Neil is available for hire
Hire NeilNeil Leupold
Verified Expert in Project Management
Project Manager
New York, NY, United States
Toptal member since February 16, 2024
Bio
Neil is a passionate coach and mentor of leaders, teams, and individuals toward realizing customer value and organizational effectiveness. He has 15+ years of experience and enterprise-level expertise in Agile, Scrum, Kanban, and SAFe coaching. Neil rigorously trains managers and cross-functional teams, including offshore resources and external clientele, in the fields of software and web development, system implementations, infrastructure upgrades, and non-IT business operations.
Project Highlights
Enterprise Agile Transformation for Estee Lauder Companies
Designed and launched the global adoption of Agile value delivery for Estee Lauder Companies with 63,000 employees across all regions, brands, and functions.
Division Transformation for Barclays Bank | US Internal Audit
Acted as the global bank's first US-based agile coach. I trained and guided their audit division in the application of Agile principles and practices to the bank's internal risk assessment, testing, and mitigation operations.
New Team Formation, Guidance, and Agile Delivery for Morgan Stanley
Led the reorganization and transition of multiple Waterfall-based technical teams into fully product-driven Agile delivery squads.
Expertise
- Agile
- Agile Coaching
- Agile Delivery
- Agile Sprints
- Kanban
- Project Management
- Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)
- Scrum
Work Experience
Enterprise Agile Coach
2022 - 2023
Royal Bank of Canada
- Performed Agile foundation design and guidance for the organization's leaders and teams, covering Agile values, principles, and practices.
- Conducted introductory Agile coaching and facilitation for senior business and technology managers.
- Coached, trained, and mentored new geo-dispersed development teams in Agile, Scrum, and Kanban.
- Provided role-based training and mentorship to new scrum masters, product owners, service delivery managers, and service request managers.
- Taught and implemented team- and organizational-level performance KPIs and metrics for Agile, Scrum, and Kanban.
- Performed targeted ad-hoc training and coaching sessions per team behaviors and challenges.
- Designed and performed team- and organizational-level Agile maturity assessments and reporting.
- Collaborated and cross-pollinated knowledge, insights, and practices with fellow agile coaches.
- Built Agile presentations and reference materials for organizational wiki in Confluence.
Enterprise Agile Coach
2019 - 2022
Morgan Stanley
- Contributed to the organizational scope of financial management technologies and modern trading platforms within the wealth management division.
- Designed and led feature elicitation and discovery sessions with business and technology managers.
- Conducted Agile foundation training for leaders and teams, covering philosophy, values, principles, and practices.
- Performed ongoing Agile coaching and facilitation of senior business and technology leaders.
- Coached, trained, and mentored development teams in Agile, Scrum, and Kanban.
- Taught and implemented team-level Agile, Scrum, and Kanban performance KPIs and metrics.
- Held targeted ad-hoc training sessions per team behaviors and challenges.
- Designed and performed team and fleet Agile maturity assessments and reporting.
Enterprise Transformation Coach
2020 - 2020
Bank of New York
- Operated in the scope of global treasury services, including business, operations, and technology with 1,000 employees.
- Provided Agile overview and foundation training in 4-hour sessions with all scrum masters from the US and India, business and operations managers, and stakeholders, including technology leaders, managers, and development teams.
- Designed and executed enterprise Agile maturity assessment and executive reporting dashboard.
- Performed deep-dive coaching of highest-profile programs, project teams, scrum masters, and leaders.
- Established alignment between the business ops product vision and technology value creation.
- Taught and began the implementation of team-level Agile and Scrum performance metrics.
- Started a DevOps group for growth in division-wide capabilities.
Agile Teams Coach | Scrum Coach | Agile Trainer
2019 - 2019
Bank of America
- Acted as an agile coach within the organizational scope, including the New York region, global banking, and marketing technology Agile teams.
- Coached, trained, and mentored eight crawl-phase Agile teams to walk-level maturity.
- Taught and began the implementation of team-level Agile and Scrum performance metrics.
