Andrew Lester
Verified Expert in Project Management
Project Manager
Vancouver, BC, Canada
Toptal member since February 7, 2020
Andrew is a successful executive and leader driven to bring positive change. Andrew enjoys taking on the "that's just the way we do it" culture and questioning it. He is most at home in big picture strategy and large-scale delivery problems. Andrew's range of learnings—from the commercial launch of a startup to leading a large 400-person digital transformation to scaled agile implementation—makes him ready to take on any challenge.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- Agile
- Agile Coaching
- Annual Budgets
- Governance
- Organizational Design
- Planning
- Program Management
- Strategy
Work Experience
Operations and Production Manager
Lyric Cycles
- Led the industrial design and development efforts to create four unique electric motorcycles from concept through prototyping to commercial launch.
- Helped grow the company from bootstrapped beginnings to over $2 million in yearly revenue.
- Created the product strategy, roadmap, and competitive advantage to help the products stand out in a crowded marketplace.
- Set up the eCommerce website on Shopify, as well as the logistics software and solutions, shipping strategy, and overseas shipping strategy.
Engagement Manager
The Hundred10 Technologies
- Helped start and grow the company and acted as the primary business development lead and engagement manager for the company's main customers.
- Grew the company over $3 million in revenue and helped the company gain AWS Advanced status.
- Helped hire employees and consultants, conduct staff engagements, write and win proposals, set up the company structure, create the company's vision/values/mission statement, and rally the team behind it.
Strategy Advisor | Marketing Director | Principal
Xerris
- Led the management team through a business strategic planning to develop the high-level 3-year plan and a detailed rolling 12-month plan to implement.
- Created the structure and chaired the 1st advisory board meetings for the company.
- Assisted in organization design to determine a structure the company could scale into for their large technology teams. The team grew from 34 members to over 100 under this structure.
- Created the marketing plan and budget and secured marketing funding from the companies' partners to execute a marketing plan 10X greater than the previous year. Led the implementation of the marketing plan.
- Developed a business development strategy to gain the 1st public services clients for the company. Closed two significant multi-year public clients within the first three months.
Co-founder
Xavien
- Acted as a co-founder of an eCommerce company that has successfully launched several products in the sporting goods and home goods market. Products have been launched on both Amazon marketplace and Shopify.
- Set up and maintained positive ROAS digital marketing campaigns on Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Manychat.
- Reviewed market trends and conducted analysis to determine products and product categories for continued growth.
Regional Director
Arcurve
- Opened the Pacific Northwest office and introduced the company to potential clients throughout the region.
- Performed the initial selection, hiring, and management of the regional team involved in services projects.
- Oversaw and was accountable for engagement and relationship management for each of the clients.
- Worked on business development to identify new opportunities, including finding creative methods for new lead generation and lead tracking with Pipedrive and Netsuite.
- Conducted market research to identify potential areas to focus both marketing and sales efforts.
Co-founder
Nine Dynamics
- Created branding and market positioning for a new fintech startup in the investment analysis space. This included logo, website design and development, and market research. Photoshop, Illustrator, and Jetbrains were all used.
- Gained $2 million in investment capital to fund the startup through the initial growth phase.
- Developed the business strategy, business plan, and operations and tactical planning to keep the company on schedule. Utilized Trello for ongoing business activity tracking.
- Organized and chaired board activities and investor updates.
- Managed business operations by utilizing QuickBooks.
- Set up and maintained customer lead and drip campaign marketing through HubSpot.
Portfolio Manager
Shaw Industries
- Created and managed a $40-million digital transformation portfolio plan (multiple programs) to deliver key self-serve capabilities to large-cap companies' customers.
- Staffed and managed the performance of the project management staff required to deliver the portfolio results.
- Created a multi-year budget plan and managed the $40-million portfolio to within 5% of the overall plan.
- Identified areas for partners and completed the vendor selection and subsequent management for the portfolio (seven key partners).
- Created and served as the ongoing chair of the delivery governance committee overseeing the digital transformation activities.
- Helped to lead the governance committee through the mind-shift to cloud migration, micro-service architecture, and DevOps strategies (AWS, Docker).
Program Manager
TC Energy
- Created and managed a program schedule to deliver the technology solution for the scheduling and operations of a major transcontinental pipeline.
- Planned and managed the budget for a $25-million program.
- Selected, hired, and managed the technology teams in three different geographic locations. The team had 50+ people including architects, developers, business analysts, quality analysts, and support members.
- Ensured that the agile delivery methodology was carried out efficiently.
- Chaired the delivery governance committee overseeing the program schedule, budget, and scope. The program was delivered on time for the major linefill activities of the pipeline.
Risk and Project Quality Manager
ICBC
- Coordinated and refined the risk management process for a $400-million business transformation program.
- Developed and refined a project quality assurance process to proactively look for areas of risk and program intersection.
- Took stewardship of project management and agile delivery best practices.
- Developed and presented risk management reporting for the board of directors and external auditors.
- Coordinated and managed the ongoing external quality audit process with a big-five management consulting firm.
Senior Project Manager
TC Energy
- Mentored and guided 12 project managers through a program of project health overviews. This program proactively identified all risks in the portfolio before they became issues.
