Ovidiu Popovici
Verified Expert in Project Management
Project Manager
Cluj-Napoca, Cluj County, Romania
Toptal member since September 28, 2022
Ovidiu is a developer turned project manager and agile coach by his love for optimizing work processes and helping teams deliver the best quality software possible. He believes the greatest improvements can be found in the way work is organized, not in individual performance. Ovidiu creates the right environment enriched with trust to enable teams to work hard and build truly innovative products.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- Agile
- Agile Delivery
- Jira
- Large-scale Scrum (LeSS)
- Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)
- Scrum
- Scrum@Scale
- Statistical Process Control Tools
Work Experience
Agile Coach
Cariad
- Joined a multidisciplinary compliance support team as an agile coach and scrum master. Worked on creating compliance processes for quality, legal, cybersecurity, and risk for four Agile release trains.
- Helped the team become more client-centric in managing their backlog and writing their tasks, leading to improved customer feedback and higher business value delivered by the team.
- Improved the quality of the work by introducing definitions of ready and definitions of done for the processes that were being developed, leading to faster application of the processes by the teams in the ARTs.
- Reworked the team's objectives and key results system to align with company directives and synergies with the PI planning creation.
- Facilitated the PI planning rituals that the multiple disciplines needed to plan their work together over the 3-month PI cycle.
- Reworked Jira flows, ticket systems, and boards to get faster cycle and lead times and have better transparency for the different granularities of ticket types, such as tasks, features, and risks.
Agile Coaching & Training Program (Off-shore)
Gartner - Transformation Office
- Improved Agile software delivery by increasing autonomy of Agile teams, lead, and cycle time through customized team-level Agile workshops to strengthen core knowledge on processes, culture, mindset, and metrics of self-organizing teams.
- Reduced wait times and increased team engagement by delivering customized Agile leadership workshops and one-on-one coaching to improve coaching skills, autonomous team creation, backlog management, WIP, and flow improvements.
- Addressed enterprise-level delivery issues by working with senior leadership on improving portfolio management, team structures, organizing around value, dependency management, and organizational culture.
- Performed a comprehensive analysis of Agile maturity and opportunities for improvement covering organizational culture, processes, Agile know-how, and software practices. Provided a comprehensive enterprise report and action plans.
Agile Coach and Supervisor
Steelcase
- Contributed to maturing teams on Agile practices for transitioning from Kanban to Scrum by teaching estimation and Agile planning. Got scope creep under control and improved ownership of needed resources and know-how.
- Increased ownership and access of the team to reduce external dependencies that made estimations unreliable, including Azure rights, pipeline knowledge, specific areas the team needed training on, and getting trust from architects on other teams.
- Improved planning by focusing on its second part, where the team planned how to finish the chosen stories over the next two weeks.
- Coached the team on the first step of behavior-driven development using Gherkin syntax to write user stories and automated tests on the front end.
- Reduced cycle time by introducing the metric in dashboards and showing it at the start of every meeting, including daily and retrospective meetings. Coached the team on the importance of reducing WIP limits and work in progress.
- Taught teams the swarming techniques to optimize mutual support to prioritize finishing tickets together instead of starting new work.
- Reduced the lead time on extending offers to potential new joiners from an average of 21 days to one week by coordinating with the HR department and restructuring the interview process.
- Suggested and led the development of a junior full-stack developer and QA training program to augment recruitment needs for the department.
- Identified a dangerous knowledge and ownership gap in a team I was working with. Explained risks to department managers and built a clear business case for defining and doing the necessary training.
Project Manager and Agile Coach
Fortech SRL
- Helped the client understand what motivated their employees and addressed their needs by building a custom tool to measure employee motivation based on the psychological framework of intrinsic motivation by Edward Deci.
- Facilitated the conflict between the CTO and senior members of the development teams, resulting in changes to how work was done that satisfied both parties and led to better estimations and faster delivery.
- Introduced improved change management rituals in the teams and tools to visualize them. It led to quicker adoption of new habits by the teams and visibility of these changes to stakeholders.
- Trained and coached two talented developers in changing their careers and transitioning to scrum masters to increase the Agile expertise of the company.
- Taught a product manager how to make the teams feel more connected to the product and deeply invested in the company's success by providing an inspirational vision, creating successful business milestones more visible, and getting user feedback.
- Built custom metrics and dashboards to help clients visualize critical data and trends in delivery. The throughput graphs were based on ticket types or business values, velocity on the number of team members, and backlog breakdown on custom rules.
- Coached teams and introduced processes that allowed the PO to work at the feature level only and have the teams create, mature, and prioritize stories. It allowed the PO to finally have time to focus on the big picture and explore customer needs.
- Built a common framework across teams to create working agreements to optimize collaborative work focused on how they preferred to seek support, receive and express gratitude, and solve disputes.
Software Developer
Fortech SRL
- Rebuilt the core data input module of a digital factory planning software. The bill of materials reader was extended to allow for complex custom formats, languages, and data types.
- Oversaw the plan and integration of work packages with the German client teams and coordinated product releases.
- Built the application layer that allowed data on racks, tools, boxes, and other factory elements to be represented in the 3D representation of the factory.
Software Developer
Octavic Engineering
- Created an intuitive user interface using Qt framework and QML for a system used in factory automatization and tailored it using user behavioral data.
- Developed an application in Python that stored and transformed data from STL files for 3D modeling.