- Created and performed targeted ad-hoc training sessions per team behaviors and challenges.
- Conducted bi-weekly Agile community of practice training sessions for all teams at all levels.
Enterprise Agile Coach
2018 - 2018
The Estée Lauder Companies
- Served as an enterprise Agile coach for all Estee Lauder regions, brands, and functions, including the Americas, UK, EU, APAC, Middle East, and Africa.
- Designed and created Estee-branded Agile, Scrum, and Kanban 101 and supplemental training curriculum for global rollout.
- Performed Agile and Scrum overview training sessions. Enhanced materials with train-the-trainer narratives and scripts.
- Coached and mentored new Scrum teams toward mastery of framework and embodiment of Agile values and principles.
- Identified, trained, and coached new scrum masters. Scaled up resources for enterprise agility.
- Defined, taught, and implemented Agile and Scrum performance metrics at team, program, and enterprise levels.
- Incorporated utilization of Atlassian tools like Jira, Confluence, and Bitbucket to augment the global scalability of Agile and Scrum.
- Created an internal Agile and Scrum center of excellence and a training center for continued growth and improvement of agility.
- Collaborated with and guided 3rd-party vendors for alignment with the Estee Lauder brand of Agile and Scrum practices.
Enterprise Agile Coach
2017 - 2018
Barclays Investment Bank
- Served as an enterprise agile coach for the entire US division, including Barclays Internal Audit, 14 functional groups, 125+ employees, and Mexico and Brazil.
- Assessed and identified the relative maturity of the internal audit division concerning knowledge of Agile, Scrum, and Kanban.
- Designed and conducted a baseline overview training for all personnel, covering Agile philosophy, values, principles, and practices.
- Coached individual audit teams on end-to-end application of Agile, Scrum, and Kanban principles and practices.
- Performed ongoing identification of weak points, challenges, and areas of improvement, including remedial training, guidance, and facilitation.
- Conducted exploration of tools and techniques to maximize the effectiveness of geographically dispersed audit teams.
- Evaluated growth in mindset and behavior patterns, targeting the realization of intended outcomes.
- Ensured knowledge sharing and collaboration with the London Agile coaching team for alignment of Agile vision and approach.
Scrum Master | Agile Coach | Agile Trainer
2015 - 2017
Scholastic
- Served as an agile coach and scrum master for two SAFe mobile device management and four non-SAFe CMS software development teams.
- Acted as a devoted champion of a mindset focused on continuous improvement and delivery of customer value.
- Conducted daily mentoring on Agile values and philosophy in the context of Kanban and Scrum, including processes, roles, and ceremonies.
- Held bi-weekly custom-designed training sessions on Agile principles and practices, project management, team motivation, and effectiveness based on observations of teams' attitudes, behaviors, and performance over time.
- Provided guidance for scrum masters regarding enabling Agile growth and maturity of their teams, sharing custom presentations, communication, and collaboration techniques, and discussing issues and options.
- Assembled monthly presentations on program health and performance for executive management, reporting on teams' metrics and outcomes in Jira, including identification of issues, opportunities, and action plans for increased quality and productivity.
Project Manager | Agile Principles Consultant
2014 - 2015
Elderplan
- Assessed organizational project management maturity. Applied Agile philosophy to correct weaknesses in communications, collaboration, and risk identification and management.
- Provided guidance to staff and workgroup members on project management fundamentals. Identified and implemented appropriate Agile principles and practices.
- Counseled senior management on techniques for cultural growth toward greater efficiency, transparency, and high-performing collaborative teams.
- Led workgroups in the remediation of Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services regulatory audit findings via assembly and execution of project plans.
- Partnered with the VP of regulatory compliance on program status updates and communication.
- Coordinated preparation of business operations for external mock and government validation audits, demonstrating corrections in response to formal audit findings.
Senior IT Project Manager | Agile Development Coach
2014 - 2014
Church Pension Group
- Led multiple software development and infrastructure enhancement projects.
