Jonathan Ncube
Verified Expert in Project Management
Project Manager
Milton Keynes, United Kingdom
Toptal member since June 15, 2021
Jonathan is a target-driven project and product manager with experience in product, program, project, and risk management at Lloyds, Luminor, Royal Bank of Scotland, Marshall Aerospace and Defense, and Kuelap Inc. Throughout his career, he has managed small- and large-scale projects and, using refined Agile frameworks, produced results with multinational team members in offshore locations. Jonathan is highly motivated to apply his expertise in operational analysis and project management.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- Agile Coaching
- IT Project Management
- Jira Administrator
- RAID
- Release Management
- Reporting
- Stakeholder Engagement
- Team Leadership
Work Experience
Programme Coordinator
Luminor
- Coordinated a critical, fast-paced IT division transformation program spanning nine workstreams. Designed, configured, and maintained all program internal and public-facing project management tools and reporting platforms, like Atlassian and SharePoint.
- Facilitated recurring meetings, captured minutes and key program decisions, recorded actions, and ensured timely follow-up. Managed the program retrospectives and follow-ups across all workstreams at program close.
- Built and managed the Transition KPI dashboard, reporting directly to the CIO and the reports. Followed up on bottlenecks and blockers to ensure resolution of the transition of 15 sets of program artifacts from the old organizational model to the new.
- Established and supported the CIO Office’s ongoing governance, reporting, and collaboration processes using the same tailored toolset. Customized templates and automated decision logs, as well as Kanban boards for tracking deliverables.
Managing Director
Nth Cube Limited
- Launched Kenya’s first vending machine integrated with Mpesa Express, enabling seamless mobile payments and enhancing customer convenience.
- Managed the end-to-end setup, from vendor coordination and brand design to importing vending machines from China, ensuring successful business operations.
- Designed and launched CraveCraze Vending’s website, integrating user-friendly features to boost customer engagement and streamline transactions.
- Orchestrated efficient import and shipping logistics from China, ensuring timely delivery of vending machines while optimizing costs and compliance.
Chief Product Officer
Kuelap Inc
- Spearheaded product management for a fintech startup, driving innovation and elevating customer satisfaction. Defined the strategic vision, aligning product roadmaps with business goals.
- Oversaw the creation of comprehensive product roadmaps, ensuring alignment across cross-functional teams. Led the seamless delivery of critical features, meeting project milestones.
- Managed workflows between software development and product support, optimizing operational efficiency and enhancing interdepartmental collaboration. Streamlined processes for smoother transitions and improved productivity.
- Revamped PRD structure for product platforms, enhancing documentation quality. Ensured clear specifications, enabling better understanding and streamlined development.
- Managed a department covering product design and support. Led a team of three UI/UX staff, three product owners, a scrum master, and a product support analyst. Fostered collaboration, skill development, and high-performance culture.
- Served as Jira and Confluence administrator, structuring BRD and PRD templates and mapping documentation. Facilitated seamless project tracking and reporting for enhanced transparency.
- Provided Agile coaching and upskilling, enhancing team efficiency and alignment. Conducted team-wide 1-2-1 meetings, setting clear KPIs to measure and elevate performance.
- Innovated by creating milestone tracking tools and dashboards, enabling team collaboration and insightful reporting. Empowered teams to monitor project progress, make data-driven decisions, and ensure successful delivery.
Project Manager
Kuelap
- Led the transformation of the organization's process maturity from level 2 (managed) to level 3 (defined) across all Scrum/Agile activities. This included the integration of product design thinking principles and enhanced Scrum framework.
- Orchestrated the adoption of a more refined scrum communication cadence, facilitating seamless collaboration and transparency among cross-functional teams.
- Undertook a strategic reorganization of the development department into two focused scrum teams and respective support teams, such as QA and SRE. This ensured optimal team sizes, resource allocation, and dedicated product backlogs.
- Facilitated the adoption of agile practices through mentorship, training, and guidance—as a scrum master for two teams. Led the teams to cultivate a deeper understanding of agile methodologies, effective productivity, and high-quality products.
