Omar Sultan
Verified Expert in Project Management
Project Manager
London, United Kingdom
Toptal member since June 27, 2024
Omar is an Advanced Certified Scrum Master and SAFe Agilist with over a decade of experience as an Agile delivery expert. He specializes in bespoke consultation and training services for organizations that wish to improve their working methods, enabling them to deliver and satisfy their customers with the best quality and efficiency. Omar believes that the hardest thing to change is a mindset, so he seeks the opportunity to be a catalyst in demonstrating the power of Agile working methods.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- Agile
- Agile Coaching
- Agile Product Delivery
- Agile Project Management
- Confluence
- IT Project Management
- IT Projects
- Jira
Work Experience
SAFe Agile Coach | Scrum Master
Vodafone Group
- Acted as SAFe agile coach and scrum master, guiding multiple teams in a high-profile sustainability program across the UK and EMEA regions.
- Coached product management to align strategic vision with tactical execution flow.
- Developed various Power BI dashboards as information radiators to benchmark and assess overall progress.
- Advised senior leadership on scaling strategies based on observed results and team behaviors.
- Supported the development of new product owners and scrum masters.
Senior Agile Consultant (SAFe)
H&M Company
- Contributed to a large Scaled Agile transformation within the company and coached leadership roles.
- Set up a baseline Agile ecosystem applying concepts from SAFe for the scaled aspect.
- Spearheaded improvements within the Atlassian suite to help teams work more efficiently and transparently.
- Ran multiple workshops alongside community-based learning sessions, usually comprising up to 200 people within a specific program or release train.
- Conducted Agile maturity assessments in a bespoke manner to help teams push through their unique challenges.
- Mentored new scrum masters, product owners, and agile coaches in their respective journeys.
- Introduced key metrics at the team, program, and portfolio levels to monitor health and progress.
AVP | Senior Agile Delivery Lead (Scaled Frameworks)
Emirates NBD
- Contributed to helping the company adopt Agile ways of working. It was the 1st and largest Agile transformation of its kind in the UAE.
- Set up Jira projects and workflows for each team and was recognized as the Atlassian expert within the IT organization, holding weekly Jira and Confluence training sessions.
- Introduced key dashboards and metrics at the team, program, and portfolio levels to monitor health and progress.
- Advised senior leadership, such as the CTO/CIO, on the next steps and areas of opportunity.
- Managed and coached distributed teams and vendors to deliver the MVP for a digital bank within 10 months of development.
- Mapped working models for Agile implementations based on the request for proposal (RFP) and statement of work (SoW).
- Collaborated with the DevOps area to implement best practices in the continuous integration and delivery pipeline to move toward a release-on-demand capability.
- Conducted Agile maturity assessments and consistently helped teams overcome their unique impediments over time. External consultants also regularly scored my teams as high-performing within the IT organization.
Agile Coach
Salmon eCommerce
- Joined the company to help kick off a new Agile project for a large Belgian client and work on their eCommerce platform.
- Enabled Scrum skills and roles across the teams in both vendor and supplier locations.
- Delivered training and workshops across multiple roles and business areas in the UK and Belgium.
- Encouraged new technical approaches to place the customer at the core of the implementation.
- Guided leadership on how to achieve higher quality through Agile practices.
Agile Coach
Autodata
- Introduced and transitioned existing Waterfall-based teams towards Agile methods.
- Advised leadership about the initial steps to share and scale teams when the time was right.
- Enabled the correct Agile behaviors and roles across the IT organization.
- Coached scrum masters and product owners, preparing to work with new teams.
Lead Agile Coach
Virgin Media
- Played a key role in the company's Agile transformation by transitioning teams from Waterfall to Agile, fostering scrum master and product owner expertise to disseminate knowledge widely.
- Delivered training and workshops using my material.
- Collaborated with teams on web and mobile apps, non-software projects, and 3rd-party applications.
- Set up an Agile community/working group with department heads.
- Improved the frequency of releases from once every quarter before my arrival to at least once monthly.
- Established Jira and Confluence spaces for teams to share information.
Agile Coach | Scrum Master
Temenos SA
- Contributed to preparing the development teams for their most significant deal in history.
- Built a motivated Scrum team from scratch and worked on .NET web applications plus a bespoke legacy system for financial work.
- Delivered workshops across our globally-distributed teams.
- Set up an Agile leadership community within the company.
- Led regular coaching sessions with fellow scrum masters to enhance collective learning and personal development.
