Chris Matthews
Verified Expert in Project Management
Project Manager
Raleigh, NC, United States
Toptal member since December 14, 2020
Throughout his career, Chris has served in a vast array of roles and capacities that have provided him with a well-rounded background in Agile project management, software modernization, and managerial responsibilities. Chris possesses PMP, PMI-ACP, and CSM certifications and has spent the last 10 years as a project manager and scrum master, helping facilitate the successful rollout of new organizational processes and technologies.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- Agile Program Management
- Agile Project Management
- IT Project Management
- Process Improvement Project Management
- Project Discovery
- Project Management Operations
- Scrum Master
- Status Reports
Work Experience
Manager, Delivery Management
Relias
- Worked through strategic recruiting and targeted development activities and cultivated a team of high-performing delivery managers tasked with enabling software delivery across multiple product teams.
- Coached individual delivery management team members and scrum teams on Agile processes and practices, fostering a culture of collaboration, helping streamline processes, and reducing operational bottlenecks.
- Tasked with driving the adoption of Atlassian Atlas and other agile tools for initiative reporting within the product, software engineering, and data and analytics organizations to enhance project visibility and target date tracking.
- Led the oversight of the software development lifecycle process from feature intake through iterative delivery of usable software, including guidance of MVP design, continuous deployment via automation, and regular feedback loops.
Senior Agile Project Manager
Relias
- Provided project management/leadership on multiple projects concurrently. Working closely with internal product teams and external vendors, developing project objectives, creating and managing timelines, risk management, and resource costs.
- Worked as a program manager for Relias' platform modernization, coordinating and overseeing contractor resources, internal product teams, and product-engineering leadership to deconstruct the platform monolith into a microservice architecture.
- Created and continuously improved several processes and templates within the newly established PMO to enable standardization and repeatability across projects and programs.
- Acted as mentor to more junior members of the PMO team. Provided guidance and insight for project management based on experience.
- Executed operational tasks supporting the engineering organization, such as internal labor financial reporting, including adherence reporting enhancements.
Proposal Manager
Spathe Systems
- Managed multiple RFP and RFI responses concurrently, including developing schedules, assigning content writers, pulling past performances, and monitoring other activities such as personnel recruiting.
- Thoroughly analyzed RFPs and RFIs and developed proposal outlines and proposal development worksheets for volumes up to 150+ pages.
- Conducted and executed regular proposal reviews during the development process.
- Collected and stored previously written content for use in future proposals.
- Performed compelling desktop publishing of proposals in Microsoft Word while ensuring clean format and readability.
IT Project Manager | Scrum Master
Spathe Systems
- Developed and documented several processes and templates for the organization's newly created PMO to enable standardization and repeatability across projects and programs.
- Managed both Agile and Waterfall projects depending on the project's needs, including initial requirement gathering, project budget estimation and management, management of project tasks, and project reporting.
- Facilitated the development of applications for the DoD client from initial project liftoff and application design through handoff of usable software.
- Facilitated regular scrum ceremonies for up to three scrum teams concurrently. This includes sprint planning, daily standups, customer demos of completed features, and team retrospectives.
Project Manager | Scrum Master
Disney Parks, Experiences, and Products, Inc.
- Collaborated with the product owner and business analysts to capture and refine user stories customizing Clarity PPM tool to support Disney's enterprise IT teams.
- Coached the development team and individual team members on appropriate Agile methodologies and values and the purpose behind specific Agile practices.
- Managed a $2 million annual project budget, working closely with the resource manager and project controller to track project actuals and forecasts and control costs.
- Provided weekly project status reports to executive-level leadership, reporting on current project status, delivered features, current budget, and product roadmap.
- Facilitated regular Scrum ceremonies for a cross-functional team of 18 members, including sprint planning, daily standups, and sprint retrospectives. Regularly reviewed Agile metrics and assisted the team in identifying continuous improvement opportunities.
- Facilitated epic and feature relative sizing and estimated team capacity for the upcoming quarter during quarterly product planning sessions.
Agile Project Leader
Catalina
- Drove global development and adoption of Catalina's new media platform execution system. The program consisted of multiple technology product development Scrum teams and implementation project teams in the US, Europe, and Japan.
- Led a project team of leaders from legal, sales, IT, and information security to prepare the organization for compliance with newly enacted GDPR laws in under four months.
- Provided project leadership over a project that set up a procurement organization within the company. The project included defining roles and responsibilities, process design, internal communication, and change management.
