Ali Junaid
Verified Expert in Project Management
Project Manager
Ali is a seasoned project manager with over 15 years of professional experience. He is also a certified scrum master and PMP-qualified project manager. He has a successful track record leading large software projects for Fortune 500 companies and MVPs for startup organizations. Over his career, Ali wore multiple hats and jumped into various roles, such as a scrum master, agile coach, product owner, and system delivery manager for enterprise systems.
Project Highlights
Expertise
Work Experience
Project Manager
Picton Mahoney Asset Management
- Planned and delivered the digital transformation of the organization. Led the delivery by working with the head of marketing and digital and managing internal and vendor delivery times.
- Set up the project management process in Asana to help the team manage the project delivery.
- Created the project governance procedures for the delivery of projects across the organization.
- Took responsibility for the end-to-end project delivery of the organization's digital identity, including the website design and development and the integration with the social channels.
- Led the design, development, and migration of the organization's corporate website. Consulted with the business to define road map and requirements. Led a team of external and internal developers to develop and launch the new corporate site.
Senior Project Manager
Maxeon - Main
- Consulted with the management team to define the ways of working for the digital products team based on the industry best practices. Took responsibility for leading the change across the organization.
- Used Jira roadmaps to map out the company projects in a way that captured key information from all projects and was used to present to the management team.
- Led the delivery of the new warranty registration system by working with the newly formed digital product team to capture requirements. Managed the engagement with the vendor to build the new system on AWS and Salesforce.
- Managed the work for the GTM of the Warranty Registration product by working with the channels, marketing team, and senior stakeholders.
Jira Consultant | Tech PJM
Calm.com, Inc.
- Developed the onboarding process on Jira. Managed requirements gathering, workshopping, design, development, and rollout of the application on Jira service management.
- Led the rollout of Jira across the organization. Trained staff members on the effective use of Jira.
- Integrated Jira with HR systems (Zenefits) to collect onboarding data to generate Jira tickets.
Project Management Consultant
Saudi Aramco
- Employed as a lead project manager for the delivery of Clarity PPM across the digital transformation and corporate IT teams.
- Led the project delivery, including creating the project plan, schedule, resourcing, and budget.
- Integrated Clarity PPM into the existing organization by working with senior stakeholders across the organization.
- Designed and developed an analytics dashboard for the senior management team on PowerBI that took information from different sections of Clarity to present key information to decision-makers to enable effective decision-making.
Project Management Consultant
New Brunswick Community College
- Led the delivery of the new Dynamics CRM system for the customer team to scope requirements, budget, and timelines. Created the project plans and budgets for approval by the management teams.
- Used Azure DevOps to help the IT team collaborate on code development and deployment. This enabled a collaborative culture and set of processes that brought the team together as key contributors to the delivery of IT projects.
- Consulted with the Cyber security team to scope and develop a project to implement ISO 27001 for the organization.
Agile Technical Project Manager
Fabriik
- Managed the marketing plan for the go-to-market activities for the launch of the Fabriik Exchange by working with the head of marketing and third-party vendors.
- Set up the company's project management processes that were then adopted across the organization for all projects.
- Joined for the technical delivery of Crypto Exchange, a key company product. Based on my performance, I was given the responsibility for all aspects of the product: regulations, operations, risk, marketing, sales, and technology.
- Utilized Confluence to manage requirements.
Senior Transformation Project Manager
Emirates NBD (One of the Leading Banks in the UAE)
- Delivered an award-winning big data platform based on SAP and Hadoop for Emirates NBD, a $90 million program of work. This had five sub-workstreams where I led a team of 70 people and delivered a group-wide data capability to the bank.
- Implemented the SAP FSDM reference model as part of the EDP set up, enabling Emirates NBD to be the first global user of the model.
- Served as a scrum master and led the replacement of the transaction alert system from an SMS-based system to a push notification-enabled application with the potential to save the Bank AED 80 million over two years.
- Created the backlog for the data Ingestion team and recommended areas for improvement where the team was supporting current production tasks. Managed the transition of the support tasks out of the project to the product support team.
- Coached the product owners to create a backlog and structured the team into the requisite Agile squads. Set up the Scrum framework and facilitated all ceremonies.
- Worked with external vendors (SAP and Informatica) to align their teams to enable delivery to the overall project plan.
- Led a remote team in Turkey and an onshore team in Dubai to re-platform the transaction alert system from an SMS-based one to a push notification-enabled system.
- Reported project progress to the organization's management team using project dashboards of PowerBI.
Delivery Manager
Sainsbury's Digital and Technology (One of the Largest Supermarket Groups in the UK)
- Successfully implemented TCS Mastercraft Test Manager at Sainsbury Bank—managing a team with a team of developers, testers, and architects. Delivered on time, within the budget, and in the scope of the business users and security teams.
- Delivered the new data warehouse for Sainsbury's Bank on Amazon Cloud using Teradata by managing a team of architects, Ab Initio ETL developers, and QA testers.
