Alvaro Villena, Project Manager in Santiago, Chile
Alvaro Villena

Project Manager in Santiago, Chile

Member since October 16, 2019
Alvaro is a seasoned project manager with vast experience in innovation and product development through the Agile methodology. With a background in industrial engineering, UX design, consulting, and coaching, Alvaro's ability to facilitate Agile implementations and process improvement initiatives has increased team velocity and enabled more efficient product development efforts. Alvaro brings a wealth of experience to any organization looking to enhance their product development results.
Alvaro is now available for hire

Project Highlights

  • Improved development time by 50% in the Innovation Department by implementing a program management structure based on SAFe, making work across various teams visible, and improving dependency and risk management
  • Developed a proctoring product MVP for a K-12 learning platform focused on the Asian market using state-of-the-art technology for face recognition and integration with existing LMS in three months.
  • Created a go-to-market strategy for a new product in the accounting industry, adopting agile product management practices and UX design strategies, helping the client raise private funds to continue his product development process

Expertise

Education

Employment

  • Edtech and E-learning Consultant

    2020 - PRESENT
    Ewaffle.cl
    • Created innovative training systems, incorporating gamification to introduce innovation and agile skills to corporate clients.
    • Standardized and captured best practices of the e-learning project lifecycle, from understanding customer needs, analyzing content availability, defining learning models and approaches, vendor selection and management, and delivery.
    • Guided educational and corporate organizations in adopting LMS platforms considering E2E projects from analysis and planning stages to QA and platform implementation.
    • Oversaw the design process, facilitating the adaptation of traditional classrooms to digital-based ones. Managed vendors to achieve on-time delivery.
    • Led the product development of a digital proctoring solution. Performed a benchmark of existing solutions, proposed a product roadmap, and built the product backlog for the development team.
  • Agile Project Manager

    2019 - PRESENT
    Toptal
    • Implemented Agile and Scrum practices on product development teams, resulting in increased team velocity and reduced project completion time.
    • Developed and implemented an agility assessment tool for multiple clients that improved product development teams' performance.
    • Facilitated Agile implementation in leadership teams, which resulted in a sustainable Agile transformation across teams and departments.
    • Managed multiple Agile teams developing for one value chain, successfully delivering IT projects and programs on schedule to the client’s complete satisfaction.
    • Led process improvement initiatives that increased customer satisfaction and reduced project costs.
  • Agile Consultant & Coach

    2021 - 2023
    Black Hat
    • Developed and implemented an agility assessment tool for various clients to establish performance levels in product development teams and create action plans to improve value creation.
    • Assisted corporate clients in implementing program management structures based on the Scaled Agile Framework managing multiple Agile teams developing for one value chain.
    • Facilitated Agile implementation in leadership teams to sustain Agile transformation across teams and departments.
    • Led process improvement initiatives to increase team and product development velocity.
  • Project Manager Screener

    2020 - 2023
    Toptal
    • Joined the Toptal team to screen project manager candidates that wanted to join the Toptal network and validated their knowledge, skills, and competencies.
    • Screened over 200 project manager candidates over the last three years.
    • Integrated the new scrum master vertical and screening team. Opened a new candidate validation process focused on the scrum masters' knowledge and skills.
  • Agile Coach and Project Manager

    2019 - 2019
    Tigabytes
    • Cultivated Agile values on three teams over six months, focusing on transparency and a continuous improvement mentality.
    • Rolled out around 15 customer-facing SaaS implementation projects, engaging client change and technology management teams.
    • Designed and enforced an internal innovation and continuous improvement program, raising and implementing 10+ opportunities to enhance the business unit's performance.
    • Led an internal product development team of six members, achieving a new version release in two months.
    • Worked with clients in the banking, alimentary, governmental, and services industries.
    • Managed 10+ software development projects for customers in Google Cloud Platform, big data, and machine learning technologies.
    • Led change management process on customers; assessed knowledge gaps, defined a training strategy, designed materials, and implemented them with customers.
    • Transformed training processes to implement an e-learning self-paced platform. Worked with instructional designers along the process to enhance the training experience.
  • Scrum Master

    2018 - 2019
    Latam Airlines
    • Coached a nine-member development team in scrum implementation and into becoming a self-organized team.
    • Achieved a minimum viable product release in four months (eight sprints), turning internal developments 3x faster than average.
    • Piloted new technologies for the organization, including Jira, Google Cloud Platform, continuous integration/continuous development models, Kubernetes Engine, Angular, and microservices architecture (Spring Boot).
    • Coached the product owner towards business value and minimum viable product mentality.
    • Trained other teams to adopt agile values and philosophy, helping our business unit become more nimble.
  • Commercial Systems Engineer

