Edward is available for hire
Hire EdwardEdward "Ed" Talabi
Verified Expert in Project Management
Project Manager
Location
Dallas, TX, United States
Toptal Member Since
November 20, 2018
Ed is an experienced agile project manager whose perspective about managing projects has given him unique opportunities to transform fortune 500 organizations into high performing teams. Ed has worked in solar, healthcare, finance, and oil & energy industries. He has demonstrated experience with agile software development initiatives in a variety of roles: business analyst, product owner, scrum master, agile coach, and as a project manager.
Project Highlights
Comparison Shopping for SMB
Led a team to build a comparison shopping engine that allows shoppers to compare the price of products.
Mobile Payments
Led a team of 150 IT talents to deliver rewards mobile payment solution for the oil and energy industry.
Customer Portal
Let the implementation of the customer portal for a renewable energy company.
Expertise
Work Experience
Agile Project Manager - Scrum Master
2015 - PRESENT
Hardeysolutions
- Coached the product owner on writing user stories and assigning business value to them.
- Coordinated agile ceremonies like sprint planning, sprint reviews, daily scrums, sprint retrospectives, and other needed meetings to help the team deliver.
- Shielded the scrum team from outside influences and interferences to ensure that the team did not get distracted and remained focused on the sprint and release objectives.
- Mentored scrum masters on process improvements.
- Managed project financials, budget, risk, and dependencies.
Agile Project Manager
2016 - 2017
Sabre Holdings Inc
- Developed project schedules and plans.
- Coordinated Agile Ceremonies such as sprint planning, story writing session, sprint review, sprint retrospectives, and sprint review.
- Helped product managers and product owners with user story writing, team ROI, and release planning.
- Helped the team with lightning workshop starts.
- Monitored project execution to deliver incremental business value.
Project Manager - Scrum Master
2015 - 2016
USAA
- Helped the team prepare and distribute progress reports; managed risks and issues; corrected deviations from plans; and performed delivery planning for assigned projects.
- Facilitated and drove implementation of multiple, complex project/program initiatives, working closely with cross-functional teams and resources to achieve multiple program and project milestones within established timeframes.
- Functioned as a scrum master for project team ensuring the team was self-organizing and adhering to the scrum framework.
- Interacted with external vendors and manage the relationship.
- Communicated with project stakeholders and executive/senior management, and provides insight on issues through root cause analyses.
- Worked on infrastructure and networking related projects.
- Worked on payment processing teams.
Agile Project Manager- Scrum Master
2015 - 2015
GE Oil & Energy
- Facilitated a user story writing session to ensure user stories met INVEST MODEL.
- Created the budget and project timelines.
- Coached the team on best practices.
- Helped with IT audit and certification of software development deliver process.
- Facilitated Agile Ceremonies such as daily stand-up, sprint planning, sprint review, sprint retrospectives, and refinement meetings.
- Worked on mobile payment and reward processing application for Plenti Rewards systems.
- Helped the team finalize estimate and project pans for the phase.
- Helped define the project scope and schedule while focusing on regular and timely delivery of value; organize and lead project status and working meetings.
Agile Project Manager
2013 - 2015
Sunpower Corp
- Involved in gathering requirements with the product team/manager to ensure requirements are clear and concise.
- Set the development and project management framework for the monitoring unit.
- Supported the senior engineering program manager in projects in delivering programs in an agile fashion.
- Coordinated the scrum process for monitoring units interfacing with firmware, software, and hardware and ensured timetables were aligned.
- Worked with the product manager as a support product owner.
Agile Project Manager
2012 - 2013
EPS Software
- Reviewed the vision and scope, labor forecast, on-site notes, product documentation, and additional documentation that was available.
- Scheduled a meeting with the client and the executive sponsor to get the clients' impression of how well the phase went and to adjust the labor forecast for the next phase based on what was discussed.
- Created a high-level mind map breakdown of the release plan with a detailed breakdown of the items in the current sprint.
- Served as a coach to help guide the team on how best to use agile/scrum practices such as pair programming, Kanban boards, INVEST model, and other tools needed to deliver quality software.
