
Abiodun Aluko
Verified Expert in Project Management
Project Manager
St. Albert, AB, Canada
Toptal member since July 13, 2022
Abiodun is an Agile practitioner with over a decade of cumulative experience in delivering financial services, human resources, and healthcare administration projects. He has led diverse, cross-functional teams to deploy various IT solutions to meet strategic business objectives. Abiodun's managed projects include custom financial product delivery, human resources information systems, business operations efficiency solutions implementation, product customization, and enhancement projects.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- Agile Product Delivery
- Facilitation
- Jira
- Project Management
- RAID
- Scrum Master
- SharePoint
- Team Leadership
Work Experience
Project Manager
CASA Mental Health
- Spearheaded strategic initiatives to cultivate a culture of project management excellence and drive organizational advancement.
- Encouraged collaborative efforts to implement impactful mental health programs for children, adolescents, and families.
- Improved processes through streamlined pathways to enhance accessibility to vital mental health services.
- Established and organized Asana portfolios for efficient project management.
- Conducted training sessions for team members on Asana usage and best practices.
- Implemented configuration management strategies to optimize workflow and collaboration.
Agile Project Manager
Maximus Canada
- Enhanced delivery quality by facilitating scrum ceremonies, including backlog refinement, sprint planning, daily stand-ups, and retrospectives, successfully delivering critical front-end modules.
- Strengthened project outcomes by proactively managing risks, issues, and dependencies, resulting in enhanced delivery quality and successful project completion.
- Streamlined cross-team dependencies and backlog refinement to ensure seamless release alignments across teams, optimizing project coordination and enhancing overall efficiency.
- Optimized product delivery timeline by integrating capacity planning and cross-training initiatives, fostering a highly cross-functional team dynamic that elevated team morale and strengthened overall team cohesion.
- Eliminated draining administrative activities for the project teams, achieving a significant 100% overtime reduction through process enhancements and the implementation of automated solutions.
- Enhanced team efficiencies significantly by implementing a value-based product delivery approach, leading to measurable progress toward the overall project goal.
- Provided direction and guidance for status reporting to executive management and clients, generating finalized reports for the leadership team and steering committee.
- Demonstrated exceptional proficiency in developing and managing project budgets and costs, encompassing accurate forecasts, comprehensive burndowns, and precise tracking of actuals for each project stream.
Agile Coach | Digital Transformation Lead
Prime Staffing Services
- Coached and mentored Agile teams on Agile principles and methods, ensuring strict adherence to Scrum practices for optimal project execution.
- Delivered the most critical phases of an HRIS implementation a remarkable eight weeks ahead of schedule, enabling the firm to remain operational during the challenging period of the pandemic.
- Facilitated collaboration between team members, product owners, and stakeholders, enabling a comprehensive understanding of project requirements, optimizing team performance, and ensuring efficient and timely delivery of solutions.
- Implemented a modular approach in delivering highly complex and interdependent modules of the HRIS, resulting in heightened team productivity and the delivery of a high-quality solution.
- Prepared an options analysis and recommended solutions for deploying a learning management system (LMS) platform. Managed the LMS deployment and integrated it with the onboarding process of the newly deployed HRIS.
- Monitored and reported the implementation status/health, providing executive dashboards and updates to the senior management across multiple lines of business.
- Enhanced the efficiency of the project by adopting the disciplined agile delivery framework, creating phase-gate milestones, and training team members in adopting best Agile practices.
Scrum Master | Agile Project Manager
Zenith Bank
- Led the charge in creating an Agile Center of Excellence, elevating project management practices to achieve exceptional results.
- Revamped dependencies and issues management processes by implementing a centralized backlog and aligning plans, enhancing visibility and efficiency. The transformation resulted in a 17% increase in productivity.
- Cultivated an enterprise-wide agile culture, orchestrating and facilitating all scrum ceremonies while instilling a proactive and agile mindset across the organization.
- Created efficient project artifacts and reporting templates, saving time and ensuring high-quality deliverables for projects and various departments.
- Coached Agile teams in adopting best practices through regular sprint retrospective action items implementation.
Scrum Master
Zenith Bank
- Facilitated sprint planning, daily scrums, sprint reviews, and retrospectives and ensured team adherence.
- Facilitated the resolution of issues, blockers, and dependencies through proactive identification, cross-team coordination, and a quick-escalation approach.
- Revamped product delivery to boost quality and efficiency while expertly managing inter-team dependencies, resulting in seamless goal achievement and accelerated feature release timelines.
- Led a team awarded the most improved and productive on a data collection, analysis, and database management project of over 70,000 government employees.
- Spearheaded the mobile banking app features development and deployment project, ensuring adherence to Scrum principles and practices.
- Imbued an enterprise-wide agile culture, facilitated all scrum ceremonies, and established the proactive (agile) mindset.
- Trained team members in standard user story writing and story pointing in alignment with best practices.
Project History
Avionte
Accelerated project phases, ensuring business continuity during the pandemic, and streamlined implementation and adoption through efficient process workflows, contributing to seamless operations and stakeholder satisfaction.