Agile Coach | Scrum Master
UKCloud
- Coached the entire company, from CEO downwards, in Agile and Scrum with a vision to scale.
- Formed proper Scrum and Kanban teams for the 1st time in the company.
- Delivered workshops to the entire organization on various Agile topics plus the Atlassian suite, which was to be used.
- Organized and facilitated all sprint ceremonies as a scrum master while training new scrum masters in their roles.
- Introduced key Agile metrics for the company, such as burndown and velocity charts.
Scrum Master
Rated People
- Coached the entire company, including senior leadership, in Agile best practices.
- Delivered software projects using appropriate frameworks while helping to remove impediments for teams.
- Organized and facilitated sprint ceremonies, including planning, stand-ups, reviews, and retrospectives.
- Improved transparency and tracking through burndown and velocity charts.
Scrum Master
Enterprise Rent-A-Car
- Coordinated activities of project teams involved in the analysis, design, development, and implementation of IT initiatives.
- Used the Agile methodology and acted as scrum master and coach for my teams while following established project management methodologies, standards, processes, and procedures.
- Contributed to defining project scope and objectives, requesting project resources, and determining time requirements while identifying and coordinating task-level dependencies.
- Identified and tracked project issues and risks using effective metrics.
Project History
Digital Bank MVP in the UAE
Coordinated and led the delivery of the minimum viable product (MVP) within 10 months of starting development across a distributed team.
I managed over 30 technical and business team members worldwide in rapidly creating the MVP working version of a digital business bank, delivering within 10 months. We did this using a distributed implementation of Agile methods, which I defined and coached.
The usual procurement processes, such as creating an RFP and SoW, were still used. I was involved in defining how to work here and selecting the appropriate vendors to partner with.
Once the project was underway, I ensured effective collaboration and delivery. I traveled between our office and vendor sites in the UK to make this happen. We used the Atlassian suite with relevant metrics to monitor and track the initiative’s health, allowing us to pivot when needed.
Atlassian Rollout Across the Entire IT Organization
Managed the migration project of all IT initiatives from a legacy tool into the Atlassian suite so that I could effectively coach the organization moving forward.
I led the collation of all project data for over 30 teams. I prepared it alongside IT support to move all of them into the Atlassian suite, specifically Jira and Confluence, without needing manual intervention.
The aim was to minimize disruption to all teams but still complete it promptly to keep up with the pace of the Agile transformation within the company.
In my role as agile coach, I used my Atlassian knowledge and expertise to take the lead in this effort. Upon completing the migration, I ensured 100% correctness and satisfaction before rolling out my training program for the Atlassian suite throughout the IT organization.
Agile Ecosystem Definition Across the Technical Arm
Defined a comprehensive Agile ecosystem for the IT organization, inspired by the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe).
I worked with leaders, agile coaches, and teams to define an entirely scaled way of working for the organization, loosely based on SAFe. This involved a lot of ideation, training, and software configuration.
I led a group of agile coaches in defining training material and rolling out phases of workshops and team-level guidance to embed people into the ecosystem. This marked the beginning of delivering in a coordinated and scaled fashion within the company.
Education
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science with Business Management
University of Manchester - Manchester, United Kingdom
Certifications
SAFe 5 Practice Consultant
Scaled Agile
Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO)
Scrum Alliance
Certified Scrum Professional – Scum Master (CSP-SM)
Scrum Alliance
Certified SAFe Scrum Master
Scaled Agile
Advanced Certified Scrum Master (A-CSM)
Scrum Alliance
Certified Agile Leadership
Scrum Alliance
Certified SAFe Agilist
Scaled Agile
Certified Scrum Master
Scrum Alliance
Skills
Tools
Jira, Confluence, Trello, Miro, Zoom, Office 365, Google Workspace, SQL, Atlassian, Atlassian Suite
Paradigms
Agile, Iterative Delivery, Scrum, Agile Leadership, Kanban, Agile Project Management, Waterfall Development, Release Trains
Platforms
Oracle
Other
Microsoft Teams, Software Engineering, Scrum Master, Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), Product Owner, Scrum Product Owner, Scrum Coaching, Agile Coaching, IT Projects, IT Project Management, Agile Product Delivery, Business Management, Accounting, Java, C, C++, Marketing, Databases, Scrumban, Jira Administration, Jira Administrator, Program Increment Planning, Atlassian Plugins, Spotify, Digital, Scrum of Scrums, SAFe 6
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