the optimal software and systems engineering processes to mitigate risk, speed development, and minimize time-to-value for solution delivery as well as obtain CMMI Level 2 certification.
- Marketed capabilities through technical presentations at conferences and leadership in technical user communities.
- Designed and delivered case management web application for US Naval Criminal Investigative Service to support 20,000 users worldwide with 99.9% availability. Implementation included the migration of business logic from legacy AS400 minicomputers.
Senior Manager
CACI, Inc.
- Led software development process integration for the joint acquisition of AMS by CACI and CGI. Worked with leadership to divide software source code assets for product portfolio between organizations.
- Implemented Rational Unified Process based tools, asset repositories, processes, end-user training, and software development standards.
- Supported a team of 250+ developers building three government off-the-shelf (GOTS) products.
Vice President of Technology
Chelsea Interactive, Inc.
- Rescued the launch of a $60 million multi-vendor eCommerce platform for Polo.com, Timberland.com, Maidenform.com, Elisabeth.com, ColeHaan.com, Ulta.com, Intershoe.com, and LizLange.com.
- Restructured and led software engineering, operations, and QA teams to improve service delivery, reduce costs, manage vendors, and generate $40 million in annual sales.
- Drove maintenance and enhancement of technology platform consisting of 15 production Broad Vision 6.0 application servers utilizing Oracle 9i RAC database servers.
- Led the development of storefronts (client and server-side JavaScript) shared eCommerce platform components (C++ and Java), data warehouses, and business intelligence reports (micro-strategy).
Senior Scientist
CACI Technologies, Inc.
- Served as the technical lead for the development of a helper tool library in support of electronic countermeasures (SIGINT) project.
- Developed J2SE Swing object models and class libraries (JDK 1.3) for use by the project team.
- Trained the development team on the use and extension of tools library.
Chief Technical Architect
Digex, Inc.
- Led a 6-member enterprise integration team with a $2.1 million annual budget in the design and development of an enterprise application integration framework.
- Developed enterprise application integration framework using for Siebel, PeopleSoft, Clarify, Remedy, Infranet, and numerous custom applications using webMethods.
- Deployed MVP and trained technology teams on the use and extension of the platform for commercial and custom applications.
Director of Application Development
Clara Vista/CMGI Solutions, Inc.
- Transformed the development capabilities from Microsoft ASP to n-tiered object-oriented solutions running on scalable platforms.
- Implemented software design and development best practices and tools. Leveraged new capabilities to win a $2.4 million contract.
- Led a 10-member team to design, develop, and deploy a cyber threat KBMS, workflow and an alerting system (ATG Dynamo Application Server, JHTML, Oracle 8i RAC) for a startup venture which was later acquired by Symantec.
Deputy Director of Information Technology
Mail2000, Inc.
- Led a 15-member IT team with a $2.0 million budget in IT operations and infrastructure management for a startup venture.
- Supported and enhanced a custom solution to consume mainframe print streams for financial statements to generate new digital mail pieces, segmented by delivery zip code, for printing at remote regional printing centers.
- Built a mail processing system that enabled the optimal delivery of first-class mail using a distributed computing architecture to achieve lower postal rates and overnight mail delivery for 90% of its volume. It was subsequently acquired by UPS.
Principal Associate, Senior Software Engineer
CACI, Inc. – Federal
- Provided technology innovation and thought leadership that transformed bleeding edge technology concepts into successful and profitable projects totaling more than $30 million in revenue.
- Served as chief architect and technical lead for design, development, and deployment of 17 production applications.
- Provided tooling and process integration for Requisite Pro, Rational Rose, and SQA Suite to enable the first CMM Level 3 certification for the firm.
- Led a 10-member project team in the design and delivery of the global status of resources and training system (enhanced) input tool (GSORTS-E) for the joint chiefs of staff.
- Migrated COBOL processing logic from US Army IBM mainframe to Windows PC Visual Basic application and SQL server database. Utilized 3rd party libraries to wrap IBM 3270 interfaces as a back end data for Visual Basic applications.
Project History
Financial Data Service Platform and Products
Led the design and development of a financial data services platform which includes three products: a mobile app for portfolio management, financial data widgets for investor relations portals, and data services APIs for direct data delivery.
The financial data services platform focuses on capturing and standardizing financial and market information for companies listed on stock exchanges in the middle east. This data is then used to feed a mobile app for portfolio management, graph and table widgets for investor relations portals of the listed companies, and data delivery APIs for financial services institutions.
Investor Portfolio Management Product with Machine Learning
Led the agile development team in the design and implementation the product MVP.