- Built a software component that transformed received input data from sensors placed at key points on the assembly line into data packages processable by the application.
Project History
Digital Factory Planning Software
Improved the delivery pipeline significantly by analyzing work and introducing a customized version of large-scale scrum.
A German client creating cutting-edge desktop software that allows large automotive clients to plan large factories and optimize material delivery to production lines needed a project manager.
I was the scrum master and agile coach for the entire client software delivery division and worked with four software development teams of up to 20 developers. I also served as a direct supervisor for one of the teams and ensured a successful collaboration between Fortech and the client company.
CHALLENGES
• Multiple teams worked on the same product with varying release schedules and complex dependencies in work between them.
• Overburdened product ownership team struggled to provide the necessary content and focus on clients’ needs.
• Two young teams needed to learn core Agile concepts and the basics of successful delivery with Scrum.
• Deeply rooted conflicts between the most senior developers of the company and the CTO due to differences in approach to building long-term sustainable architecture and how to deliver software fast to clients.
Cost and Supply Chain Optimization Product
Negotiated and delivered the first MVP despite a very tight timeline, difficulties with the budget, resource constraints, and a complex delivery ecosystem.
I managed a project to build a product that allowed planning complex assemblies like engines to be optimized based on costs, suppliers, and production processes. I directly supervised a team of 12, including a product owner and scrum master reporting to me. I also oversaw Agile processes and high-level delivery for the project.
CHALLENGES
• Serious differences in personality and approach within the team, which initially led to difficulties and conflicts when collaborating.
• The team felt disconnected from the product and did not understand why their work was valuable, which led to demotivation.
• Extremely tight delivery timeline and budget.
RoomWizard Booking System
Led the introduction of the Scrum@Scale framework for my teams as part of a larger initiative to align our department to release cycles of the broader organization.
I served as a direct supervisor and agile coach for two teams of 14 people that were developing a room booking ecosystem similar to Teams Rooms. I also conducted analysis and preparation work on training with the PMO department.
The product allows the integration of multiple calendar solutions with a tablet placed outside the meeting rooms and shared spaces. The tablet shows occupancy and the schedule for the day and enables reservations to be made. The device runs a customized Android version. An external vendor coordinated the hardware and operating system level work. The ecosystem also had a web interface for administrators built mainly using Angular, and the back end was built in .NET.
CHALLENGES
• The disempowered team lacked the proper knowledge and ownership of resources and processes to drive the product’s development.
• Extremely loose processes that were using an incomplete form of Kanban and unclear priorities.
Education
Master's Degree in Human Resources and Organizational Health
Babes-Bolyai University - Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Bachelor's Degree in Political Science
Babes-Bolyai University - Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Certifications
SAFe 4 Agilist
Scaled Agile
Professional Scrum Master Level I (PSM I)
Scrum.org
Skills
Tools
Jira, Slack, Microsoft Project, Atlassian Suite, Project Management & Work Tracking Tools, Confluence, Google Workspace, Microsoft Power BI
Paradigms
Agile Delivery, Agile, Change Management, Agile Workflow, Azure DevOps, Key Performance Metrics, Management, Agile Product Management, Agile Project Management, Implementation Project Management, Kanban, Scrum, Behavior-driven Development (BDD), Lean, Agile Leadership, Agile Software Development, Requirements Analysis, DevOps, Lean Project Management
Other
Conflict Resolution, Communication, Organizational Structure, Risk Management, Team Management, Certified ScrumMaster (CSM), Sprint Ceremonies, User Stories, Sprint Master, Agile Practices, Agile Certified Practitioner, Scrum Master, Sprint Planning, Cross-functional Team Leadership, Leadership, Agile Sprints, Sprint Retrospectives, Team Leadership, Team Mentoring, Remote Team Leadership, Teams, Multi-functional Teams, Sprints, Change Leadership, Statistical Process Control Tools, Microsoft Teams, Large-scale Scrum (LeSS), Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), Workshop Facilitation, Status Updates, Business Requirements, User Requirements, Coaching, Training, Training & Training Content Development, Dashboards, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), Agile Program Management, Process Optimization, SAFe 4 Advanced Scrum Master, Product Ownership, Process Improvement Project Management, Software Project Management, Product Delivery, Agile Product Delivery, Career Coaching, Feature Backlog Prioritization, Software Implementation, Project Evaluation, Teaching, IT Project Management, IT Projects, Project Management, Project Planning, Projects, Project Delivery, Product Discovery, Project Estimation, Client Management, Client Delivery Management, Product Roadmaps, Story Mapping, Product Management, Corporate Culture, Python, Qt, QML, C++, Scrum@Scale, Scrum Coaching, Technical Recruiting, Agile Coaching, Backlog Management, Content Management, Hybrid Frameworks, Agile Transformation, Jira Administration, Jira Administrator, Agile Release Training, Consulting, Enterprise, Enterprise Metrics, Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), Mobile App Development, Web Project Management, Planning, Project Timelines, Quality Assurance (QA), Agile Deployment, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), User Interface (UI), Mobile Apps, Digital Project Management, Digital Innovation, Engineering, Implementation, Lean Development, Lean IT, Discovery Workshops, Project Discovery, QA Automation, EasyBI, Software Architecture, Business Analysis
How to Work with Toptal
Toptal matches you directly with global industry experts from our network in hours—not weeks or months.
Share your needs
Choose your talent
Start your risk-free talent trial
Top talent is in high demand.
Start hiring