    2017 - 2018
    Latam Airlines
    • Designed and implemented the technology migration and improvement roadmaps to meet migration goals and deadlines.
    • Coordinated the revenue, digital, distribution, and pricing teams to a 99% effective migration, achieving business continuity and zero customer impact within the merger of Lan (Chile) and Tam (Brazil) airlines.
    • Mobilized the multidisciplinary technology team to improve Latam.com availability and accuracy from 85% to 99%.
    • Analyzed and tested data to ensure zero impact on the company merger process.
    • Trained and guided Brazilian users (in Sao Paulo) in the new technology usage.
  • Teacher

    2015 - 2017
    Universidad de Concepción
    • Taught three courses on innovation, business, and well-being management to engineering students, involving external organizations for hands-on experience.
    • Designed and implemented a social innovation course for engineering students, engaging with external social non-governmental organizations.
    • Promoted innovation knowledge and skills in higher education engineering students through project-based learning methodologies.
  • Co-founder and Commercial Manager

    2015 - 2016
    Innapel
    • Designed and implemented a technical-commercial strategy to develop a new customer portfolio, achieving a 30% quarterly growth.
    • Created and managed a customer portfolio of 30+ clients by integrating traditional business channels with digital creation.
    • Raised USD 50,000 in private and public funding for new technologies development and implementation.
  • Strategy Consultant

    2014 - 2016
    FBL Consulting
    • Consulted small and medium businesses to improve process efficiency, business outcomes, and internal customer well-being by implementing management models.
    • Coached the business to implement new internal development processes and management models to create innovative in-house capabilities.
    • Performed a gap analysis on the skills and knowledge of collaborators, defined a strategy to close those gaps, and designed training materials that lecturers later implemented. Implemented some of the project workshops as a lecturer.
  • Engineer | Research, Development, Innovation

    2012 - 2014
    Incuba Udec
    • Analyzed and improved go-to-market strategies for 15+ university research technologies.
    • Led innovation processes through a design thinking framework in 3+ small and medium businesses to enable value creation and business innovation.
    • Helped researchers raise governmental funds (USD 1 million) to improve technology development.

Project History

  • E-learning Manager
    I significantly improved the course development time, reducing it from six to three months, and reduced development costs by 300% by optimizing vendor management.

    Acting as an interim e-learning manager, my responsibilities included:

    • Managing multiple e-course development projects
    • Defining scope and coordinating instructional design activities and vendor technology development
    • Identifying and coordinating with instructional design vendors
    • Providing overall project management support for e-courses
    • Providing expert advice and feedback on the design and development of e-courses
    • Holding weekly review meetings with vendors and internal team members
    • Providing weekly status reports on projects to the publisher and other designated team members
    • Leading the development and launching of 6-8 e-courses in a quarter
    • Editing courses and loading them into the platform
    • Coordinating with the team in India

    I acted with independent thinking and as someone who proved to be comfortable being proactive, making decisions while keeping stakeholder needs in mind.

  • Digital Implementation of Customer Training Processes
    Enabled faster implementation and escalation, increased customer reach, and learned knowledge validation

    Managed the transformation of the customer training process, which was implemented through traditional approaches (20 people personal training in classrooms), into a digital e-learning self-paced platform.

    Led a multidisciplinary team of 5+ content creators, developers, and customer service representatives to design and implement courses.

  • Innovation Process Implementation
    Reduced process implementation time by 100%. Designed and implemented an innovation procedure at the organization level

    Led a 6+ person team in implementing innovation methodologies, aiming to identify new business opportunities and develop operation solutions, achieving operational time improvements of 200%, enabling new customer acquisition and business models.

    Trained business and operation representatives in innovation processes and methodologies, resulting in institutionalized innovation standards. The implemented procedure consisted of a 4-stage innovation process based on the design thinking methodology. The stages were: business challenges exploration, solution ideation, prototyping and testing, and solution implementation.

  • Revenue System Development
    Minimum viable product release in four months and monthly feature releases

    Guided a newly formed team of nine developers, one business analyst, and a product owner into adopting the scrum development framework plus other practices from Kanban and extreme programming (XP) with E2E ownership of the product involving architecture and infrastructure design and implementation, software development, QA testing, deployment (continuous integration and continuous delivery) and operation.
    Technologies used included Jira, Google Cloud Platform, Bamboo, Kubernetes Engine, Angular, Selenium, and microservices architecture (Spring Boot). Implemented pilot technologies for the organization: cloud infrastructure, continuous integration pipelines, and microservices architecture. Coached team members into performance improvement through 1:1 sessions, continuous feedback, and goal management.

  • Availability System Improvement
    Increased availability accuracy levels from 85% to 99% for major digital distribution channels

    Led a multidisciplinary team of 9+ people from business (revenue, pricing, and distribution) and technology units (digital, development, IT business continuity, and operation research) in identifying errors in the availability systems, adopting short-term fixes and implementing long-term solutions to improve the system's overall efficiency.