- Introduced essential reporting elements successfully—including velocity charts and burndown charts—to the project management framework. These tools provided invaluable insights into team performance, work progress, and sprint planning.
- Set up a central product management department responsible for POs, BAs, UI/UX design, and 1st-line product support, enabling seamless collaboration across all teams and ensuring that every stage of the product lifecycle was expertly managed.
Program PMO Lead and Agile Coach
Luminor Bank
- Joined the company as a PMO analyst for the new bank transformation program, became the assistant program lead, and was seconded to agile coach for the digital channels department upon closure of the transformation program.
- Drove risk assessment and signoff for deliveries critical to the new bank platform delivery, customer migration, and removing the risk-related obstacles for the steering committee and CAB approval.
- Upskilled delivery leads in project reporting practices and improved the workflow structure and Jira functionality across transformation programs and digital channels departments.
- Coordinated functional and non-functional testing, release, technical and business implementation, environments, and migration leads to plan and track the delivery of the new bank platform.
- Trained the PMO team on best practices for Jira administration and tool configuration to increase organization-wide project efficiency.
PMO and Process Analyst
Marshall Aerospace and Defense Group
- Led and directed the development and report-out of project and portfolio metrics along with the associated tool development and alignment with cross-functional teams.
- Trained teams in best practice configuration for Jira workflows, permission schemes, custom fields, and screen schemes.
- Used advanced Excel (VBA and macros) and SharePoint integrations to build status monitoring and reporting tools.
- Utilized Excel (complex formulas and INDEX MATCH) to produce weekly reports, including the RAG and progress of IFS development and change management tickets through Jira via CSV extracts.
Agile PMO and Assistant Agile Coach
The Royal Bank of Scotland
- Enhanced the governance framework by incorporating Agile coaching, scrum of scrums, sprint goals, and roadmap planning.
- Served as the administrator for Jira and Confluence and used Jira to transform status reporting from fortnightly PowerPoint packs to live Jira dashboards and comprehensive sprint reports.
- Assisted in implementing and embedding processes, methods, and best practices into strategic service delivery activities for the function, including project management, financial management, and resource management.
- Improved the program financial planning and budget forecasting tool to enable more intuitive cost and expenditure modeling.
- Redefined the entire Jira tool structure for the program, including setting up new Jira projects, schemes, naming conventions, and documentation, and reporting practices to properly facilitate SAFe practices.
- Managed and facilitated program sprint reviews and meetings for which I produced agendas and materials and ensured that audiovisual equipment was set up properly.
Digital Agile Project Manager
Lloyds Banking Group
- Project-managed and supported two tablet application Scrum teams, in parallel, through the full lifecycle within time, quality, and budget expectations, which involved coordinating 23 cross-functional specialists.
- Released 20+ branch tablet applications to 4,000+ iOS tablets in line with critical regulatory milestones.
- Monitored and forecasted program spend on a £4.2 million budget; identified and championed internal cost-saving opportunities to protect the budget from a predicted £500,000 overspend.
- Facilitated ongoing maintenance and development of bug fixes and patch sets for existing applications by rolling out a robust support model for the tablet application team, including 24-hour coverage based on ITIL principles.
Digital Banking PMO Analyst
Lloyds Banking Group
- Collaborated with teams across the UK and India to monitor, manage, and collate updates on the project, operational, and financial RAID analyses, ensuring timely escalation of business-critical items.
- Created a new standard for SLA performance and financial reporting for senior management, which was subsequently rolled out across the digital CIO function.
- Scheduled and chaired senior stakeholder meetings, such as leadership meetings, change advisory boards, budget planning, and operational process improvement reviews.
- Developed the onboarding and offboarding process, using integrated SharePoint tools for team members and saving 20 person-hours per week.
- Tracked and produced reports on KPIs throughout the ITIL operational process and created new tools to collate management information.
- Organized and led training sessions on effective communication in a project environment across the entire digital banking support team.
Project History
Kuelap Nexus Lending as a Service for Coops
Streamlined credit underwriting functionality, enhanced KYC data capture, optimized HR payroll, and integrated loan application into the customer mobile app. Transformed fintech offerings, exceeding customer expectations.