- Coached and mentored multiple technology and business teams on Agile project design and collaboration.
- Reported on project status, deliverables, remediation plans, and recommendations.
Scrum Master | Agile Coach | IT Program Manager
2011 - 2014
ActiveHealth Management
- Managed different project types, including software development, Agile principles training, IT audit compliance, infrastructure upgrades, enterprise-level NCQA accreditation, and HR procurement and management.
- Led the enterprise implementation of Agile development principles and practices.
- Served as a scrum master of the company's first Agile team.
- Coached and mentored three new scrum masters and development teams on Scrum and Kanban.
- Managed multiple infrastructure upgrade initiatives, including Oracle 11g, Informatica, webMethods, and JBoss migration.
- Managed enterprise-level preparation for KPMG IT compliance audit—SAS 70, SSAE 16, and SOC 2.
- Designed and implemented the group's first formal SDLC process and defect management tool.
- Managed IT staffing for DMS Group, including vendors, resume evaluations, phone screens, and onsite interviews.
Senior Program Manager
2010 - 2011
Comcast
- Managed different project types, such as system and infrastructure, cable TV, commercial high-speed data, and home security and automation.
- Led deployments of Cisco video-on-demand content delivery network for the California region, metro Ethernet commercial high-speed data, and unified database.
- Covered the full system implementation lifecycle, including preparation, installation, configuration, testing, training, deployment, go-live, and support.
- Provided direct leadership and management of large geographically dispersed national project teams.
- Deployed Xfinity home security, including business analysis, use case interviews, requirement definition, BRD publication, Visio process diagramming, and WebGUI interface mockups.
- Conducted dependency identification and management, resource and vendor management, activity integration, creating documentation and reporting.
Senior Project Manager | Organizational Restructuring Initiative
2009 - 2010
eBay
- Managed design and transition phases of the organizational restructuring project.
- Conducted traditional PMBOK Waterfall duties, including initiating, planning, executing, monitoring, controlling, and closure.
- Researched and documented the current organizational structure of the information security and risk management group, with around 40 personnel affected.
- Conducted and documented extensive interviews of management and all direct technical personnel reports.
- Mapped roles, responsibilities, in-progress operations, and project-based initiatives to future-state organizational structure design, including identification of headcount and skill set gaps to arise from transition.
- Prepared transition of roles, responsibilities, management ownership, reporting relationships, and onboarding of new personnel for skillset gaps in future-state organizational structure.
Program Manager | Agile Development Coach
2008 - 2009
Altice USA
- Managed the application development program and three projects with a focus on telephony. Organizational structure was a strong matrix.
- Oversaw the SDLC, including the initial proposal, through design, development, testing, deployment, and support. The budgets ranged from $2,000,000 to $5,000,000, teams from 15 to 20 employees, and time frames from three months to 2+ years.
- Coached and mentored technology and business project teams on Agile project design and collaboration. The teams consisted of PMs, business analysts, software architects, developers, test teams, lab technicians, DB services, and operation support.
- Executed project management plans, including SOW, scope, and budget approval, WBS, personnel assignments, time frames, ongoing team meetings, project tracking, and management reporting.
- Performed resource management, risk register planning, updates, and resolution, and budget versus actual via Clarity.
- Managed processes regarding design closure, development, testing, and defect resolution in HP Quality Center, UAT, deployment, training, beta testing, and production rollout.
IT Project Manager
2007 - 2008
WarnerMedia
- Led small hardware deployment projects ($50,000) for communications network infrastructure, including budget estimation and approvals, project plans, design meetings, installation, configuration, testing, training, live cutover, and support.
- Managed small-budget iterative app support projects ($50,000 – $200,000) and vendor relationships with a team of 8 – 10, including a workforce management app, defect resolution, and system and handheld field unit upgrades. Reached 400+ end users.
- Collaborated with a 3rd-party vendor on business analysis, functional design, requirement documentation, and development a scorecard app for monitoring TWC sales and support, technical operations, and call centers. Reached 2,500+ end users.
