Adel Du Toit
Verified Expert in Project Management
Project Manager
Andover, United Kingdom
Toptal member since June 1, 2023
Adel Du Toit is a seasoned project and program manager renowned for delivering digital transformation initiatives at global firms like Cisco and Boston Consulting Group (BCG). Leveraging her expertise in change management, UX, and Agile, she aligns strategy to deliver projects in complex settings. Key achievements include leading Agile transformation at BCG and a $9+ million project at Cisco, consistently fostering high-performance teams, and yielding impressive business results.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- Agile Project Management
- Change Management
- IT Management
- IT Strategy
- Management
- Program Design
- Stakeholder Management
- User Experience (UX)
Work Experience
Invited Industry Lecturer
Nielsen Norman Group (NNG)
- Spearheaded the development of a comprehensive UX coach training program.
- Delivered high-impact training sessions to foster skill development and knowledge transfer focused on design operations, new UX manager, and product and UX.
- Managed user and stakeholder interviews and analysis to enable the creation of new training content.
Director, Digital Product Organization – User Experience Centre of Expertise
BCG
- Assumed a key leadership role to enable the Agile at scale transformation across the organization, impacting 1,300+ digital organization employees.
- Introduced a framework (backed by AI) that measured the satisfaction of 111 digital products. Measuring and holding product teams accountable increased satisfaction with products and services by +10% (74% to 84%).
- Founded a design team of 35 designers across 14 Agile tribes, contributing to 272% team growth in 2022.
- Developed and delivered design thinking training globally across the functions, resulting in 92% satisfaction and 96% saying they would recommend it.
- Improved quality, speed, and consistency across the organization during both design and delivery as part of the Agile at scale transformation.
- Led an effort to improve the meeting experience, increasing user satisfaction from 69% to 93%.
- Spearheaded the discovery phase to identify the challenges and requirements of hybrid working across workspaces, use cases, and regions.
- Enabled the change to a customer-focused organization aligned with the BCG strategic vision.
- Created a high-performing team by focusing on people, skills, ways of working, and practical knowledge sharing and communication.
Senior Manager, Digital Transformation – Team and Employee Experience Strategy
BCG
- Owned the incubation and execution of the digital transformation program aligned with the BCG 2020 strategy.
- Created the vision, strategy, and execution plans to deliver a range of digital initiatives to support the employee experience and digital collaboration business needs.
- Led an effort to transform IT self-service and delivered an MVP—ServiceNow—launched globally to all employees.
- Transitioned BCG from voice-only to digital video conferencing.
- Incubated a virtual case room concept that led to the implementation of collaborative filesharing and instant messaging globally.
Senior Manager, Product Owner - Service and Application Management Delivery
Cisco
- Founded a vision to provide a single internal digital store for employees for all IT needs by removing duplication, reducing costs, and avoiding user frustration. This vision remains a key component of Cisco's IT Service Management (ITSM) approach.
- Enabled the delivery of 294 IT services and nearly 100+ mobile apps to 100,000 end-users.
- Created a global agile team to custom-develop the core components of this product.
- Managed finances and budget for this $9+ million project.
Program Manager – Communication and Collaboration
Cisco
- Delivered the Integrated Workforce Experience program successfully and on time.
- Created an operations team of 10 in two global locations to deliver Integrated Workforce infrastructure environments throughout six weeks for four lifecycle environments.
- Managed various Web 2.0-type projects, including Jive Clearspace, Confluence, wiki, RSS, tagging, social bookmarking, and casual editing.
Project Manager – Enterprise Messaging Services
Cisco
- Managed the implementation of Exchange 2003 within budget and on time.
- Led the outsourcing and vendor selection process to outsource application support for 192 exchange servers globally.
- Implemented automated processes during the global laptop refresh project, completed two months ahead of schedule, saving Cisco £300,000 in lease penalties.
