Mark is available for hire
Hire MarkMark Hollins
Verified Expert in Project Management
Project Manager
Bury, United Kingdom
Toptal member since November 18, 2020
Bio
A multi-industry, multi-disciplined proven change expert, Mark is far from the norm in terms of creating thriving environments of continued delivery. Mark has a track record of value creation ranging from the rapid, high positive impact on struggling projects in billion-pound companies to driving the success of startups. A proven senior Scrum master, program manager, and Agile project manager, Mark is someone who you pay to tell you how things are and help you solve problems.
Project Highlights
Launch of Tote.co.uk
Led the program to launch UK Tote Group to market, including product (website) to marketing, operations, compliance, and market through to the run state of the business.
Customer Communication Transformation | Lloyds Banking Group
Transformed 42 product types from paper-only to online archiving and access—including millions of customers' bank statements—through establishing new ways of working in the form of the Scrum framework.
AXA Insurance Digital Transformation
Scoped and delivered the outsourcing of AXA Insurance customer communication delivery, migrating work from legacy production site in Lytham to a state-of-the-art, multi-channel site in Liverpool, closing Lytham inside the stretch target date.
Expertise
- Agile Coaching
- Agile Leadership
- Jira
- Project Management
- Project Planning
- Scrum
- Scrum Master
- Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC)
Work Experience
Scrum Master
2020 - PRESENT
Thales — Self-employed
- Joined the team as a scrum master and quickly moved into multi-team and leadership coaching.
- Established several Scrum teams as part of the transformation of the talent, learning, and culture department in HR.
- Drove the adoption of new, customer value-focused ways of working, bringing to life the need to be data-driven through measured experimentation.
- Integrated Atlassian-based tooling—Jira at a team level through to the Big Picture at the program levels. Teams that had previously taken months to navigate a delivery are now creating releasable, valuable products every two weeks.
- Facilitated the shaping of a new working model at a UK HR level, moving from siloed solution first to data-driven problem solving, co-creating future-proofing solutions for people in Thales.
Senior Scrum Master | Program Manager
2019 - 2020
UK Tote Group — Self-employed
- Managed the launch of the UK Tote Group to market with its B2C React/iOS and Android product proposition of Tote.co.uk and the acquisition program Ten to Follow, alongside full customer migration, covering engineering, ops, marketing UX and product.
- Served as the interim head of engineering for nine months, grew the department from one squad of engineers to four cross-functional teams covering end-to-end capability and testing, and led 30 people in total.
- Introduced agility, in my initial Scrum Master role—progressing from product releases once every two sprints to multiple times per day while introducing automated and crowd testing to increase quality.
- Led the move to an in-house supplier-built platform (Google Cloud, PHP, and Go) in three months, reducing support costs by £50,000 per month and increasing the speed to market.
- Introduced the concept of PI Planning and eventually, the use of the SAFe Framework to meet growth needs; held the role RTE for two program increments.
- Mentored an aspiring scrum master into the role while recruiting an additional scrum master and RTE as part of my exit strategy.
- Spearheaded the build and release of AWS Cloud Infrastructure used to host the React-based front-end app.
Agile Coach
2018 - 2019
National Grid — Self-employed
- Increased understanding and practices of Agile ways of working with 160 people across 20 teams, supported the introduction of a new flat structure through an organizational redesign which unified their business and domestic operations.
- Introduced visual workflow management with Kanban in some teams and goal-driven, time-boxed sprints in others. Brought about the discipline of retrospectives using a number of varied and engaging techniques.
- Used the Scrum framework to support the rollout and development of the new Salesforce application, resulting in functionality increments being released every three weeks.
- Designed and delivered tailored training across the division including subjects such as "servant leadership," "taking Responsibility," flow, and feedback.
- Due to the proven demand for the skill, Identified, recruited, and mentored four permanent coaches, creating hundreds of hours of 1-to-1 and team coaching availability per week.
- Assessed team structures, implemented post-organizational designs to surface skill gaps, and created plans to fill them either with new hires or cross skilling.
- Popularized the practice of actionable metrics and hypothesized experimentation, resulting in the business performance team avoiding thousands of wasted field visits.