- Managed pilot preparations with Arris/C-COR, a 3rd-party vendor, for design, configuration, testing, limited rollout, and eventual corporate-wide deployment of a new workforce management application.
- Generated RFP, coordinated identification of prospective vendors, and hosted presentations for model replacement of handheld field unit for installation and repair technicians region-wide. The project reached 400+ end users.
- Mentored junior project coordinator and business analyst on app development and system improvement management processes.
Senior PMO Coordinator | Agile Principles Coach
2006 - 2007
American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers
- Acted as a senior PMO coordinator for a balanced matrix organizational structure operating in the field of music performance rights, royalties, and licensing.
- Provided guidance to multiple technology and business project teams on Agile project design and collaboration.
- Created, linked, and managed a program of ten Microsoft Project plans, 3,000+ task lines each, for a large-scale development initiative that included ground-up design and engineering of new performing rights and royalties.
- Managed a total budget of over $20,000,000. Coordinated 100+ employees, including PMs, business analysts, development and architecture teams, data reengineering programmers, QA teams, and trainers.
- Oversaw the process scope of the whole SDLC from business requirements documents to design, development, testing, training, deployment, and support.
- Employed schedule variance analysis, dynamic inter-project milestones, resource leveling and management by implementing a shared master resource pool, and Gantt chart what-if analyses for project visibility and projections in Microsoft Project.
- Taught weekly group individual classes and mentored staff on project management fundamentals and Microsoft Project application throughout the IT department, including executives, project managers, developers, and junior coordinators.
Project History
Enterprise Agile Transformation for Estee Lauder Companies
Designed and launched the global adoption of Agile value delivery for Estee Lauder Companies with 63,000 employees across all regions, brands, and functions.
The worldwide initiative entailed the following:
• Guided organizational leadership in identifying transformation vision, objectives, and key results. Defined target goals, metrics, and outcomes.
• Performed introductory Agile training for leaders, teams, specialized roles, and individual contributors. Conducted interactive foundational workshops for deep-dive, topic- and issue-based practice and exploration. Designed and created Estee-branded Agile guides and presentations for foundational training at all levels. Launched and populated Confluence-based wiki for reference topics, materials, and recommendations.
• Conducted ongoing in-context Agile coaching for leaders, teams, and individuals, drawing upon Agile training and lessons learned. Mentored current and prospective leaders on Agile mindset, approaches, and behaviors.
• Performed Agile org-, team-, and individual maturity assessments. Tracked, analyzed, and reported Agile performance metrics and outcomes for empirical learning, adaptation, and continuous improvement over time.
• Engaged the leadership to identify candidates for training as internal guides, mentors, and champions of Agile value delivery and enablement of high-performing individuals, leaders, and teams.
• Guided organizational leadership in identifying transformation vision, objectives, and key results. Defined target goals, metrics, and outcomes.
• Performed introductory Agile training for leaders, teams, specialized roles, and individual contributors. Conducted interactive foundational workshops for deep-dive, topic- and issue-based practice and exploration. Designed and created Estee-branded Agile guides and presentations for foundational training at all levels. Launched and populated Confluence-based wiki for reference topics, materials, and recommendations.
• Conducted ongoing in-context Agile coaching for leaders, teams, and individuals, drawing upon Agile training and lessons learned. Mentored current and prospective leaders on Agile mindset, approaches, and behaviors.
• Performed Agile org-, team-, and individual maturity assessments. Tracked, analyzed, and reported Agile performance metrics and outcomes for empirical learning, adaptation, and continuous improvement over time.
• Engaged the leadership to identify candidates for training as internal guides, mentors, and champions of Agile value delivery and enablement of high-performing individuals, leaders, and teams.
Division Transformation for Barclays Bank | US Internal Audit
Acted as the global bank's first US-based agile coach. I trained and guided their audit division in the application of Agile principles and practices to the bank's internal risk assessment, testing, and mitigation operations.