- Deployed the agile framework based on scrum for the bank product family at Sainsbury's by working with the global product owners at the digital and technology division and tailoring the framework for specific regulatory needs of the banking sector.
- Delivered a project to provide a managed file transfer solution for end users and packaged that solution into a reusable product.
- Reported directly to the project board on the team's progress and challenges.
- Coached and mentored new project managers to enable a smooth transition into the organization.
- Reported on project progress, risks, issues, and milestones using the Clarity PPM.
IT Project Manager
Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC)
- Led one of the first agile projects for HSBC UK in developing and enhancing a branch reporting system using the Agile methodology by managing two scrum teams over one year, realizing over £40 million in additional revenue for the bank.
- Delivered a 14-man-year business intelligence project to develop a new financial reporting system in the UK. The project was underway for three years before I took it over successfully and delivered and closed the project within eight months.
- Spearheaded the development of a project with a team of over 30 resources to develop a credit card data mart for HSBC and partners, including the conversion from an old system to a new one.
- Coached the retail business team in agile to become a retail business performance team. Took over the product owner role for the first three sprints to mitigate delay while the business teams recruited.
- Managed the new payment and cash management system and delivered the project within time and budget.
- Managed development and testing teams based in Pune, Hyderabad, Hong Kong, and Guangzhou while working with business teams in London, Birmingham, Hyderabad, Paris, Mexico City, Bermuda, and Hong Kong.
Technology Manager
Learning and Skills Improvement Service (Leading Quality Improvement Organization in England)
- Joined the team as a SharePoint administrator and was promoted to manage all internal IT system development having a budgetary responsibility of £18 million annually.
- Managed the hosting, maintenance, development, and up-gradation of the largest further education portal in England (Excellencegateway.org.uk). Led user-centered design workshops and worked with vendors to implement the recommendations.
- Worked with large data sets to apply BI tools (Tableau and SQL Server Business Intelligence) to enable business users and regulators to extract useful insights on a regular basis.
- Led the development and implementation of the new online events management system based on Dynamics CRM and Java. This was a project that failed previously however I was able to turn the project around and deliver the system within the agreed time.
- Managed procurement of vendors for the web services framework to develop a pool of vendors who could be called upon to deliver small assignments as per the requirements at the time.
- Led large-scale national procurement activities based on OJEU guidelines to select KPMG as the vendor to deliver the £24-million World Class Skills Program.
- Managed a project to merge and consolidate two Dynamics CRM applications following the merger of the organization.
- Led a project to upgrade SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2010 for over 300 users.
Marketing Executive
Jobs.ac.uk | University of Warwick (Leading Job Board for Higher Education)
- Joined the team as a business development executive and also created two new products for the organization.
- Improved an Excel-based booking system to a database-based system that optimized processes and increased resilience.
- Managed relationships with existing clients and generating new leads through follow-ups from trade shows.
Business Development Lead
LMK Resources
- Joined the team as a sales executive with a mandate to grow the non-oil and gas business based on results of team growth of 700% and a revenue increase of $12 million.
- Promoted to lead the business development team.
- Increased sales for Virtual Office, our ERP solution, by 150% over two years by aggressively expanding the customer base. Virtual Office was later nominated for IBM's Beacon Awards.
- Served as the 1st point of contact for all client support requests and worked closely with the incident response team to resolve these requests.
Project History
Big Data Platform for Emirates National Bank of Dubai
Launched the new big data platform for the Emirates NBD Group, one of the largest banking organizations in the Middle East.
The program's goal was to provide the Emirates NBD with a single data platform across all eight of its business entities.
I worked with the vendors of this solution to create a master project plan that he presented to the project board. As the program manager, I oversaw all design, development, scheduling, integration, and testing for vendor-delivered and in-house systems. This meant orchestrating schedules and dependencies across five separate projects, ensuring that stakeholders were actively participating, coordinating activities with the change management team for communication across the enterprise, managing the program's budget, and communicating status to the executive team.
This program was one of the largest parts of the transformation programs for the Emirates NBD group.
Portal for Further Education
http://www.excellencegateway.org.ukLed the development and upgrade of the largest portal for further education in England.
I began by creating a product roadmap while working with senior stakeholders and the organization's management committee to get funding approval for the work program. Working with technology teams, I selected three vendors for hosting, content creation, and development. Then I created and managed a master plan for all three vendors and in-house resources to ensure project delivery could be tracked and set up working groups and project reporting. Finally, I successfully migrated the portal from an on-premise hosted solution to a Windows Azure-based solution. We also upgraded the content management system and provided a single sign-on facility to the end users.
The project was delivered as per the business case time frames and within the agreed-upon budget.
Online Event Management System for Learning and Skills
Launched the events portal for the organization based on Microsoft Dynamics.