Scrum Master | Agile Coach
2017 - 2018
Lloyds Banking Group — Self-employed
- Delivered the full transformation of a legacy portfolio one month ahead of the contractual milestone—resulting in £1 million cost avoidance and delivering 42 communication products.
- Initiated new Scrum teams, bringing together teams that had been previously using a Waterfall approach and educating them on the Agile manifesto and Scrum framework.
- Drove an incremental redesign of the software development lifecycle, creating a 400% increase in speed to market (one product per quarter to four products per quarter).
- Coached the product owner in prioritization and the importance of team growth - resulting in a shift (20% time was now dedicated to upskilling and learning within the team).
- Worked with the product owner and project manager to design program progress reporting using Jira, created Scrum team budgeting, and aligned them to the Safe Lean Budgeting approach which enabled budget management within a 5% accuracy.
- Spearheaded division-level changes in the delivery approach and third-party relationships (moving from physical, operational testing to electronic, automated testing)—resulting in the reduction of E2E testing timelines from one week to one hour.
Senior Project Manager
2016 - 2016
Communisis — Banco Sabadell & Barclays
- Initiated the communications program as part of Lloyds Bank's sale of TSB to Banco Sabadell—agreeing approval of a £2.2 million project delivery revenue for CMS and handed over to PMO.
- Delivered the strategic MPLS Direct Connect infrastructure implementation (development, test, live, and failover) for Communisis (Barclays as part of a major contract win).
- Slashed testing timelines from four days to four hours by introducing digital testing (transferring content via MPLS) with the offshore team, moving away from posting physical output.
- Created a concept for utilizing the online MI and delivered a reporting dashboard to enable a just-in-time supply chain process, resulting in a 30% reduction in stock outage incidents and a £100,000 reduction in obsolescence caused by stock changes.
Scrum Master (Digital Transformation)
2016 - 2016
Communisis and LV=
- Brought together a cross-functional team to work incrementally, resulting in incremental product delivery (moving from releasable functionality being delivered every six weeks to every two weeks).
- Delivered single-sign functionality from LV= to the Communisis platforms, delivering customer policies via email functionality and SMS communication service.
- Introduced and facilitated product reviews, retrospectives, planning—both face to face and, in the case of stand-ups, remote team engagement—allowing regular planning, inspection, adaption, and experimentation.
Project Manager (Digital Transformation)
2015 - 2016
Communisis and AXA
- Delivered the on-time transition of services from the operational site in Lytham to Liverpool.
- Transformed the technical architecture and software from physical, printed communication data to a new site, rationalizing legacy data systems and reducing support costs.
- Transformed numerous print-only communcations channels to email and SMS.
Project Manager
2013 - 2015
Lloyds Banking Group
- Delivered on-time site closure and transformation of LBG communications as part of outsourcing to Communisis—delivering on plans for revenue and profit and launched a new IT print workflow platform to enable LBG’s first white paper transformation.
- Scoped the requirement for new, industry-leading printing capability in the gaining site of Halifax and delivered transition with no customer impact.
- Delivered the on-target reduction of the temporary FTE required by 60%.
Project Manager — Production Planning
2011 - 2013
Lloyds Banking Group
- Introduced an end-to-end planning and work redistribution model into the two LBG major print and mail operational sites, increasing capacity through better planning and strengthening the disaster recovery model.
- Actively facilitated and influenced the FTE budget for 1,000+ FTE business and through driving operational improvements, such as transforming communications to white paper and archiving, created a 5% (£1.5 millioin) savings in 2012.
- Proposed and managed the upskilling of bank engineers by contracting to third-party suppliers, achieving a net £300,000 annual savings in technical expertise requirements.
Project and Performance Manager
2009 - 2011
Grosvenor Services Group
- Developed a startup security business from four part-time staff in Sheffield to over 500 throughout the UK.
- Managed security operations throughout sporting venues such as Wembley stadium, including senior security personnel with overall responsibility of 500+ employees.
- Identified and delivered a drive to paperless activity—renegotiating group mobile phone contract to include the supply of netbooks and taking a database-driven Filemaker application from concept to implementation, which reduced print, paper, and postage costs by 60%.
Project History
Launch of Tote.co.uk
http://www.tote.co.ukLed the program to launch UK Tote Group to market, including product (website) to marketing, operations, compliance, and market through to the run state of the business.
