Shumaila Sarwar
Verified Expert in Project Management
Project Manager
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Toptal member since November 12, 2021
Shumaila is a tech professional with 11 years of experience. She has worked as a technical project manager, business analyst, and product owner in the telecommunications, retail, and software technology industries. Shumalia has managed multiple large projects applying the Agile methodology in the domain of eCommerce and digital transformation. She was a magna cum laude graduate in her master's degree in project management based on PMBOK standards.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- Agile Project Management
- Business Analysis
- IT Project Management
- Jira
- Microsoft Project
- Project Management
- Scope Management
- Scrum
Work Experience
Senior Manager for Digital Commerce and Care
Etisalat
- Managed eCommerce and self-care domain for Etisalat's digital channels (web and app).
- Developed and maintained the digital product roadmap and designed customer-centric capabilities that supported the organization’s business strategies.
- Set up the sprint process under Agile methodology to manage all the requirements, including new capabilities and features and enhancements to existing ones.
- Drafted stories and acceptance criteria, prioritized the backlog, and actively participated in the agile development process.
- Introduced digital payments methods on the web and apps, including Apple pay, Samsung pay, and eWallet.
- Managed significant digital events like Black Friday, Dubai's Shopping Festival, and Dubai's Summer Surprises to introduce promotions and discounts on the web and apps, including but not limited to visuals, discounting, product listing, etc.
- Introduced a digital promotion framework to support the digital channels, so they'd have one platform for supporting different promo variants.
- Coordinated closely with product development and IT teams to deliver the capabilities and test the end-to-end customer journey within the sprint cycles.
- Analyzed the gap between digital and retail channels to provide a similar customer experience on all channels.
- Managed end-to-end business processes. Started with identifying requirements, then analyzing the impact aligned with KPIs, and finally drafting customer experience using wireframes and visual designs.
IT Project Manager
Chalhoub Group
- Worked as a PM on the end-to-end management solution of Oracle Retail Xstore Point-of-Service's (POS) and its rollout in 800 luxury retail stores, including Dolce & Gabbana, Tory Burch, Michael Kors, Swarovski, and others across the Middle East.
- Headed the introduction, as an Agile project manager, of a loyalty program across the Chalhoub group on the point of sale and eCommerce integration.
- Managed Integration to multiple CRM platforms with retail systems (Xstore) and order management systems.
- Defined the project's objectives, scope, requirement gathering, timelines, and program approach.
- Conducted a workshop and CRP sessions with businesses to identify and prioritize requirements and business processes.
- Performed fit-gap analyses for products and validated critical gaps in requirements.
- Reviewed functional design documents and translated business requirements into technical requirements.
- Created a statement of work (SOW), contracts, project plans, and project budgeting.
Agile Project Management and Business Analysis
e-horizon
- Joined as an Agile project manager and business analyst to manage digital products portfolio for a mobile app and web development.
- Delivered projects covering all aspects of Scrum methodology, including daily scrum, sprint planning, sprint review, and retrospectives to satisfy the customer and achieve specific commercial project requirements.
- Wrote functions and technical requirements using different visual modeling techniques like workflow diagrams, process flow, requirement gathering using Visio, Jira, Confluence, etc.
Head of Products and Business Analysis
eConceptions
- Created cross-products in partnership with the technology, telecommunication, and entertainment industry.
- Created business analysis documentation, including as-is and to-be process flows, requirement specifications, functional requirements, technical requirements, use cases, user acceptance testing, and wireframes.
- Practiced all phases of the project management methodology. Created detailed project plans, including dependencies, work breakdown structure, risks, issues, and planned tracking.
- Established effective communication among stakeholders by modeling requirements in use cases and holding joint walk-through meetings.
- Achieved alignment across departments by preparing extensive presentations, including weekly and monthly project progress, workflow and project roadmaps, risk and issue registers, etc.
- Worked as a scrum master to manage products that provided 90% of the company's total revenue, including the web portfolio and app development, value-added service (VAS), digital products, and enterprise solutions in Pakistan and the GCC.
- Supported the product owner to define the product portfolio roadmap and collaborated with the Scrum team and other stakeholders to translate business requirements into actionable user stories to execute them in sprints.
- Facilitated agile meetings such as sprint planning, daily stand-ups, sprint review, and sprint retrospectives.
IT Project Manager
Telenor Group
- Launched a multitude of digital products encompassing a variety of digital service types, from quick-time critical products to larger, more complex platforms.
- Partnered with cross-functional teams to develop technology-enabled products to improve customer experience and deliver new and revised products and capabilities to meet the objectives.
- Introduced a critical thinking process to solve business problems and enlisted requirements. Collaborated with technical leads to translate them into design deliverables and reviewed them upon completion.