Education
Master of Business Administration (MBA) in Business Administration
Warwick Business School - Coventry, England
Master's Degree in Computer Science
Bahria University - Islamabad, Pakistan
Certifications
Certified Scrum Master
Scrum Alliance
Project Management Professional
Project Management Institute
ITIL Foundation
Axelos
Skills
Tools
Microsoft Project, Jira, Microsoft Excel, Project Management & Work Tracking Tools, Confluence, Asana, Microsoft Dynamics, Google Docs, Tableau, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, ETL, SQL, Google Analytics, Excel 365, NetSuite, IBM Cognos, Trello, Salesforce, Adobe, Microsoft Power BI, Magnolia
Platforms
SharePoint 2007, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), SharePoint, WordPress, Amazon Web Services (AWS), ProductPlan, Azure, Marketo
Paradigms
Agile Leadership, Agile Project Management, Scrum, Software Testing, Testing, Requirements Analysis, Change Management, Organizational Change Management (OCM), Agile, Implementation Project Management, UI Design Standards & Best Practices, DevOps, Kanban, Design Thinking, Agile Product Management, Management, Azure DevOps
Industry Expertise
Banking & Finance, Digital Marketing, Financial Services, Small & Medium-sized Enterprises (SME), Utilities, Software
Other
Projects, Scrum Master, Project Management, Business Requirements, Discovery Workshops, Finance, Technical Project Management, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Certified ScrumMaster (CSM), Project Planning, Scope Management, IT Projects, QA Testing, Quality Management, Test Cases, IT Project Management, Customer Experience Management, Digital Project Management, Digital Transformation Program Management, Portfolio Management, Jira Administrator, Program Management, System Integration, Stakeholder Management, User Requirements, User Stories, Business Cases, Scope, Project Finance, Product Management, Product Development, Project Delivery, Backlog Management, Project Reporting, Project Timelines, Project Budget Management, Product Strategy, Estimation & Planning, Web App Development, Estimations, Project Scoping, Web Applications, Agile Product Delivery, Cross-functional Collaboration, Cross-functional Team Leadership, Data Transformation, Release Management, Web Development, Process Improvement Project Management, Freelancing, Process Mapping, Project Management Professional (PMP), Process Management, Project Management & Delivery, Business Processes, SaaS, Software as a Service (SaaS), Data Migration, Database Migration, Requirements, Scrum Coaching, Processing, Dashboard Development, Progress Reporting, Reporting, Dashboards, Sprint Planning, Digital Asset Management, Service Delivery Project Management, IT Service Delivery, Document Management Systems (DMS), Request for Proposal (RFP), Document Management, RFP Negotiation, RFPs, Vendor Selection, Business Analysis, Process Design, Configuration Management, Customer Support, Issue Management, Issue Tracking, Quality Assurance (QA), Root Cause Analysis, User Feedback, Workflow, Software Implementation, Implementation, System Implementation, Workflow Tools, Scaling, IT Infrastructure, IT Service Management (ITSM), Business Systems Analysis, Cost Estimation, Microsoft, Systems Analysis, Project Rescue, Project Scheduling, Requirements & Specifications, Agile DevOps, Process Improvement, Team Management, Product Requirements Documentation (PRD), Website Redesign, Advisory, Process Flows, Leadership, Project Tracking, Dashboard Design, Analytics, Data Analytics, Identity & Access Management (IAM), User Journeys, Branding, Agile Program Management, Data Delivery Management, Certified Project Manager, Business to Business (B2B), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Planning, Roadmaps, Enterprise, Scope of Work, Stakeholder Engagement, Hybrid Project Management, Web Project Management, Websites, Web Design, Project Coordination, Troubleshooting, Process Analysis, Project Management Operations, Data Lakes, Detail-oriented, Process Optimization, Vendor Management, Evaluation, Risk Management, Lean Portfolio Management, Enterprise Product Portfolios, Waterfall Methodology, Website Migration, Training, Consulting, Business Intelligence (BI), Data Extraction, Product Owner, Statement of Work, Relationship Management, Documentation, Software Architecture, Governance, Feature Prioritization, Budgeting, Resource Management, Agile Coaching, Web Technologies, Big Data, HTML, Prototyping, Data, Quality Control (QC), Customer Journeys, Cryptocurrency Exchanges, Clarity PPM, Content Management Systems (CMS), Feature Backlog Prioritization, eCommerce, Data Management, Startups, Data Warehousing, IT Operations Management (ITOM), Fintech, Technical Program Management, SAP, Lean Product Development, Mobile App Development, Marketing Automation, Organizational Design, Social Media APIs, Human Resource Management Systems (HRMS), Funnel Marketing, APIs, Operational Assessments, Credit Card Processing, Payroll & Benefits, Manufacturing, Booking Systems, Elementor, Information Systems, Teradata, Sales, Business Development, Bids, Procurement, Regulatory Compliance, Operations, Marketing, ServiceDesk, PMO Development, Project Management Office (PMO), PMO, Digital, Amazon, Software QA, ServiceNow, Dynamics CRM 365, Resource Allocation, Java, Integration, Digital Transformation, Headless Software, User Experience (UX), User Interface (UI), Data Visualization, Content Management
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