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
Project Manager - Supply Chain Strategy
Tropicana Brands Group
- Joined the supply chain strategy team to develop a communications strategy for the supply chain department that recently separated from PBNA.
- Developed the change management strategy and plan for a cross-functional program to develop a new independent distribution and sales channel to support a product category that needed to be moved from PBNA to TBG.
- Managed stakeholders related to the change management risks/issues and transition cutover for a cross-department SAP program involving system, process, and people change.
- Managed the development of new reporting and analytics projects through a transition period in the business to establish new data sources and reporting materials.
- Executed a communications strategy to bring visibility to new department values, priorities, and programs, as well as communication of risks, supply chain disruptions, and resolution paths for issues.
- Developed a bi-weekly newsletter, video series, and other communications strategies to bring interest to department activities.
Operations and Technical Product Manager
Lyric Cycles
- Led the industrial design, project management, product management, 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 $3 million in yearly revenue.
- Built and managed the product roadmap and release schedule, balancing market requirements, compliance regulations, and technical dependencies across mechanical, electrical, and software teams.
- Directed end-to-end product management and delivery of high-performance electric bikes, coordinating hardware engineering, industrial design, and embedded software development for controllers and power systems.
- Selected, configured, and managed the inventory ERP, logistics, and shipping systems as well as the inventory and logistics strategy for the company, which reduced logistics costs from 11% down to 5.2%.
- Oversaw iterative prototype cycles and validation testing, ensuring alignment between user feedback, regulatory requirements, and engineering feasibility.
Delivery Manager
The Hundred10 Technologies
- Helped start and grow the company and acted as the primary business development lead and engagement manager for its main customers.
- Grew the company's revenue to over $3 million 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.
- Drove cross-functional Agile delivery of digital solutions by acting as a key client conduit, managing technical product backlogs, sprint planning, and stakeholder alignment.
- Led engagement governance, ensuring visibility into delivery velocity, risk status, and backlog priorities for executive stakeholders.
- Implemented Scaled Agile practices by synchronizing product increments with client expectations, aligning incremental launches with strategic business outcomes.
- Oversaw resource hiring and onboarding in agile team contexts, fostering alignment with delivery values, priorities, and technical roadmaps that underpinned AWS Advanced milestone achievement.
Product Launch Manager
Spin Mobility
- Developed the new vehicle program launch schedule to bring new vehicle types to new markets and open new markets (cities) for Spin Mobility.
- Managed stakeholders through reporting for the executive team and board of directors for all new launch markets, along with issues and risks reporting for both markets and vehicle development projects.
- Managed cross-functional teams of software, embedded software, hardware, testing, and operations teams to prepare new vehicles for market launch.
- Used hybrid project management approaches combining traditional waterfall with agile to work for different groups in the organization.
Senior Project Manager
Xerris
- Led Scaled Agile (SAFe) program implementations, coordinating across multiple teams to deliver enterprise-level digital transformation initiatives.
- Facilitated Program Increment (PI) planning sessions, sprint reviews, and retrospectives to align delivery teams with business objectives.
- Partnered with client executives and technical leads to define roadmaps, backlogs, and release trains, ensuring alignment between strategy and delivery.
- Championed Agile best practices, driving continuous improvement in velocity, predictability, and stakeholder satisfaction.
- Oversaw end-to-end project delivery for cloud-native solutions, balancing scope, budget, and resources across distributed Agile teams.
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.
Delivery 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 service 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.
- Directed client engagements across software development and IT service projects, applying Agile delivery frameworks (Scrum/Kanban) to improve predictability, quality, and velocity.
- Led technical audit projects for technology businesses, reviewing their delivery processes, tooling, backlog management, technology stacks, and organizational practices, and producing actionable audit reports with recommendations for improvement.
- Facilitated workshops with engineering and product teams to identify delivery bottlenecks, introduce Agile best practices, and implement backlog refinement processes.
- Directed client engagements across software development and IT service projects, applying Agile delivery frameworks (Scrum/Kanban) to improve predictability, quality, and velocity.
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
Served as the co-founder for a new investment analysis tool in the fintech market.
I, along with a partner, developed the concept and business model (SaaS) for a new fintech tool servicing the professional investment management market. We created the software tool, branding, and market positioning for an innovative artificial intelligence analysis tool positioned to the professional investment manager or highly skilled at-home investor.
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.
I created and managed the strategic plan for a digital transformation portfolio of projects. The goal of the program was to deliver integrated self-serve and eCommerce tools to Shaw’s customers which would increase their customer service satisfaction with the brand, increase conversion rates on discovered products, and reduce overall operating costs.
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.
As a member of the management team, I wore several hats including marketing director, advisory board chair, business development executive, client principal, coach, and mentor. The challenge was scaling a group of individuals that had previous experience as independent contractors but little experience being members of a company. The company grew by leveraging our network of partners (AWS, Azure, Google, Hashicorp, Etc.) and growing each account through continued success.
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.
Lyric Cycles Graffiti Launch
- $150,000 — First Month Sales
- $1.5 million — Total Annual Sales
- 1% — Warranty Cost of the Product on a 1-year Warranty
• We needed to develop a new style of electric bike in a crowded marketplace that would find product market fit and develop a following for the brand
• We needed a foothold in the market as well as early success to allow the company to keep developing new models and attract investors.
• We developed a moped style bike that was differentiated both in form factor and in power and performance that set the company up as a performance e-bike brand.
• The initial model sold very well and solidified the brand as a high performance bike brand.
• This model allowed us the ability to launch three more models in the next three years to grow the companies product offerings.
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, Google Workspace, Microsoft Excel, Jira, Figma, Google Sheets, 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, Change Management
Industry Expertise
Software, Consumer Products, Digital Marketing, New Business Ventures, Venture Capital, Telecommunications, Oil & Gas, Retail & Wholesale, Logistics, Digital Agencies, Revenue Operations (RevOps)
Platforms
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Shopify, Monday.com, Azure, Magento, WooCommerce
Other
Product Launch, 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), Innovation, Business Communication, Web, Stripe, Digital Payments, Client Delivery Management, Client Management, Project Timelines, Project Tracking, Risk Management, Getting Things Done (GTD), PMO Processes, Project Leadership, Cost Management, SaaS, PowerPoint Design, Coordination, Business Transformation, Business Consulting, Client Relationship Management, 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, Business Analysis, Business Operations, CRM Systems, Financial Modeling, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Go-to-market (GTM) Strategy, 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, Newsletters, Presentations, Presentation Design, Communication, External Communications, Embedded Hardware, Hardware Testing, Product Development, Product Design, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Design, Prototyping, Investment Banking
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