Agile product and manager of a global team for the design and development (including DevOps) of product that allows high net worth individuals to build and optimize investment portfolios using machine learning. Investment models utilize machine learning to analyze financial and market data streams to identify optimal portfolio constituents to achieve investor objectives (Angular, Python, TensorFlow, Postgres, Google Cloud Platform).
WiseWorks Virtual CTO/Agile Coach/Scrum Master/Product Manager
Developed and launched an SaaS-based business process modeling product.
Provided strategic go-to-market leadership, agile coaching, agile project management, and DevOps management of the product team and outsourced international development team (product/project manager, scrum master) for https://www.wisedesign.net/. Cloud-hosted SaaS business modeling product launched in May of 2019.
Education
Master's Degree in Business Administration
Virginia Tech - Blacksburg, VA
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science
Marymount University - Arlington, VA
Skills
Tools
Jira, Slack, Trello, Draw.io, Zoom
Paradigms
Agile Product Management, Agile Project Management, Requirements Analysis, Change Management, Marketplace Platforms, Scrum, Agile, Testing
Industry Expertise
New Business Ventures, High-tech Startups, Banking & Finance, Marketplaces, Financial Markets, Healthcare, Regulatory Reform, Education Technology (Edtech)
Platforms
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), WooCommerce
Other
Product Management, Scrum Master, Consulting, Startups, User Requirements, Offshore Team Management, Distributed Team Management, Project Planning, Communication, Technical Product Management, Agile Transformation, Product Discovery, Cost Estimation, Project Scoping, Scope Management, Agile Coaching, Management, Fintech, Coaching, Product Roadmaps, Product Strategy, CTO, eCommerce, Integration, Background Checks, UX Wireflows, Subscriptions, Rentals, Analysis, Competitive Strategy, Planning, Pricing, SaaS, Sprint Planning, Migration, Data Migration, Product Ownership, Product Delivery, Requirements, Roadmaps, Team Building, Workflow, Workflow Analysis, User Workflows, Business Processes, Business Process Modeling, Business Process Automation, Business Process Management (BPM), Business Process Analysis, Business Process Re-engineering, Software as a Service (SaaS), Business Process Optimization, Business Analysis, Product Owner, Requirements & Specifications, Product Design, Business, Business Logic, Project Coordination, Project Management, Startup Consulting, Business Management, Scope of Work (SOW), Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Compliance, Agile Leadership, User Experience (UX), Web Platforms, User Empathy, Product Research, Business to Business (B2B), Prototyping, Discovery Workshops, Product Strategy Consultant, Backlog Management, Talent Management, Feature Roadmaps, Discovery, Experimental Design, Feature Backlog Prioritization, Product Planning, Project Timelines, Staffing, User Stories, B2B, Process Flows, Business Models, Instruction & Coaching, Agile Practices, Digital Transformation Program Management, Finance Product Manager, B2B Product Management, Business Cases, Business Plan Consulting, Business Planning, Financial Modeling, Market Entry, Forecasting, Market Fit, Product Consultant, Project Consultancy, Strategy, Executive Support, Technology, Tracking, Technical Documentation, Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), Business Process Improvement (BPI), Process Documentation, Project Management & Work Tracking Tools, Software Implementation, Product Launch, User Journeys, New Product Development, Web Applications, Web & Mobile Applications, Product Marketing, Cross-functional Team Leadership, Workshops, Enterprise Software, IT Support, Technical Support, API Integration, SaaS Product Management, Mobile Apps, Finance, Fashion & Beauty, Product Sales, Cloud Migration, Microsoft Teams, APIs, SOC Compliance, Mobile Platforms, Platforms, Financials, Online Payments, Payment Gateways, Pricing Strategy, User Interface (UI), Go-to-market (GTM) Strategy, Programming, Automation Tools, No-code Development, App Store, App Store Acceptance Process, Financial UX, UX Design, Two-sided Marketplaces, Legal, Payment Processing, Marketing, COBOL, Miro, Lucidchart, Microsoft Office, Leadership, Change Leadership, Team Leadership, Regulatory Compliance, Architecture, Risk Management, Risk Analysis, Security Audits, Project Portfolio Management (PPM), Portfolio Management, Stakeholder Engagement, Stakeholder Management, IT Consulting, Business Consulting, Technology Consulting, IT Security, IT Strategy, Digital Transformation, Scrum Coaching, IT Projects, Projects, Large-scale Projects, Business Transformation, IT, App Development, Node.js, React, Machine Learning, Process Design, IT Operations Management (ITOM), Computer Science, Salesforce, Edtech Design, Learning Management Systems (LMS)
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