James is available for hire
Hire JamesJames Knox
Verified Expert in Project Management
Project Manager
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Toptal member since January 2, 2023
Bio
James is an experienced Senior Project Manager and delivery lead, certified in PRINCE2 and Scrum, with a strong technology background, specializing in business and technical systems analysis, digital product development, mobile apps, platform transformation, and data integration projects. Having most recently worked on industrial-class software products, James would welcome further exploring DevOps in the industrial space.
Expertise
- Confluence
- Cost Estimation
- Jira
- Miro
- PRINCE2
- Program Management
- Project Management
- Scrum Master
Work Experience
Delivery Lead
2023 - 2024
Frameplay
- Led the transition from traditional project management methodologies to Agile practices within engineering teams, accelerating delivery speed.
- Developed dashboards and reports in Jira to provide real-time visibility into project progress, team performance, and potential risks.
- Led four cross-functional engineering teams (game engines, back-end development, front-end development, and data), each with a dedicated product manager, to drive project success and innovation.
Delivery Lead
2022 - 2022
Creature Technology Company
- Established a PERT project estimation and risk analysis approach to project costing that de-risked an extensive project portfolio.
- Configured project delivery systems and leveraged the Atlassian product stack, enabling complex progress reporting and measurable qualitative enhancements to project deliverables.
- Integrated Agile processes and DevOps into an industrial software engineering product team.
Delivery Lead
2021 - 2022
JTB Studios
- Established a new estimation model that enabled risk-integrated project costing across a portfolio of over 30 clients.
- Developed enhanced delivery processes and documentation and provided Agile training and coaching to a team of five project managers.
- Configured Atlassian tools and processes across design and engineering disciplines, introducing immediate qualitative enhancements to outgoing project deliverables.
Project Management Consultant
2020 - 2021
McCorkell & Associates
- Delivered a project management playbook to a global enterprise SaaS enablement team.
- Provided a range of functional project templates for program-wide delivery using Asana and the Atlassian suite of products.
- Developed a remote working and change management strategy for a series of globally distributed teams, allowing consistent enterprise customer enablement, regardless of region or time zone.
Project Manager
2020 - 2020
Carsales
- Planned and delivered a platform transformation project to migrate the car sales ad services tech stack to a new Google and Salesforce-based solution.
- Introduced risk-integrated estimation and work breakdown approach, enabling consistent sprint velocity rate across a team of 50.
- Worked with Jira automation to enable high sprint and backlog quality across more than 10,000 tasks.
Senior Digital Producer
2020 - 2020
BBE
- Led a project team to re-platform a fully integrated, data-driven, headless eCommerce solution leveraging GraphQL and Contentful.
- Managed client engagement workshops with UX and engineering teams to craft a new customer experience across various product divisions.
- Organized project planning, cost validation, and ongoing risk analysis across a large, globally distributed project team.
Senior Digital Producer
2019 - 2019
R/GA
- Delivered a range of projects on strict deadlines for a global automotive manufacturer.
- Scoped and estimated complex projects across web, mobile and automotive interface design.
- Integrated new Agile delivery methods alongside traditional Japanese approach to projects.
Project Manager
2018 - 2019
La Trobe University
- Configured and managed Jira and Confluence, creating custom issues, schemes, screens, and workflows and developing a working portfolio implementation for evaluation purposes with documentation.
- Conducted project requirements gathering sessions, documenting business requirements and rules, developing user story-based requirements, and workflow mapping.
- Managed senior project stakeholders within a traditional matrix management environment and maintained existing external vendor relationships.
Digital Producer
2017 - 2018
Butterfly
- Created extensive improvements to the Jira Cloud platform, developing custom automation, structured workflows, and integrating third-party applications into the existing Jira environment to expand and enhance functionality.
- Continued improvement of documentation processes, increasing the scope and quality of technical, creative, and project documentation within the production team.
- Developed processes to facilitate managed release schedules, hotfix release plans, automated deployments, and continuous delivery.
Project Manager
2017 - 2017
AKQA
- Managed the development of an enterprise-class .Net microservices platform for scalable API integrations.
- Conducted business process and object-oriented analysis to define complex technical and systems requirements within a microservices delivery team.
- Documented and designed project workflow and delivery frameworks through enterprise project management tools Jira and Confluence.
- Led enterprise marketing campaigns with advanced personalization and marketing automation tools Adobe campaign.
Digital Producer
2015 - 2016
Luminary
- Managed multiple concurrent projects end-to-end across a portfolio of clients, including websites, complex web application products, mobile apps, digital advertising campaigns, and User Experience.
- Led client requirements gathering processes, including meetings and documentation templates.
- Organized UAT and regression testing of complex technical web projects.
Payroll Integration Specialist
2011 - 2013
Xero
- Supported the successful development and sale of startup pay cycle to Xero, then project managing the integration of the cloud payroll software product into the core Xero product.
- Produced technical documentation, including software requirements, release notes, and internal technical reference documentation for payroll API functions.
- Analyzed complex reports developing further insight into product usability and trends.
IT Manager
2009 - 2011
Tom Waterhouse
- Managed the development of the Tom Waterhouse online trading platform and associated websites.
- Supervised aspects of digital marketing strategy, content, features, and customer engagement for multiple online websites and services.
- Developed the network security of both internal and externally hosted assets, including online fraud protection, customer data security, DDOS mitigation, and network penetration protection.
Project History
SaaS Enterprise Enablement
Produced a project management playbook to enable SaaS enterprise customer enablement for a public fintech company at scale.
Delivered a project management playbook, functional project templates, interactive Miro workshops, change management strategy, and reporting framework for consistent, global, SaaS enterprise customer enablement.
Agency Delivery Framework
Developed an end-to-end internal agency project delivery system, including resource management tools, functional project templates, and structured Agile processes for an agency of 50 staff.
Delivered an end-to-end project management system for a primarily eCommerce-based creative agency. Developed project management process, solution design model, Agile training and guides, functional project templates in Jira, UX workshops in Miro, and led a team of five project managers. During this engagement, I also introduced a risk-integrated estimation strategy across a portfolio of more than 30 clients.
Microservice Replatforming Project
Led a team to deliver a re-platforming project for an enterprise-class public company to a fully integrated Google and Salesforce-based self-serve media buying platform.
Established a new estimation strategy, delivery process, and risk modeling method to break down and deliver a complex, systems-based, multi-million dollar platform redevelopment of over 10,000 backlog items.
Education
2003 - 2005
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Systems and Networks
Lake Tuggeranong College - Australia
Certifications
JANUARY 2019 - PRESENT
Certified Scrum Master
Axis Agile
Skills
Tools
Jira, Confluence, Google Sheets, Asana, Miro, Slack, Trello, Salesforce, Tableau
Paradigms
Agile, Agile Project Management, PRINCE2, DevOps
Platforms
Zendesk
Other
Project Management, Cost Estimation, Scrum Master, Estimations, Program Management, Agile Program Management, Atlas, Google Apps, Google Apps Script, User Requirements, Google, Video Production, Jira Administrator, User Experience (UX), Microsoft, IT Projects, Computer Networking, Software Development, Computer Science, Jira Administration, Machine Learning
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