- Gathered, interpreted, and translated customer needs into functional and technical requirements.
- Created comprehensive project documentation for the project's scope, gathered business requirements, and registered risks and issues.
- Worked with clients to determine appropriate test case scenarios for UAT.
- Reviewed 3rd party vendor documentation, conducted RFP, RFQ, and bidding processes.
Project Manager
Teradata
- Worked as project manager on data warehouse in Swap projects for the telecom and banking sector.
- Worked as a project manager to manage advanced analytics projects introducing product affinity, social network analysis, and location-based services.
- Ensured that all projects were delivered on time, within the scope and budget, and with the right resources.
- Worked on the presales domain, managing requirement identification and proposal development.
- Conducted a business discovery workshop for analytics requirements at Telenor.
Project History
eCommerce Shop for Etisalat's App and Web
I launched and managed the set up of the eCommerce shop for Etisalat in the UAE.
Managed a team of over 18 people to deliver the eCommerce capability on Etisalat’s web and mobile application.
I worked intensively defining the customer experience and user journey for the purchase flow.
I created the backlog and user stories to deliver the end-to-end purchase journey based on multiple sprints, from selecting products to payment and successful delivery.
I was also involved in gathering requirements, writing stories, user acceptance testing, and managing the mobile app and web release.
Oracle Retail Xstore Point-of-Service Rollout
Managed the implementation of the Oracle Retail Xstore POS, rolling out a solution for approx 600 stores and 45 brands across the Middle East.
I managed the entire project, from requirement gathering to the successful launch of the Oracle Retail Xstore POS solution across 600 stores in the Middle East.
I identified business requirements along with the brands by conducting multiple requirement gathering sessions. Also, assisted in converting these requirements into technical and functional requirements.
I worked closely with the solution architect to define the system’s architecture and managed vendors and developers to implement the solution.
Assisted in defining the test cases, conducted user acceptance testing, and prepared a rollout plan and strategy for implementing the solution across all the stores.
Integrating Loyalty Program with eCommerce and Retail Point of Sale
I launched the capability and managed the rollout of the loyalty integration program for several brands with eCommerce and point of sale.
I worked on building the concept of loyalty, including an earn, burn and redeem loyalty points process when the product is purchased from either a point of sale or through eCommerce.
I managed a team of 15 people, including business analysts, developers, testers, and designers, to deliver the integration of the loyalty program of luxury retail with their respective eCommerce channel and retail point of sale.
My role was to ensure that all requirements were gathered from everyone involved in the system and platforms. I had to map all business requirements from all brands and other stakeholders and transform them into technical requirements.
I created the end-to-end delivery plan and ensured all activities, including requirement gathering, preparing the BRD, initiating development, tracking development, conducting testing, and UAT with all the involved stakeholders.
The final stage was to plan the production release and roll it out to all respective brands and stores.
Recommendation Engine for eCommerce
I launched and managed a recommendation engine for eCommerce.
I started by creating an integration between an AI platform and an eCommerce channel to display the option of purchasing frequently bought or closely related products during the purchase journey to increase the upsell and cross-sell of products.
My role was to work on the front end customer experience, analyzing customer data to identify the products that are closely matched and can be bought together.
Working with the designer and UI/UX teams to understand and create the experience. We optimized the number of steps taken by the customer to purchase the products. Once developed, we tested the overall flow and ensured the customer experience was not broken.
After the launch, I monitored the customer behavior and observed the increase in uptake.
Education
Master's Degree in Project Management
Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto University - Islamabad, Pakistan
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science
National University of Computers and Emerging Sciences - Islamabad, Pakistan
Skills
Tools
Zoom, Jira, Microsoft Project, TestRail
Paradigms
Agile Project Management, PMBOK, Scrum, User Acceptance Testing (UAT), Agile
Platforms
Oracle
Other
BlueJeans, Computer Science, Analysis, Project Management, IT Project Management, Time Management, Cost Management, Scope Management, Quality Management, Business Analysis, Databases, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Data Mining, Product Owner, Digital, eCommerce, Digital Transformation, Catalog Management, User Experience (UX), User Interface (UI), User Stories, Backlog Management, Technical Project Management, Oracle Retail, IT Business Analysis, Use Cases, Point of Sale, Business Requirements, Mobile Apps, Websites, Product Management, Web Product Management, App UI, App UX, Value-added Services (VAS), Vendor Management, Digital Production, Data Warehouse Design, Client Delivery Management, Business Intelligence (BI), eCommerce UX, eCommerce UI, IT Projects, Loyalty Management, Loyalty Programs, Recommendation Engine, Upselling, Cross-selling, Web Platforms, Customer Journey, User Behavior
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