- Facilitated the implementation of several business-related functions and processes with cross-function project teams, including contract lifecycle management and Lean campaign setup.
Project History
Media Platform for Catalina
Served as a program manager driving development and adoption of the internal execution platform.
- Led the commercialization teams in the US, Europe, and Japan to enable adoption by internal users.
- Participated in scrum of scrums meetings, coordinating support features such as ETL.
Global Logistics Overview (GLO)
Led the development of a cloud-based containerized application MVP on behalf of a DoD client.
- Executed regular Scrum ceremonies for the development team and client product owner.
- Hosted regular end-user demos with external stakeholders to provide an overview of progress and solicit feedback and potential enhancements
- Delivered MVP within four months from the project kickoff. Deliverables included working software, architectural and training documentation, and a roadmap for future feature capabilities.
GDPR Compliance Readiness
Led a project team of leaders from information security, legal, sales, and IT to prepare the organization for compliance with newly enacted GDPR laws in under four months.
- Facilitated project discovery to understand what work had been accomplished and what deliverables were still pending.
- Coordinated the authoring of necessary compliance documentation, including inputs from various departments within the organization and implementation of cookie notices for users of all company-owned and operated websites.
- Facilitated the completion of data controller agreements between Catalina and approximately 90 vendors in the project's scope.
- Led a sub-team of IT and data architecture to map and document all data stores within the organizational databases.
Clarity PPM Configuration and Customization
Coordinated and managed several configurations and customization releases of the Clarity PPM tool to support Disney's IT teams.
- Worked with the product owner and business analysts to capture and refine user stories.
- Facilitated quarterly product planning sessions where product roadmap was set. Led epic and feature relative sizing and estimated team capacity for the upcoming quarter.
- Actively managed a $2,000,000 annual OPEX project budget, working closely with the resource manager and project controller to track project actuals and forecasts and control costs.
- Owned day-to-day management of project activities, including driving project schedules, scheduling and facilitating regular production releases, and managing stakeholders. Actively identified potential risks and issues and handled the closure of issues promptly.
- Provided a weekly project status report to the company leadership. I reported current project status, features delivered, current spend to budget, and product roadmap.
Education
Master's Degree in Business Administration (MBA)
University of South Florida - Tampa, FL
Bachelor's Degree in Marketing
Anderson University - Anderson, IN
Certifications
PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)
Project Management Institute, Inc.
Certified Scrum Master
Scrum Alliance, Inc.
Certified Change Practitioner
Prosci, Inc.
Project Management Professional (PMP)
Project Management Institute, Inc.
Skills
Tools
Jira, Zoom, Slack, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Excel, Project Management & Work Tracking Tools, Microsoft Project, TargetProcess, VersionOne, Miro
Paradigms
Agile Project Management, Scrum, Agile, Kanban, Agile Leadership, Change Management, Organizational Change Management (OCM), Requirements Analysis, PMBOK
Industry Expertise
Software
Other
Cisco Webex Meetings Server, Outlook, Excel 2013, Scrum Master, Project Management Operations, Agile Program Management, Sprint Retrospectives, Story Point Estimation, Project Management, Project Planning, Cross-functional Collaboration, Waterfall Methodology, Process Improvement Project Management, Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), Project Discovery, IT Project Management, Business Management, Status Reports, Project Budget Management, PI Planning, BlueJeans, Sprint Planning, Continuous Improvement, Agile Transformation, Discovery Workshops, Discovery, Planning, Project Management Office (PMO), Process Documentation, Best Practices, Project Management Professional (PMP), Certified ScrumMaster (CSM), Software as a Service (SaaS), Cross-functional Team Leadership, Software Project Management, Clarity PPM, Customer Service Management (CSM), Marketing, Accounting, Project Scheduling, Feature Planning, Executive Reporting, Cost Management, Client-side, Communication, Project Leadership, Cross-cultural Communication, Budgeting, Feature Roadmaps, Project Portfolio Management Platforms, Agile Coaching, RFPs, RFQs, ITTs, Responses, Proposals & Quotes, Proofreading, Budget Management, Retrospective Techniques, Program Management, Team Mentoring, Process Improvement, Interviewing, Tool Adoption, User Stories, Business to Business (B2B), Team Leadership
How to Work with Toptal
Toptal matches you directly with global industry experts from our network in hours—not weeks or months.
Share your needs
Choose your talent
Start your risk-free talent trial
Top talent is in high demand.
Start hiring