I led a team of engineers, engineering managers, and testers through the launch of the business and into an operational excellence run model.
In a blended role of scrum master and program manager, I drove the department plans at a daily level of detail. I also created the environment and engagement, ensured that impediments and blockers were surfaced, addressed real time, connected the executive-level sponsors with the people doing the work, and removed all decision-making proxies.
Alongside the launch, I delivered a full legacy system customer migration to provide a product transition for over 40,000 active customers, including facilitating the design of the CRM campaign for these customers
Following the initial launch, I delivered a full transfer of ownership and upskilling of a supplier-built platform while using coding languages where there had been previously no capability and architecture (which was equally new to the business) with no impact on the customers.
In a blended role of scrum master and program manager, I drove the department plans at a daily level of detail. I also created the environment and engagement, ensured that impediments and blockers were surfaced, addressed real time, connected the executive-level sponsors with the people doing the work, and removed all decision-making proxies.
Alongside the launch, I delivered a full legacy system customer migration to provide a product transition for over 40,000 active customers, including facilitating the design of the CRM campaign for these customers
Following the initial launch, I delivered a full transfer of ownership and upskilling of a supplier-built platform while using coding languages where there had been previously no capability and architecture (which was equally new to the business) with no impact on the customers.
Customer Communication Transformation | Lloyds Banking Group
Transformed 42 product types from paper-only to online archiving and access—including millions of customers' bank statements—through establishing new ways of working in the form of the Scrum framework.
I served as a scrum master for a squad of engineers and testers from multiple technical disciplines, including coaching the product owner. I also drove the incremental redesign of the software development lifecycle, which resulted in a 400% increase in speed to the market.
I delivered 1-to-4 products per quarter and delivered the entire project one month ahead of the contractual milestone, avoiding £1 million in additional license spending.
I delivered 1-to-4 products per quarter and delivered the entire project one month ahead of the contractual milestone, avoiding £1 million in additional license spending.
AXA Insurance Digital Transformation
Scoped and delivered the outsourcing of AXA Insurance customer communication delivery, migrating work from legacy production site in Lytham to a state-of-the-art, multi-channel site in Liverpool, closing Lytham inside the stretch target date.
I project-managed multiple teams for the entire cycle, from software delivery to logistics and supply chain. I delivered ahead of time the transformation of 20+ years of customer communication output to digital offerings, reorganizing complex logistical and supply chain arrangements for customer delivery with 0 customer impact. I also led the introduction of an online archiving solution for AXA policies to enable customer real-time access to their documents and data.
Certifications
JULY 2020 - JULY 2021
Licensed Product Owner
Scrum, Inc.
JUNE 2020 - JUNE 2021
Licensed Scrum Master
Scrum, Inc.
MARCH 2019 - PRESENT
Professional Scrum Master Level I (PSM I)
Scrum.org
OCTOBER 2014 - PRESENT
PRINCE2 Practitioner Certification
Axelos
Skills
Tools
Jira, Miro, Flow, Asana, Atlassian Suite, Big Room Planning, Confluence
Paradigms
Scrum, Agile Project Management, Agile Leadership, Requirements Analysis, Management
Industry Expertise
Software, Supply Chain Management (SCM)
Other
Scrum Master, Project Planning, Retrospective Techniques, IT Project Management, PSM-1, Certified ScrumMaster (CSM), Storyboarding, Product Roadmaps, Sprints, Work Breakdown Structure, Release Train Engineer (RTE), Product Launch, Agile Coaching, Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), Project Management, Scrum Product Owner, Leadership, Remote Team Leadership, System Integration, Product Owner, Discovery Workshops, Web Platforms, Estimations, Discovery, PI Planning, Data Migration, Startups, Marketing, CRM Systems, IT Operations Management (ITOM), Operations, Engineering, Training, Digital Transformation, Product Ownership, Product Development, Product Design, Software QA, IT Support, Incident Management, Automation Tools, Program Management, Teams, Legacy Software, Contract Negotiation, IT Projects, Planning, Security, CRM APIs, Payment APIs, APIs, Mobile, Reports, CRM Design, Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), Training & Training Content Development
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