Shilpa Narayan, Project Manager in London, United Kingdom
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Shilpa Narayan

Verified Expert  in Project Management

Bio

Shilpa is a pragmatic project/delivery manager with over 15 years of experience in the semiconductor, pharmaceutical, bank, and tax product industries. She’s worked with small startups to large Fortune 500 companies. Her recent projects include sustainable finance and mobile/web app development. Shilpa enjoys working as a project manager/scrum master with teams of all skill levels and guiding them to become better.

Project Highlights

Hive Mobile and Web App
Launched and managed several product-and-feature releases for the Hive mobile and web app.
Scrum Master at Royal London Asset Management
Helped team deliver towards stringent regulatory deadlines. Improved long standing inefficient release process within the team.

Expertise

  • Agile
  • Certified ScrumMaster (CSM)
  • Jira
  • Kanban
  • Mobile Apps
  • Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)
  • Scrum
  • Web Applications

Work Experience

Agile Delivery Manager

2022 - PRESENT
BBC
  • Worked with two teams to establish Agile ways of working and improve team efficiency.
  • Facilitated workshops to establish the team's mission and roadmap to turn around a demotivated team.
  • Developed team metrics to help the team be goal oriented and performance-driven.

Agile Delivery Lead

2022 - 2022
Kin + Carta
  • Planned and delivered a three-month project aimed at recommending the digital vision, strategy, and roadmap for K+Cs public sector client, Trade Remedies Authority (TRA). Successfully delivered the project within budget and on time.
  • Set up agile processes and ceremonies relevant to the team, slightly different from the regular team, comprising a technical architect, strategist, service designer, content designers, and data engineers.
  • Set up client-specific reporting and metrics for regular reporting to internal and external stakeholders to address dependencies and escalations proactively and promptly.

Scrum Master

2021 - 2022
Dunnhumby
  • Joined a team that did not have a scrum master role and helped set up agile ways of working.
  • Coached and guided the team on SAFe practices as most of the team was new to SAFe/Agile.
  • Introduced additional metrics that the team could capture that helped the team look at performance and more effective working methods.

Scrum Master

2021 - 2021
Q.ai (through Toptal)
  • Introduced and facilitated scrum ceremonies to ensure the team was organized and activities were planned proactively.
  • Facilitated retrospectives and ensured that the team had a space safe to voice their views and concerns.
  • Coached the team in agile ways of working and helped improve how the team understood and followed Agile.

Scrum Master

2020 - 2021
Royal London Asset Management
  • Joined two teams as scrum master and helped improve team collaboration and agile adoption.
  • Identified gaps in current processes and helped improve inefficient release processes.
  • Shielded team from distractions, thus, improving member happiness and team productivity.

Project/Product Manager

2020 - 2020
Hopin (via Toptal)
  • Joined the team to deliver a short-term project to meet accessibility requirements for a client of Hopin. On this online events platform, you can create engaging virtual events that connect people around the globe.
  • Developed the backlog based on the accessibility review/audit done by a third party.
  • Helped ramp up the team from two to six developers in two weeks to deliver the project within six weeks.
  • Successfully delivered the project to requirements within the tight deadlines before the event date for the client.

Agile Project Manager

2019 - 2020
Overlay
  • Joined an early-stage startup to lead the implementation of the proof of concept with the first corporate customer.
  • Established agile practices for the team and organized workshops to help develop the product vision and roadmap.
  • Set up Azure boards for workflow management and other PM practices to streamline communication and stakeholder management for the team.

Agile Delivery Manager

2018 - 2019
Lexis Nexis | 101Ways
  • Customized agile practises for the teams leading to increased acceptability and adoption of agile.
  • Mentored two teams to transition into an agile way of working and enabled the teams to perform more effectively.
  • Streamlined communication with external stakeholders resulting in shared vision and improved decision making.
  • Managed delivery of two teams of 8-10 members each: developers, QAs, and UI/UX designers.
  • Coordinated various scrum ceremonies including planning, refinement, demos, reviews, and retros.
  • Guided teams to follow best practices like BDD, TDD, and CI.
  • Facilitated workshops to generate team working agreements, the definition of done, the definition of ready, and so on.

Scrum Master

2016 - 2018
Hive | Centrica
  • Served as a scrum master to deliver multiple high-profile products and features on cross-platform apps (iOS, Android, and web) from inception to launch.
  • Managed teams through a difficult transition from Native apps to React Native apps.
  • Guided the team to adopt XP practices (TDD and CI/CD).
  • Managed geographically dispersed teams split across North America, Europe, and Asia.

