Paweł Kałkus
Verified Expert in Project Management
Project Manager
Warsaw, Poland
Toptal member since May 16, 2022
Paweł is an agile coach and a professional scrum trainer with 11 years of experience working in digital product development. He acted as a project manager, product owner, scrum master, and agile coach throughout his career, helping major media, logistics, and banking organizations worldwide move from a traditional project-based setup into a product-focused environment. Paweł is passionate about the people’s aspect of the Scrum method, focusing his efforts on building effective agile teams.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- Agile
- Agile Coaching
- Certified Trainer
- Product Owner
- Scaled Professional Scrum (SPS)
- Scrum
- Scrum Coaching
- Scrum Master
Work Experience
Professional Scrum Trainer
Scrum.org
- Ran the Professional Scrum Master I and Applying Professional Scrum training courses.
- Took active part in the Scrum.org community of trainers sharing knowledge and ideas with other trainers.
- Received multiple positive reviews from course attendees, proving my level of dedication, professionalism, and training skills.
Agile Coach
QAgile
- Consulted large-scale organizations on their path to agility, working closely with the management boards to measure the impact of agile transformation.
- Coached developers, product owners, and scrum masters.
- Provided training courses on agile, scrum, product management, and soft skills.
Scrum Master
BNP Paribas
- Worked closely with three teams developing mobile applications for iOS and Android and used the Nexus framework to handle scaling. This was a smaller part of an extensive configuration of 20 teams building new online banking.
- Played an active role as a member of the bank’s Agile Center, organizing agile days to increase awareness, training other teams in Scrum methodologies, coaching new scrum masters, and handling impediments to agility at the organizational level.
- Participated in the organization's agile transformation program and raised understanding of the empirical product development approach among high-level stakeholders.
Agile Coach
Wirtualna Polska Holding
- Supported the product development part of the organization in the agile transformation process.
- Built the enterprise transformation community (ETC) team and organized dedicated agile training and workshops for the development teams.
- Ran several workshops to strengthen the bonds within the development teams and improve their engineering practices.
Agile Coach
DSV
- Coached four teams in the DSV's electronic data interchange (EDI) division on their way to agility.
- Mentored product owners, introduced agile practices to the development teams' work, ran scrum, agile, and team building workshops, and built the overall understanding of the Agile approach to product development in DSV.
- Cooperated and coached remote work teams, gaining relevant experience on related processes and strategies.
Product Owner
Wirtualna Polska Holding
- Took responsibility for developing the company's two most important sites— WP.pl and O2.pl—and the CMS that supports 20+ theme sites.
- Contributed to maximizing the business value of those products through close cooperation with stakeholders and product backlog management.
- Ran AB tests, monitored the usage of the different functionality, and looked for ways to increase user engagement on both sites.
Scrum Master
Wirtualna Polska Holding
- Articulated with a scrum team for developing the company’s CMS.
- Acted as an agile project manager and scrum master, handling the project budget, scope, and deadlines while also introducing the team to Scrum methodologies, focusing on the concepts of incremental and iterative delivery and addressing impediments.
- Ran a wide range of product-related experiments that improved the CMS's customer satisfaction and the index metrics on feature usage.
Product Owner
Gazeta Wyborcza
- Directed SEO activities within the Wyborcza.pl group, handling over 30 websites.
- Took responsibility for planning SEO strategies, educating content writers and online publishers, initiating new SEO initiatives, and handling the overall SEO performance of Wyborcza.pl and associated brands.
- Managed a small team of SEO experts that helped increase the portal's search engine presence.
Scrum Master
Gazeta Wyborcza
- Participated in the agile transformation of Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper using scrum and various agile practices and tools.
- Worked with two scrum teams, undertaking all scrum master's responsibilities.
- Worked on the new Wyborcza.pl web portal incrementally and iteratively.
Agile Project Manager
Agora SA
- Developed products for the internet, daily newspapers, and radio departments of the Agora SA media corporation.
- Worked on SEO, eCommerce, social media, and mobile application projects.
- Used Agile and Waterfall-related methods and frameworks, namely AgilePM, Scrum, and Prince2.
Junior Project Manager
Agora SA
- Learned the basics of project management within a large media environment while working as part of a small team of IT professionals.