Project History
Cisco e-Store | IT Service Catalog and Mobile App Store
https://blogs.cisco.com/datacenter/introducing-the-cisco-it-estore-and-a-service-catalog-for-byodAssigned as the program manager at an early stage of the project to take it through the discovery phase. After the discovery phase, the vision, strategy, and execution plan were created, and I then moved into the product owner role.
As the range of IT services we offer has increased, we noticed that acquiring the various tools has become complex and confusing. We had several different internal sites (aka "stores") within Cisco, each offering different systems for employees to request services. This complexity impacted the user experience and productivity of these employees.
To simplify the employee experience with Cisco IT, we decided to consolidate all these different systems into a single online service catalog—effectively a unified eCommerce storefront for our IT services—where our employees could find the services they needed to do their jobs.
Meeting Experience
Led the product team to transition to a new meeting experience solution that increased satisfaction from 69% to 93%.
Supported by research and evidence-based design, the product team was able to switch to an alternate solution and improve the satisfaction of both our employees and clients.
Design Thinking Training
Created and delivered design thinking training to over 200 employees across 14 Agile Tribes, with 96% satisfaction and 92% saying they would recommend it to someone in a similar role.
Education
Professional Degree in Project Management
George Washington University - Washington, DC, USA
Certifications
Organizational Relationship Systems Coach (ORSC)
CRR Global
Lean UX and Agile
Nielsen Norman Group (NNG)
DesignOps: Scaling UX Design and User Research
Nielsen Norman Group (NNG)
Being a UX Leader
Nielsen Norman Group (NNG)
Conscious Leadership Development Program
Global Warriors
ITIL Foundation Certification
ITIL
Skills
Tools
Trello, Slack, Zoom, Microsoft Exchange, Jira
Paradigms
Design Thinking, Management, Change Management, Agile Project Management, Requirements Analysis, Servant Leadership, Agile, Agile Leadership, Scrum, Agile Software Development, Agile Product Management, Lean, UX Design, Agile UX
Platforms
SharePoint
Other
Project Management, User Experience (UX), IT Strategy, IT Management, IT Product Management, Stakeholder Management, Change Leadership, Program Design, Agile Program Management, IT Services, Vendor Selection, Vendor Management, Program Management, IT Projects, Leadership, Facilitation, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Discovery Workshops, Employee Experience, User Requirements, Business Requirements, Discovery, Project Discovery, Project Planning, Project Reporting, Project Tracking, Process Improvement Project Management, Workshop Facilitation, User Feedback, Estimation & Planning, Roadmaps, Product Roadmaps, Affinity Mapping, Empathy Mapping, Scope of Work (SOW), Vendors & Suppliers, Request for Proposal (RFP), Project Delivery, Product Design, Portfolio Management, Financial Management, Annual Budgets, Project Coordination, Conflict Resolution, Meetings, Organization, Creative Thinking, Mentorship & Coaching, Planning, Team Mentoring, Process Optimization, Communication, Digital Transformation, Data Analytics, Customer Experience Management, Business & Digital Transformation, Digital Transformation Program Management, Research, Innovation, Feature Backlog Prioritization, Project Timelines, Team Leadership, Lean Portfolio Management, Enterprise Product Portfolios, Business Transformation, Digital Strategy, Management Consulting, Stakeholder Interviews, Operations Management, Digital Product Design, Design Ops, Project Design & Management, Webex, Microsoft, Lean UX, UX Strategy, Coaching, Design Leadership, IT Service Management (ITSM), Product Owner, RFP Negotiation, User Research, Usability, Operations, Software Project Management, Customer Journeys, Validated User Research, User Journeys, Mobile Apps, Service Design, Agile Product Delivery, Web Development, Technical Project Management, Process Automation, Journey Mapping, User Personas, Leadership & Coaching, Story Mapping, Agile Coaching, Agile at Scale, Agile Transformation, User Interface (UI), Product Management, Web & Mobile Applications, Project Management Professional (PMP), Hybrid Project Management, Project Management Office (PMO), Consulting, Training Content, HR Tools, Cloud, Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), Mobile App Development, Scrum Master, Training
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