Senior Project Manager of eCommerce

2016 - 2016
GlaxoSmithKline
  • Managed the transition of the Maxinutrition webshop from one eCommerce provider to another.
  • Assisted in the requirements gathering for the transition.
  • Managed the development and support for the existing webshop alongside the transition.

Project Manager

2013 - 2015
HSBC
  • Successfully delivered the overdrafts proposition review which revised the way HSBC charged customers when they withdrew over available balance.
  • Worked with the global test team to understand inter-dependencies and define the system test strategy in accordance with other ongoing IT change projects.
  • Mapped inter-dependencies of other projects/programs and workstreams and developed governance and standard reporting across projects/workstreams.
  • Managed the project budget, scope, and plans using Clarity.

Senior Project Manager

2011 - 2013
Cognizant
  • Acted as consulting PM for three different projects: Lloyds Banking, Travelers Insurance, and GSK.
  • Managed the program and lead the migration effort for one of the GSK divisions—global manufacturing and supply (GMS-IT) impacting about 25,000 users.
  • Assessed, for GSK, the current EUC (end-user computing) and drove site preparedness for rollout to Windows 7 by liaising with IT directors at the 37 sites across the globe (Europe, Asia, and the US).
  • Managed, for Lloyds Banking Group, the development of dashboard to consolidate and present MI across QA environments and development of the environmental management system for scheduling, tracking, and booking QA environments.
  • Managed, for Travelers Insurance, a project for the deployment of the new underwriting system program.

Project/Program Manager

2001 - 2010
Intel Technologies
  • Managed long duration complex programs running over two years and involving about 250 resources spread across ten component teams dispersed across the US, Malaysia, Israel, and India.
  • Deployed the Theory of Constraints (TOC) methodology to the scheduling of the top ten priority projects for Intel across geographies.
  • Tracked the program schedule and generated schedule and risk indicators to help the technical manager and the team take proactive action to keep to the schedule.
  • Developed a system application for the validation of data plane library code functionality for the IXP2400 processor.
  • Provided customer support for protocol layers like LLC, SNDCP, and NBAP of the Trillium GPRS stack and 3G stacks.

Software Engineer

2000 - 2001
Tata Elxsi
  • Developed interfaces between Test Expert (test automation tool from Verecomm) and telecom/networking devices like Ixia and SilverCreek.

Software Engineer

1997 - 2000
Wipro Technologies
  • Provided field solutions and features in the form of software plug-ins for various signaling protocols for NORTEL’s DMS 100 switches deployed worldwide.

Project History

Hive Mobile and Web App

Launched and managed several product-and-feature releases for the Hive mobile and web app.

I managed multiple cross-functional teams of developers, testers, and analysts to launch new product and feature releases for Hive on mobile and web applications. I also led the team to convert the mobile apps to a React Native app.

Scrum Master at Royal London Asset Management

Helped team deliver towards stringent regulatory deadlines. Improved long standing inefficient release process within the team.

Royal London Asset Management is an investment management company investing across a broad range of core asset classes including fixed income, equities, multi-asset, cash, and property.

My role:
• Acted as a scrum master for the Murex team guiding and coaching the team to understand Agile theory, practices, and rules.
• Was a member of the scrum master guild working towards continuous improvement of Agile practices across the organization.

Education

2000 - 2003

Post Graduate Diploma in Software Enterprise Management

Indian Institute of Management - Bangalore, India

1993 - 1997

Bachelor of Technology Degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering

National Institute of Technology - Kozhikode, India

Certifications

SEPTEMBER 2016 - SEPTEMBER 2021

Certified Scrum Master

Scrum Alliance

Skills

Tools

Jira, Trello, Google Docs, Slack, Zoom, Azure Boards, Miro, Confluence

Paradigms

Agile, Waterfall Development, Kanban, Scrum, Azure DevOps

Platforms

iOS, Android

Industry Expertise

Sustainability, Banking & Finance

Other

Certified ScrumMaster (CSM), Project Planning, Communication, Risk Management, Project Management, Stakeholder Management, Complex Program Management, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Discovery Workshops, Media, Project Coordination, Events, Accessibility, Mobile Apps, Web Applications, Web, Scrum Master, Notion, Teams, Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), eCommerce

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