Embracing digital transformation, I digitized critical operations such as safety training and streamlined workflows by documenting key processes. Through comprehensive training, I ensured a smooth transition for both internal and external system users, maximizing the adoption and utilization of the new solution. The teams' commitment to Agile data management was reflected in the successful conversion of data from legacy systems, the implementation of secure cloud storage, and the establishment of a robust data retention process. This Agile-driven project not only optimized efficiency but also empowered the organization to embrace a culture of continuous improvement and adaptability.
ENMOC
Spearheaded the Agile adoption leading to a 30% boost in productivity and consistently delivering high-quality products. Implemented efficient scope-change management and risk escalation processes, fostering a culture of excellence and adaptability.
As a Scrum Master, I led two streams of front-end development teams, designing and developing the initiative's two most important modules or business areas. I facilitated all Scrum ceremonies and ensured an easy flow of communication through proactive blockers identification and resolution. To develop the different units of the core solution, I facilitated release content refinements and cross-team dependencies sessions for better integration of interrelated modules.
Working on the overall project as an Agile Project Manager, I created a consolidated risk and issues logging process for all streams and produced risk, issue, status, and other project reports for stakeholders and management as required by the project. Simplified requirement delivery tracking by mapping user stories to their corresponding features, capabilities, and parent requirements, ensuring timely and effective delivery of every project goal.
Government Payroll Solutions
Transformed state government payroll operations with a standardized database, saving $1.4 million annually, and championed Agile practices, fostering efficient collaboration and ensuring timely project completion.
This intricate project involved collaboration with multiple vendors and 77,000 civil servants. I implemented an Agile culture, driving efficiency and quality. Our high throughput led to additional agency transfers.
As team manager, I led nine professionals in developing a tailored payroll solution and robust database for the state government.
My leadership earned commendations, which led to the team being recognized as the Most Improved Team and receiving a bonus. Our organization was recognized for saving the government $1.4 million annually due to the project's success.
Through this transformative initiative, I delivered exceptional results and contributed to the government's efficiency and cost savings goals.
Education
Master's Degree in Business Administration (MBA)
Obafemi Awolowo University - Nigeria
Certifications
Disciplined Agile Value Stream Consultant (DAVSC)
Project Management Institute (PMI)
Prosci Certified Change Practitioner
Prosci
Certified Scrum Master
Scrum Alliance
Project Leadership Certificate
Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT)
Professional Scrum Master Level I (PSM I)
Scrum.org
Project Management Professional (PMP)
Project Management Institute (PMI)
Skills
Tools
Jira, Excel 365, Confluence, Slack, Microsoft Excel, Project Management & Work Tracking Tools, Trello, MURAL, Microsoft Project, Microsoft Visio, Zapier, Salesforce, Asana
Paradigms
Agile Product Management, Implementation Project Management, Waterfall Delivery, Agile Project Management, Scrum, Agile Delivery, Agile, Management, Agile Leadership, Kanban, Requirements Analysis, Azure DevOps, Change Management, Organizational Change Management (OCM), Lean
Platforms
SharePoint, Zendesk
Industry Expertise
Banking & Finance, Healthcare
Other
Project Management, Agile Product Delivery, RAID, Scrum Master, Team Leadership, Project Coordination, Meetings, Facilitation, Reporting, Microsoft Teams, Task Management, Outlook, Discovery, Project Design & Management, Project Review, Project Budget Management, Risk Management, Microsoft Office, Workshop Facilitation, Story Mapping, Storyboarding, Communication, Organization, Remote Team Leadership, Conflict Resolution, Project Consultancy, Cross-functional Team Leadership, Stakeholder Management, Stakeholder Engagement, IT Project Management, Cross-functional Collaboration, Project Management Professional (PMP), Software Implementation, Backlog Grooming, Sprint Planning, Waterfall Methodology, Detail-oriented, Digital Project Management, Dashboards, Project Reporting, Progress Reporting, Budgeting, Best Practices, Planning, Core Banking Systems, Program Management, Jira Administrator, Process Optimization, Certified ScrumMaster (CSM), Sprint Ceremonies, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), User Stories, Operations, Agile Program Management, Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), Process Improvement Project Management, Process Documentation, Data Entry, Project Scoping, Project Scheduling, Scrumban, Critical Path Analysis, Consulting, Information & Communications Technology (ICT), Microsoft Project Online, BI Reports, Smartsheet, Lucidchart, DocuSign, IT Projects, Process Design, Financial Forecasting, Google Cloud/Suite, Jira Administration, Product Roadmaps, Feature Roadmaps, Feature Prioritization, Process Flows, Hybrid Project Management, Budget Modeling, Contract Negotiation, Technical Project Management, Project Planning, Process Improvement, Project Tracking, Agile Coaching, Distributed Team Management, Requirements & Specifications, System Integration, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Executive Presentations, Executive Reporting, Data Analytics, Marketing Communications (MarCom), Mobile Apps, Web Platforms, Web Development, Business Analysis, Project Management Office (PMO), HRIS, Human Resources (HR), Product Management, Project Management Operations, Software as a Service (SaaS), User Onboarding, Product Ownership, PMO, Discovery Workshops, Case Management, SOC 2, JDA, Backlog Management, Sprint Retrospectives, Marketing, Change Leadership, Organization Building, Value Creation, Value Stream Management, DA FLEX
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