Over eight months, the division's leaders and teams committed to a guided examination of their audit practice and processes via an Agile lens across 14 functional verticals and 125 personnel. Groups and individuals underwent foundational training and participated in collaborative workshops, identifying and recognizing long-standing challenges and pain points, followed by in-context coaching and incremental changes to mindset and approach.
In conclusion, the project realized a large-scale team of teams, consistently delivering their risk insights and corrective actions more rapidly, at higher quality, and with greater impact across the enterprise than had ever been possible.
In conclusion, the project realized a large-scale team of teams, consistently delivering their risk insights and corrective actions more rapidly, at higher quality, and with greater impact across the enterprise than had ever been possible.
New Team Formation, Guidance, and Agile Delivery for Morgan Stanley
Led the reorganization and transition of multiple Waterfall-based technical teams into fully product-driven Agile delivery squads.
FMT Group was struggling to deliver value within wealth management. Their executive director invited me to observe several of their development teams and recommend a solution. The teams were organized horizontally, focused solely on technical components, and led exclusively by technical stakeholders. Nothing they developed was vertically integrated or suitable for end-user delivery.
Assembling a group of business and technical leaders, we clarified FMT's mission from the division, determined the skills and experience groupings necessary for value delivery, and proceeded to reorganize the teams in line with that mission. Four new product-driven squads were created. Joint training on Agile foundations was performed, followed by single-team Scrum guidance and coaching, including role-based product owner and scrum master training.
The new squads were all based in India, each one collectively available only within their time zone. For 2.5 months, I adjusted my schedule to Indian Standard Time and individually coached each squad through formation, comprehension of Agile values and principles, mastery of the Scrum framework, and delivery of their first two sprints of end-user value to their wealth management clients and end users.
Assembling a group of business and technical leaders, we clarified FMT's mission from the division, determined the skills and experience groupings necessary for value delivery, and proceeded to reorganize the teams in line with that mission. Four new product-driven squads were created. Joint training on Agile foundations was performed, followed by single-team Scrum guidance and coaching, including role-based product owner and scrum master training.
The new squads were all based in India, each one collectively available only within their time zone. For 2.5 months, I adjusted my schedule to Indian Standard Time and individually coached each squad through formation, comprehension of Agile values and principles, mastery of the Scrum framework, and delivery of their first two sprints of end-user value to their wealth management clients and end users.
Education
1999 - 2000
Graduate Studies in Business Administration (MBA)
The Ohio State University - Columbus, OH, USA
1995 - 1997
Bachelor's Degree in Music (Orchestral Performance – Clarinet)
Southern Methodist University - Dallas, TX, USA
1988 - 1989
Undergraduate Coursework in Music
University of Rochester - Rochester, NY, USA
Certifications
MARCH 2014 - PRESENT
Certified Scrum Master
Scrum Alliance
Skills
Tools
Zoom, Confluence, Jira
Paradigms
Agile, Scrum, Agile Delivery, Agile Workflow, Agile Project Management, Kanban, Management, Transformation Design, Agile Software Development
Platforms
SharePoint
Industry Expertise
Music
Other
Project Management, Agile Coaching, Agile Sprints, Risk Assessment, Analysis, Multi-functional Teams, Human Assessment, Change Impact Assessment, Performance, Backlog Management, Product Delivery, Microsoft Teams, Tutoring, Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), Surveys, Survey Design, SurveyMonkey, Design, IT Projects, Training & Training Content Development, Presentation Design, Transformation Vision, Auditing, IT Audits, Mentorship & Coaching, Team Mentoring, IT Project Management, Software QA, Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), Technology Solutions, IT Management, Scrum Master, Telecom Equipment & Solutions, Internet Protocols, IT Infrastructure, Video Streaming, Telephony, Data, Stakeholder Interviews, User Interviews, Reorganization, Project Design, Agile Software Testing, Training, Workshops, Empowerment, Planning, Business Transformation, GAP Analysis, Inter-departmental Alignment, Technical Hiring, Technical Design, Regulations, Discovery, Fiserv
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