Ghulam Akbar
Verified Expert in Project Management
Project Manager
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Toptal member since December 29, 2021
Ghulam is a senior scrum master, agile coach, and project manager who has led teams in completing various projects across several domains such as banking and finance, FMSG, and B2B. He has a wealth of experience working with local and distributed teams from startups to large enterprises. Ghulam excels at bringing enthusiasm and awareness to teams, applying expert judgment to remove impediments, keeping teams focused, and delivering success in rapidly evolving and dynamic environments.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- Agile
- Agile Coaching
- Agile Project Management
- Azure DevOps
- Microsoft Project
- Projects
- Scrum
- Scrum Coaching
Work Experience
Principle Scrum Master
Australian Stock Exchange Company
- Acted as a principal scrum master of a large digital program of work, where I established scaled agile ways of working to ensure the successful delivery of a complex program across multiple scrum teams.
- Established agile ways of working for a portfolio of work within the digital space.
- Led multiple scrum teams using scaled agile techniques.
- Coached multiple scrum teams to work in alignment on the portfolio.
- Utilized lean portfolio techniques to deliver value better.
Senior Scrum Master | Agile Coach
British American Tobacco
- Established a new scrum team working on a B2B Salesforce retailer community portal and acted as their scrum master. This team supplied a significant overhaul of the B2B platform and was awarded the recognition of exemplary delivery.
- Implemented scaled agile ways of working across the IT domain using the SAFe framework and acted as a release train engineer. The ART provided significant deliveries across the varied portfolio of work.
- Acted as the senior scrum master and agile coach on an extensive program of work where I established and facilitated multiple business scrum teams. The program of work delivered numerous benefits to the organization across various value streams.
- Established the use of first Jira and then AzureDev Ops to run necessary scrum activity, including backlogs, sprint management, and reporting. I also implemented the use of online collaboration tools like Miro and Teams to facilitate remote working.
Scrum Master
ABN AMRO Bank
- Joined ABN AMRO Clearing in Sydney to implement agile and scrum ways of working and lead scrum teams to deliver a digital program of work focusing on automation initiatives.
- Implemented Portfolio Kanban using lean portfolio management techniques.
- Guided the Business Portfolio Manager in the adoption of lean portfolio techniques.
- Acted as an agile coach and Scrum master for two scrum teams working on a digital portfolio across the Asia-Pacific region.
- Implemented agile/scrum ways of working for the scrum teams. The success of the teams and the agile approach were recognized at all levels.
- Developed, trained, coached, and guided the scrum teams to deliver valuable business outcomes/products at a steady velocity.
- Provided agile coaching to both scrum teams as well as other teams at ABN AMRO looking at implementing agile ways of working.
- Established an Agile Community of Practice (CoP) in Sydney.
- Seconded into a temporary role as agile project manager—on a global project with ABN AMRO for three months—to help with challenges being faced by the project.
Agile Project Manager | Scrum Master
Volt Bank
- Acted as a scrum master on a business scrum team, guiding the planning and tracking day-to-day activities of teams working on both business and technology streams for a program of work for this new digital neobank.
- Spearheaded a second team of geographically dispersed developers working on the product backlog also performing as a scrum master.
- Worked with IT operations, release management, and vendors to plan and organize deployments.
Agile Squad Lead | Agile Project Manager
Bendigo and Adelaide Bank
- Mentored, coached, developed, and led two high-functioning scrum teams delivering a high-quality product for the bank.
- Established new project risk management practices for the agile squads across the field, aligned with new agile practices, thus ensuring that the IT domain was still operating within bank risk frameworks.
- Developed new reporting dashboards in Jira and Confluence to report the project work, team progress, and project risk and issues.
- Fostered an environment of openness and empowerment, allowing teams to develop and flourish.
Agile Project Manager | Scrum Master
Bendigo and Adelaide Bank
- Successfully delivered over 100 projects of varying sizes and complexity during my tenure as project manager and scrum master using both waterfall and agile ways of working.
- Introduced agile and scrum ways of working to the development team in Sydney and assumed the role of scrum master for two squads.
- Led a team of 17 IT professionals, including business analysts, developers, testers, and business representatives.
Project History
The Building a Better Way Program of Work | BAT
Acted as a senior scrum master establishing multiple values streams and corresponding business scrums to manage the delivery of the program. This incredibly successful program achieved global BAT recognition for outstanding delivery and new WOW.
I managed up to 7 scrum teams running across multiple value streams across a program of work, coaching and guiding all teams while ensuring the use of appropriate agile project management techniques towards a successful delivery in a timely fashion.
Education
Postgraduate Diploma in Information Technology
Sheffield University - England
Bachelor's Degree in Mechanical Engineering
University of Salford - England
Skills
Tools
Trello, Miro, Confluence, Microsoft Project, Jira
Paradigms
Azure DevOps, Agile, Scrum, Agile Project Management, Lean
Other
Scrum Master, Scrum Coaching, Projects, IT Projects, Teams, Agile Coaching, Agile Program Management, Portfolios
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