  • Internal Processes Optimization and Automation
    Improved process performance for over 200% by automating and standardizing day-to-day processes

    I successfully managed a complex project for a financial service, improving their day-to-day operations.

    Some of the key achievements in this project include:

    Proficient use of Asana, demonstrating expertise in the Asana project management software and effectively managing all aspects of the project.

    Mentorship and coaching, acting as a mentor and coach to the organization, helping to transform the mindset and setting the structure required to prepare the organization for new projects.

    Status reporting, consistently keeping the organization's senior officials informed of the project status through regular status reports and meetings.

    Project documentation, maintaining accurate project documentation and follow-up systems, mainly Jira, to ensure the project was properly tracked and recorded.

    Instrumental in team development, removing roadblocks to the team's work, mentoring the team, and utilizing organizational resources to improve their capacity for project work.

    High-quality work, encouraging a sustainable pace with a high level of quality for the team, ensuring that the project was delivered on time and to the client's satisfaction.

  • Project Processes Standardization and Automation
    Achieved the standardization of the company's operation and billing processes and improved efficiency, which allowed obtaining valuable KPIs for decision-making at the company level

    Successfully improved the utilization of Wrike and coached the project team on its full advantages.

    Effectively led the team on various responsibilities, including planning, scheduling, and managing all aspects of the project. Maintained status reports, compiled historical data, and presented status reports to senior officials.

    Assisted in team development and empowerment, promoting meaningful contributions from each team member.

    Showed strong experience in fast-paced software development with Agile (scrum) and Wrike proficiency.

    With excellent analytical skills and attention to detail, drove continuous improvement throughout the project lifecycle.

    Also led the project team to execute various tasks, including project planning, scheduling, coordination, and management.

    Contributed to the project's success with solid experience with Wrike and project management, excellent analytical skills, and attention to detail.

    Also praised for my strong communication skills and ability to respond to rapidly changing situations with flexibility and rigorous attention to detail.

  • SAFe Implementation
    Improved development time by 50% in the Innovation Department by implementing a program management structure based on SAFe, making work across various teams visible, and improving dependency and risk management

    Demonstrated experience in implementing Agile methodologies, specifically the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe).

    Developed and implemented an agility assessment tool to evaluate the performance levels of product development teams and create improvement plans.

    Assisted a forest manufacturing industry corporate client in setting up program management structures using SAFe to manage multiple agile teams.

    Facilitated agile implementation within leadership teams to ensure sustained transformation across teams and departments.

    Additionally, I led process improvement initiatives to increase team and product development velocity.

  • Proctoring App for K-12 Institutions
    Developed a proctoring product MVP for a K-12 learning platform focused on the Asian market using state-of-the-art technology for face recognition and integration with existing LMS in three months.

    Developed an AI-powered online proctoring solution for a cheat-free learning environment by:

    • Creating an industry benchmark of existing solutions
    • Preparing technical specifications
    • Estimating timeline and cost with development
    • Validating key initial decisions with stakeholders
    • Managing a team of developers and designers to develop the MVP
    • Overseeing the product development

  • Accounting Nexus Calculation App Development
    Created a go-to-market strategy for a new product in the accounting industry, adopting agile product management practices and UX design strategies, helping the client raise private funds to continue his product development process

    Client-owned and operated a data analytics platform implementation company that was in business for over a year. Completed an organization assessment and proposed a structure for product development, team management, and running client projects.

    Managed a team of three data engineers, one data analyst, and one data analyst intern and expanded with a few developers.

    Coached the CEO of the company in agile and product management best practices.

    Overseed the development of an MVP, launching it to market in four months.

Education

  • Master of Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Business Administration
    2022 - 2023
    OBS Business School - Barcelona, Spain
  • Advanced Ontological Coach in Coaching
    2020 - 2022
    Newfield Network - Santiago, Chile
  • Master's Degree in Systems Engineering
    2013 - 2015
    University of Concepcion - Chile
  • Bachelor's Degree in Industrial Engineering
    2009 - 2014
    University of Concepcion - Concepcion, Bio Bio, Chile

Certifications

  • Six Sigma Yellow Belt
    OCTOBER 2022 - PRESENT
    SCRUMstudy
  • Scrum Product Owner Certified (SPOC)
    OCTOBER 2022 - PRESENT
    SCRUMstudy
  • UX Design
    SEPTEMBER 2020 - PRESENT
    Coderhouse
  • Certified Scrum Master
    MAY 2020 - MAY 2023
    SCRUMstudy
  • Professional Scrum Master Level I (PSM I)
    JUNE 2019 - PRESENT
    Scrum.org

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