Led a fintech startup’s strategic evolution, driving innovation and customer satisfaction. Aligned roadmaps with business goals, ensuring seamless feature delivery. Optimized Nexus workflows, enhancing efficiency and interdepartmental collaboration. Revamped PRD structure for Nexus application customization, clarifying specifications and enhancing development processes. Managed diverse product design and support departments, including three UI/UX staff, three product owners, a scrum master, and a p[roduct support analyst. Fostered collaboration and skill development. Administered Jira and Confluence, structuring templates for streamlined project tracking. Provided agile coaching, conducted 1-2-1 meetings, and set KPIs to enhance performance. Innovated milestone tracking tools and dashboards for data-driven decision-making. Successfully evolved product: Enhanced credit underwriting, KYC data capture, HR payroll, integrated loan application into the customer mobile app, exceeding customer expectations.
Luminor Estonia Banking Website
Delivered a new banking platform for Luminor Bank in Estonia and migrated 100,000 customers.
I managed and coordinated 500 resources over six delivery workstreams and four support workstreams to carve out a new functional website for private and corporate banking customers in Estonia.
KEY ACTIVITIES
• Led the PMO function in the Estonia new bank program, covering the steering committee, plan tracking, stage gates, Jira implementation, and RAID management.
• Coordinated functional and non-functional testing, release, technical and business implementation, environments, and migration, leading to the plan and tracking of the delivery of the new Estonian banking platform.
• Created committee terms of reference, scheduled meetings and prepared agendas, provided consolidated steering committee materials, and plotted and tracked the resulting actions.
Lloyds Banking Tablet App
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/nov/04/has-lloyds-come-up-with-a-credible-shrinking-bank-branchLaunched and managed several release updates for Lloyds retail banking apps used by customers and colleagues.
Reporting to the mobile program manager, I managed and supported key aspects of the development and deployment of iOS tablet apps for in-branch use. This was part of a £4.2 million digital banking initiative in collaboration with five vendors.
I led and supported two tablet application Scrum teams, in parallel, through the full lifecycle within time, quality, and budget expectations. I also coordinated and monitored 23 cross-functional specialists, including product owners, business analysts, UX and UI designers, solution architects, front-end and back-end developers, and quality analysts. In the end, we successfully released 20+ branch tablet applications to 4,000+ iOS tablets in line with critical regulatory milestones.
IFS Implementation for Marshalls A&D
Implemented ToBe configuration of IFS Enterprise System inline with Marshalls forecasted ways of working, ensuring consistency across their 3 main departments in all significant processes (finance, supply chain, human resources, manufacturing, sales)
Worked on a £50 million business/IT change program to implement IFS enterprise software solution across three major Marshals A&D departments:
• Led and directed the development and report-out of project and portfolio metrics, along with associated tool development and alignment with cross-functional teams.
• Effectively trained teams in best practice configuration for Jira workflows, permission schemes, custom fields, screen schemes, etc.
• Led the advanced Excel (VBA, Macros) and SharePoint integrations to build status monitoring and reporting tools.
• Utilised Excel (Complex Formulae, INDEX-MATCH) to produce weekly reports, including the RAG and progress of IFS development and change management tickets through Jira via CSV extracts.