- Functioned as the scrum master working with the team to give appropriate estimates on product backlog items, remove impediment, ensuring the team was comfortable and sprints were completed on time.
Agile Project Manager
2009 - 2012
Hardeysolutions
- Tracked project financials reporting estimated cost of the project, estimated time to completion, and managed budgets of approximately $6 million.
- Worked with product owners to help groom user stories.
- Tracked team metrics such as team velocity, rejection rate, sprint burndown, feature, and release burndown.
- Conducted meetings with executive sponsor/project sponsor and internal development team to gather, understand, and document product/service requirements.
- Coordinated the review of the project vision, roadmap, release plan, and product backlog with the scrum team to have a clear idea of the project details.
- Served as product owner on a project writing user stories, working with the scrum team, and ensuring demos were well reviewed before presentation.
Sr Business Analyst/Co-founder
2006 - 2009
Model Information System
- Gathered requirements for the development team.
- Supervised and performed user acceptance testing for end product been delivered.
- Created product timelines and developed Gant charts.
- Gathered feedback from end customers, converting feedback into requirements.
- Managed budgets for the project.
Project History
Comparison Shopping for SMB
Led a team to build a comparison shopping engine that allows shoppers to compare the price of products.
A startup looking to build a comparison shopping engine for their customers. The aim of the project was to build an engine that listed the sources of comparison shopping. The project consisted of an offshore team based in Romania. It was completed on time and within budget.
Mobile Payments
Led a team of 150 IT talents to deliver rewards mobile payment solution for the oil and energy industry.
A large fortune 500 company needed to implement integration with a major payment processing company on their rewards program. The product involved three fortune 500 companies implement a rewards program across over 1600 gas stations nationwide. The first of its kind involving a payment processor, hardware manufacturer and oil and gas downstream sector.
I have used rally as a tool and also worked using SAFE as a tool
I have used rally as a tool and also worked using SAFE as a tool
Product and Item Master
In my role as the release train manager, I led the transformation of product and item master database using SAFE.
As the release manager, I was the servant leader and coach for the release trains. In my role, I was able to facilitate release train events, manage portfolio impediments, manage risk, and drive continuous improvement. I was able to manage and optimize the flow of the release train. I communicated the annual calendar for iterations and program increments. I facilitated PI planning for multiple teams. I was able to work with system architects, product management organization, business owners, and enterprise architect to coordinate our delivery pipelines. I was responsible for tracking metrics. The aim of the project was to update our database from the traditional database to a more modern NoSQL database.
Customer Portal
Let the implementation of the customer portal for a renewable energy company.
The project involved moving the database into our data warehouse to allow for our different teams to use data for their reporting and analytics tools. The customer has access to hourly data from their solar panels showing production, energy assurance, and productivity. Data from this database helped the field team to use as a predictive tool for troubleshooting. The research team also used our data to help with the next generation of solar panels been manufactured. The project was a mixture of data warehousing, data analytics, reporting tools, and APIs.
Airline Ticketing System
Completed migration effort of existing airline system into a new system.
Ticket moved from an existing system using old technology to a newer system using modern day architecture and technology. We used the Scaled Agile Framework to deliver this project. I worked as a coach and release train engineer on this project.
Enterprise Content Management
Led a team of 50 to build an enterprise content management system for a major non-profit.
A non-profit organization is looking to manage the content of its various sub-units located around the world. Due to the similar naming structure, there was a challenge to get the right content to the right people.
My role was coordinating the teams, and ensure prompt delivery of the two-year project.
The project was completed on time and within budget.
My role was coordinating the teams, and ensure prompt delivery of the two-year project.
The project was completed on time and within budget.
Education
2006 - 2009
Bachelor's Degree in Science
Texas Southern University - Houston, TX
Certifications
SEPTEMBER 2018 - PRESENT
Certified Agile Leader
Scrum Alliance
AUGUST 2018 - PRESENT
Professional Scrum Master Level I (PSM I)
Scrum.org
FEBRUARY 2017 - FEBRUARY 2019
Certified Scrum Product Owner
Scrum Alliance
JANUARY 2017 - FEBRUARY 2019
Certified Scrum Professional
Scrum Alliance
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