John Faulkner-Willcocks
Verified Expert in Project Management
Project Manager
London, United Kingdom
Toptal member since November 29, 2021
John is a product consultant, project leader, and agile coach with 10+ years of experience in startups and enterprises. At Just Group, he bootstrapped and led cross-functional projects for the C-suite that enabled the business to deliver three breakthrough products, meet solvency requirements, unlock £1.5 million in YoY cost savings, and create £12 million in revenue. Before this, John worked at IBM iX as a strategy consultant for 5+ years, delivering products and projects for 10+ EMEA clients.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- Agile Coaching
- Agile Transformation
- Business Transformation
- Design Thinking
- Facilitation
- Product Discovery
- Product Management
- Project Management
Work Experience
Consulting COO
Self-employed
- Engaged by the founder of a VC-backed B2B eCommerce SaaS to transition from a sales-led business to a product-led business and raise Series A funding.
- Project managed the design and definition of an MVP for a B2B SaaS business' pivot toward a new customer segment.
- Designed and implemented a lightweight OKR system for a remote team, which increased team alignment and improved strategy execution.
Agile Coach & Transformation Leader
Just Group PLC
- Led the post-merger transformation of a 250-person operating model, which delivered £1.5 million in YoY cost savings and halved the feature cycle time.
- Designed processes that enabled the number of product teams to scale 300% from five to 15. As a result, delivered three breakthrough products that enabled Just Group to satisfy its solvency requirements.
- Led interventions that reduced time-to-market for a flagship product by six months, avoided reputational damage, and created £12 million in revenue.
- Designed a staff engagement self-diagnostic that went viral within Just. Identified 34 teams that needed help and coached those leaders in required skills and behaviors. As a result, The Sunday Times 100 engagement score rose by two quartiles.
- Was promoted after one year to build out the Agile coaching and BusOps function from scratch to a team of ten responsible for the productivity and collaboration of a 350-person product ecosystem.
Product Consultant
IBM
- Led an award-winning, 30-person project to deliver a digital service from alpha to live for a 100,000-person operations team. Reduced call times by 75%, enabling the business to achieve cost-saving targets.
- Led the design and delivery of a B2B eCommerce app for Vodafone that created £3 million in revenue in less than six months and stopped key account churn.
- Coached a 400-person Agile transformation project with 40 teams scaling up across three geographies and two time zones in six months.
- Drove a 2X improvement in the feature cycle time speed in months six through nine, enabling the business to go to market 2X faster.
Strategy Consultant
IBM
- Led market analysis, customer strategy, operational excellence, and digital transformation engagements for 10+ EMEA clients.
- Designed a data model and operational processes that enabled commercial functions to achieve a single view of the customer by consolidating 14 siloed systems.
- Designed the user experience strategy for the Boots website relaunch.
Account Manager
Venn Group
- Grew key account revenue by 40% ($310,000) in nine months.
- Hired 50+ people across product, engineering, and user experience for tech scale-ups.
- Secured access to three preferred supplier lists, enabling more pipeline growth.
Project History
New Digital Service for Government Digital Services (GDS)
https://dwpdigital.blog.gov.uk/2018/05/21/success-for-searchlight/Led product discovery, design, and launch of a new digital service for 100,000 users that reduced call times by 75%, enabled the business to achieve cost-saving targets, and won a National Technology Award (NTA 2018) for UK Best Technology Project.
• Managed 30 product professionals, including three Scrum teams.
• Led product discovery using design thinking: user personas, empathy maps, as-is/to-be scenario mapping, and user story mapping.
• Designed and managed alpha and private beta phases, including multiple releases and A/B tests.
• Wrote the test automation framework.
• Coached new product owners.
B2B eCommerce Portal for Vodafone Ireland
https://www.vodafone.co.uk/business/my-vodafone-businessLed the discovery and design of a strategic MVP and five subsequent product releases, which created £3 million in revenue in less than six months and stopped key account churn.
• Led the project team in the capacity of QA, scrum master, and project manager.
• Led Scrum ceremonies.
• Performed user testing.
• Coached the product owner in backlog prioritization and sizing.
• Led sprint reviews and demos for senior stakeholders at the C-suite and board levels.
Transformation of a 250-person Fintech Operating Model
Envisioned, designed, and led the organizational transformation that enabled a £1.5 million YoY cost savings, improved feature cycle time by 3X, and created faster time to market.
• Designed the post-merger culture and target operating model transformation to shift from a functional hierarchy to teams organized around the value stream.
• Developed the strategic narrative, including the vision, logic, and plan.
• Created the business case and secured approval and buy-in from C-suite stakeholders.
• Designed the transformation program.
• Created momentum and the imperative for change (Kotter).
• Designed and led iterations and experiments toward the target state and celebrations along the way.
• Implemented a new knowledge management solution (Notion and Miro).
• Created the blueprints for scaling the product organization and coaching managers.
• Created BI and new processes for the PMO.
• Designed and created a team health check to gain insights and actions to increase engagement.
• Implemented a single toolchain for all teams to ensure transparency.
• Created the OKR system.
• Facilitated large-scale planning and review events.
• Tracked spending and benefits against the business case.
Education
Bachelor's Degree in Law & History
Cardiff University - Cardiff, Wales, UK
Certifications
ICAgile Certified Professional - Coaching Agile Transitions (ICP-CAT)
ICAgile
ICAgile Certified Professional - Agility in the Enterprise (ICP-ENT)
ICAgile
Certified Disciplined Agilist (CDA)
Disciplined Agile Consortium
Design Thinking Practitioner
IBM
Enterprise Design Thinking Practitioner
IBM
SAFe Program Consultant
Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)
Certified Scrum Master (CSM)
Scrum Alliance
Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO)
Scrum Alliance
Skills
Tools
Slack, Miro, Tableau, Looker, SQL, Apple Keynote, Prezi
Paradigms
Scrum, Design Thinking, Agile Leadership, Agile, DevOps, B2B, User Testing
Platforms
Webflow
Other
Presentations, Agile Coaching, Agile Transformation, Business Transformation, Project Management, Product Management, Facilitation, Business Operations, Product Discovery, Notion, Airtable, Operations, Strategy, Product Owner, Program Management, Story Mapping, Empathy Mapping, Enterprise Coaching, Research, User Research, User Experience (UX), Less, Coaching, Agile Sprints, Project Design, React, MongoDB, Protractor, Selenium, Selenium WebDriver, PowerPoint Design, Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), User Personas, Value Stream Mapping, Executive Coaching, Analysis, Process Design, Consulting, Market Research & Analysis, Digital Transformation, Data Modeling, Websites, eCommerce, Software as a Service (SaaS), Startup Funding, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Objectives & Key Results (OKRs), Operating Models, Post-merger Integration, Employee Experience, Engagement Strategy, Production Management, IT Project Management, Leadership, Business Development, Account Management, Technical Hiring, Certified ScrumMaster (CSM), Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO), A/B Testing, Test Automation, Product Ownership, Quality Assurance (QA), Scrum Master, Feature Backlog Prioritization, Sprint Reviews, Product Demonstrations, Business Cases, Optical Character Recognition (OCR), Knowledge Management, Business Intelligence (BI), Project Management Office (PMO), Cost Control, Technical Project Management
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