- Implemented agile project management of custom-developed applications ($1-5-million budgets) for gas storage and oil pipeline management.
- Supplied ERP project management for a $5-million Dynamics AX implementation. The program was rolled out with successful change management.
- Generated custom off-the-shelf project management for several $1-to-3 million projects.
- Planned and managed budgets for up to five projects at a time.
Project Manager
Bell Canada
- Successfully delivered a $2-million program of small initiatives that the company had previously struggled to find a delivery plan for; it was delivered through the Agile methodology.
- Acted as a scrum master for several custom development initiatives. This was a large, disconnected team of 50 or more people that each needed to be coordinated to do a 3-4 day task for every release.
- Managed a project team of 12 people to deliver an exchange server upgrade and changeover to active directory.
- Planned and managed a $2 million project budget, including executive reporting.
- Hired and implemented the performance management of business analysis and quality assurance staff.
Manager, Project Management Office
Enmax
- Developed a project selection scoring funnel to help filter opportunities and reduce the number of active projects.
- Created a program level dashboard for effective executive communication and management information.
- Managed program level risk.
- Oversaw hiring and performance.
- Provided program-level budget planning and management services.
Analyst
BearingPoint
- Created project management white papers to commercialize an academic project management process.
- Conducted industry research on best practices in project management.
- Assisted in the management of a PMO for a large B2B telecommunications company launch.
- Contributed to the facilitation of project management training courses delivered to clients.
- Worked with the University of Calgary to develop course material for students of project management.
Project History
Nine Dynamics Launch
https://customers.microsoft.com/en-gb/story/nine-dynamics-partner-professional-services-power-bi-embeddedServed as the co-founder for a new investment analysis tool in the fintech market.
The software was completed and commercially launched through gaining critical strategic investment capital for the go-to-market strategy. The company gained traction initially through the presentation and demonstration at major industry trade shows.
Shaw Digital Transformation
Led the digital transformation portfolio to bring Shaw's digital assets into an innovative self-serve space.
The program included elements of cloud migration, self-serve tool selection and implementation, SAFe agile program delivery, vendor selection and partnership, and program staff hiring and performance management.
The program was successful in making the first steps towards a multi-year journey of ongoing digital transformation.
Xerris Growth
Part of a small management and founder team that grew a software services company from three employees to 100 employees in around two years.
We were particularly good at hiring and onboarding resources and spent a significant amount of time doing so including readying new team members to our teamwork and values principals before they were engaged in client-facing projects.
Education
Bachelor's Degree in Commerce
University of Calgary - Calgary, Canada
Certifications
Project Management Professional (PMP)
Project Management Institute (PMI)
Skills
Tools
Trello, Microsoft Project, Microsoft Outlook, Jira, Zoom, Slack, Asana
Paradigms
Waterfall Delivery, B2B, Scrum, Agile, Agile Project Management, Agile Workflow, Agile Delivery, Marketplace Platforms, B2C, Kanban, Agile Leadership, Waterfall Development, B2B2C
Industry Expertise
Software, Consumer Products, Digital Marketing, New Business Ventures, Venture Capital, Telecommunications, Oil & Gas, Retail & Wholesale, Logistics, Digital Agencies
Platforms
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Shopify, Monday.com, Azure, Magento, WooCommerce
Other
Waterfall Methodology, Budgeting, Budget Modeling, Vendor Selection, Hiring, IT Projects, Hybrid Project Management, Program Management, Portfolio Management, Budget Management, IT Strategy, Strategy, Project Management, Software Project Management, Mobile/Web Project Management, Project Discovery, Governance, IT Governance, Annual Budgets, Cost Estimation, Project Estimation, Agile Sprints, Planning, Procurement, Pitch Decks, Estimation & Planning, Project Scoping, Stakeholder Management, Digital Transformation Program Management, Digital Project Management, Project Management Operations, Cross-functional Collaboration, Startups, Early-stage Startups, Project Planning, Project Coordination, Project Scheduling, Task Scheduling, Project Management & Delivery, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), Critical Path Analysis, Certified Project Manager, Delivery Management, Cross-functional Team Leadership, Communication Management, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), PMO, Business to Consumer (B2C), Web Project Management, Project Management Office (PMO), Process Improvement, Consulting, IT Project Management, Productivity, Workflow, Project Management Professional (PMP), Finance, eCommerce, Amazon FBA, Marketing, Board of Directors, Account Management, Business Development, Contract, Product Management, Management Consulting, Financial Analysis, Operations, Accounting, Budget Controls, Vendor Management, Vendors & Suppliers, Launch Strategy, Fintech, Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), Organizational Design, Agile Coaching, Operations Management, Process Optimization, Growth, Documentation, Product Imports, PMI, Microsoft 365, Government Contracting, Serverless Architecture, Technical Project Management, Drop Shipping, Digital Strategy, Social Media, Social Networks, Supply Chain, R&D, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning, Chief of Staff, Product Launch, Cloud, Teams, Strategic Planning, Business Advisory, Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP), Growth Marketing, Lead Marketing, New Business Development, Proposals, Engagement Management, Clients, Agency Relationship Management (ARM), Embedded Software, Electric Vehicles, Industrial Design, Contract Manufacturing, Manufacturing, Financials
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