Education
Master of Arts Degree in Design & Media Management
Miami International University of Art and Design - Miami, Florida, United States
Bachelor of Arts Degree (Honors) in Game Design & Production Management
University of Abertay Dundee - Dundee, Scotland, United Kingdom
Higher National Certificate in Computer Games Technology
University of Abertay Dundee - Dundee, Scotland, United Kingdom
Certifications
Certified SAFe 6 Agilist
Scaled Agile
Professional Scrum Product Owner II (PSPO II)
Scrum.org
Professional Scrum Master Level II (PSM II)
Scrum.org
Professional Scrum Product Owner I (PSPO I)
Scrum.org
PRINCE2 Practitioner Certification
AXELOS Global Best Practice
Professional Scrum Master Level I (PSM I)
Scrum.org
APM Project Management Qualification (PMQ)
Association for Project Management (APM)
ITIL Expert Certificate v3
AXELOS Global Best Practice
Skills
Tools
Jira, Excel 2016, Microsoft Excel, Project Management & Work Tracking Tools, Confluence, Financial Data, Slack, Zoom, Atlassian, Google Workspace, Miro, Trello, Visio
Paradigms
Scrum, Agile Workflow, Management, ITIL Continual Service Improvement (CSI), PRINCE2, Change Management, Agile, Agile Project Management, Kanban, Agile Product Management, Organizational Change Management (OCM), Agile Leadership, Requirements Analysis, User Acceptance Testing (UAT), UX Design, Azure DevOps
Platforms
SharePoint, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), iOS, Android, Nexus, ProductPlan, WordPress
Industry Expertise
Financial Services, Software
Other
IT Project Management, Team Leadership, Project Management, Collaboration, Jira Administrator, Budget Controls, Reporting, Document Management, Project Controls, Workflow Tools, ITIL V3 Foundation Certified, Planning, Program Management, MIS Reporting, Excel 2013, PMO, Jira Administration, Scrum Master, Project Management Office (PMO), Project Tracking, Scope of Work (SOW), Process Control, Detail-oriented, Certified Project Manager, Dashboards, Process Improvement, Workflow, Task Management, Risk Management, Backlog Management, Project Timelines, Hybrid Project Management, Software Development, Product Owner, Stakeholder Engagement, Creative Problem Solving, Sprint Ceremonies, Assistance, Project Coordination, PMO Frameworks, PMO Processes, Workflow Optimization, Acceptance Criteria, Waterfall, Fintech, Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), IT Strategy, Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Remote Work, Mathematics, Budget Modeling, Steering Committee Facilitation, Agile Coaching, Excel VBA, Forecasting, Release Management, Risk Analysis, Sprints, Retrospective Techniques, Sprint Retrospectives, ITIL, Service Design, ITIL Service Strategy, ITIL Service Transition, ITIL Service Operation, ITIL Managing Across the Lifecycle, Budgeting, RAID, Risk Models, Presentations, Business Process Refinement, Technical Project Management, Digital Project Management, Excel Macros, Stakeholder Management, Project Planning, Performance Management, Product Roadmaps, Cross-functional Team Leadership, Process Flows, Agile Program Management, Organizational Leadership, Documentation, Web Platforms, Process Optimization, Feature Backlog Prioritization, Business Analysis, Digital Transformation, Product Management, Project Management Professional (PMP), Coordination, Resource Management, Discovery Workshops, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Web & Mobile Applications, Data Migration, Technical Product Management, Delivery Management, Discovery, IT Infrastructure, Business Planning, Service Delivery Project Management, Business Processes, Technical Leadership, Quality Assurance (QA), QA Testing, Program Management Office (PgMO), Business to Business (B2B), SaaS, Team Building, Team Management, Web, Governance Frameworks, Teams, Middleware, Animation, Web Design, Accounting, Business Law, Marketing, Business Strategy, 3D Animation, C++, Game Engine Programming, Incident Management, Problem Management, Unity, Unity3D, Video Games, JavaScript, 3D Games, C#, Mobile Games, Stakeholder Analysis, Project Reporting, Mobile Apps, Financial Systems, PMO Development, Web Development, Design, Product Design, Software as a Service (SaaS), Enterprise SaaS, Product Requirements Documentation (PRD), Strategic Planning, IT Operations Management (ITOM), Business Requirements, Remote Team Leadership, Administration, Game Development, Standard Operating Procedures Development, Startups, Operations, Biotechnology, Vendor Management, eCommerce, Financing, Scrum of Scrums, Feature Prioritization, Feature Roadmaps, User Requirements, User Stories, User Engagement, Market Risk, Stakeholder Mapping, Value Analysis, Value Stream Mapping, Roadmaps, Transition Management, Templates, program support, Payroll & Benefits, Post-merger Integration, Program Increment Planning, SAFe 6, Agile Release Train (ART), Lean Product Development
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