- Ran tens of small IT and marketing projects related to the Gazeta.pl portfolio of websites.
- Took an active part in the project managers' community of practice.
Project History
Agile Transformation in a Large Media Outlet
Helped the company move from a project-based environment to a product-based setup with dedicated agile teams focused on developing a portfolio of products, including web portals, mobile applications, and subscription services.
As a dedicated agile coach, I helped the management board develop a concrete step-by-step plan to move away from a waterfall project management approach that caused delays, frustration, and low quality to a scrum process with cross-functional teams able to deliver releasable parts of products every sprint.
Scaled Scrum While Working on a Banking Application
Helped scale the work of almost 20 scrum teams dedicated to one big product —a new online banking platform for one of the largest banks in the world.
As one of the scrum masters, I introduced the Scaled Professional Scrum with LeSS and Nexus practices to help synchronize the work of multiple scrum teams and ensure they produce an integrated increment of value on each sprint. Used various practices to make sure that the scrum teams were aware of the dependencies between them, had the tools to collaborate on an ongoing basis, and were able to handle impediments that affected their work.
Scrum Master and Product Owner Academy
Spearheaded the in-house initiative to create and run an extensive training program for both new scrum masters and product owners in the organization.
I created the entire training program curriculum and content, consisting of eight training days spread across a few months. At the end of the Scrum Masters and Product Owners Academy, students were able to start working in the new role and were offered an additional mentorship program to help them get up to speed. I ran this initiative multiple times in different organizations.
Education
Postgraduate Program in Requirements Management and Business Analysis
Kozminski University - Warsaw, Poland
Postgraduate Program in Project Management
Kozminski University - Warsaw, Poland
Postgraduate Program in Internet Technologies
Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology - Warsaw, Poland
Bachelor's Degree in Music Technology and Production
University of Derby - Derby, United Kingdom
Certifications
Certified LeSS Practitioner
LeSS
Professional Scrum Trainer
Scrum.org
Scrum@Scale Practitioner
Scrum Inc.
Professional Scrum with Kanban
Scrum.org
Team Kanban Practitioner
Kanban University
Professional Scrum Product Owner II (PSPO II)
Scrum.org
Professional Scrum Master Level III (PSM III)
Scrum.org
Professional Scrum Developer
Scrum.org
Professional Agile Leadership Essentials
scrum.org
Extended DISC Certified Consultant
Extended Tools
Professional Scrum Product Owner I (PSPO I)
Scrum.org
Scaled Professional Scrum
Scrum.org
Scrum Master Toolbox
Code Sprinters
Professional Scrum Master Level II (PSM II)
Scrum.org
Prosci Change Management (ADKAR)
Prosci
Conflict Solving
House of Skills
Train the Trainer
Altkom Akademia
Management 3.0
Happy Melly
Improve Your Team Performance
Thomas International
Coaching in Scrum
Mariusz Chrapko
Professional Scrum Master Level I (PSM I)
Scrum.org
Project Risk Management
Paweł Dąbrowski
Prince2 Foundation
AXELOS
Value Requirements Training
Gilb International
Agile Project Management Foundation
APMG International
Communication Skills Training
Grupa Training & Consulting
G-Force: Project Management
Agora SA
Skills
Tools
Jira, Zoom, Trello, Slack
Paradigms
Agile, Scrum, Agile Leadership, Agile Project Management, PMBOK, Requirements Analysis, Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN), Testing, Kanban, Change Management, PRINCE2
Platforms
Nexus
Other
Scrum Master, Certified Trainer, Scrum Coaching, Agile Coaching, Training, Product Owner, Product Ownership, Professional Agile Leadership (PAL), Scaled Professional Scrum (SPS), Performance, Communication, Project Management, IT Project Management, Web Project Management, Consulting, User Behavior, Human Assessment, Microsoft Teams, Music Production, Java, APIs, Databases, UML, Web Services, Web Design, Waterfall Methodology, Risk Management, Business Analysis, Business Process Management (BPM), Value Stream Mapping, Quality Management, Prosci ADKAR, Conflict Resolution, Management 3.0, Coaching, PRINCE2 Project Management, Less, Large-scale Scrum (LeSS)
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