Tyler Haycraft, Project Manager in Rockwall, TX, United States
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Tyler Haycraft

Verified Expert  in Project Management

Project Manager

Location
Rockwall, TX, United States
Toptal Member Since
April 21, 2020

Tyler is an agile leader focused on continuous improvement and development of high-performing teams. He's led multiple process improvement initiatives for Fortune 50 and Fortune Global 10 organizations enabling improved delivery capabilities. His pragmatic and customer-first approach helps organizations execute lean product development leveraging an agile mindset to deliver value with the highest quality and lowest cost in the shortest lead time.

Project Highlights

Toyota Financial Services Agile Transformation and Process Improvement
Led training and coaching efforts to train over 500 team members and leadership, and boot-up over 50 new agile teams to support the successful development and delivery of a new financial services platform.
Keurig Dr Pepper Agile Transformation
Established a DevOps mindset focused on the flow of value at the enterprise level by leading the change from subjective to objective measures such as cycle time, lead time, change failure rate (CFR), and mean time to recovery (MTTR).
Process Improvement for Multi-organization Product Development
Improved the product development process and organizational design between multiple organizations.

Expertise

Work Experience

Founder, Chief Trainer, and Coach

2020 - PRESENT
Crafted Agility
  • Created a customized and highly interactive 2-day training and 3-day workshop focused on agile, scrum and lean concepts for new teams.
  • Conducted 2-day agile, scrum and lean training for 50+ people.
  • Led a 3-day product and team boot-up workshop for a client specializing in advanced automotive technology, systems, and components.

Enterprise Process Improvement and DevOps Coach

2020 - PRESENT
Eliassen Group
  • Promoted to client delivery lead within a month of being on the account, acting as liaison between agency and client, escalating impediments and assuring alignment, while leading the direction of three coaches (direct reports).
  • Established a continuous improvement mindset at the enterprise level by leading the change from subjective to objective measures such as cycle time, lead time, change failure rate (CFR), and mean time to recovery (MTTR), to name a few.
  • Collaborated with beverage product development teams to merge business unit processes into a consolidated streamlined flow utilizing value stream and story mapping approaches.
  • Collaborated with senior leadership on improving their demand management intake process.
  • Implemented the improvement kata model to help infrastructure teams improve their work intake and delivery processes.
  • Coached adoption of a platform team model for internally focused product/service groups that were skillset constrained organizationally.
  • Established a platform leadership action team consisting of senior leadership to focus on the removal of organizational debt and impediments.
  • Coached product teams on establishing and maturing DevOps practices including the adoption of version control, automated builds, and automated testing to reduce lead times (speed) and improve change failure rates (quality).

Kaizen Leader, Agile Coach, and Trainer

2017 - 2019
Toyota Connected
  • Implemented behavioral marker and guided self-improvement systems leading to improved team, leadership, and organizational behavior and performance.
  • Conducted 15+ team and executive workshops focused on vision, shared mental models, agile leadership, backlog creation, prioritization, road-mapping, value stream mapping, continuous process improvement, and team formation activities.
  • Led kaizen activities to identify waste, create visual controls, and establish continuous improvement plans to evolve team practices.
  • Coached a global mobility services platform leadership and three development teams in maturing their agile and integration practices using the Nexus framework to deliver car sharing, ride sharing and fleet management products, and enhancements.
  • Led a telematics platform program through adoption of agile practices including the establishment and maturity of eight cross-functional engineering teams, Scrum@Scale and communities of practice enabling successful delivery of Toyota Safety Connect.
  • Conducted value stream mapping sessions to help finance teams identify bottlenecks and constraints in their process, establish an improvement backlog, and implement weekly improvements.
  • Supported three vendor development teams in release planning, estimating, and delivery activities for a ride sharing platform in Japan.
  • Trained 500+ people in foundational and advanced agile, scrum and lean product development principles, techniques, mindsets, and frameworks.
  • Booted-up 50+ new product delivery teams as part of Toyota Financial Services transformation and provided ongoing coaching support for the value delivery of major financial services project.
  • Coached DevOps and cloud engineering teams on an organizational adoption strategy and delivery of new capabilities.

Change Agent, Process Improvement Lead, Agile Coach, Scrum Master, Software Developer

2007 - 2017
State Farm
  • Coached a program of 150+ team members through agile transformation using SAFe leading to a 4-month reduction in release cycle time.
  • Coached two Agile Release Trains (19 teams) on the adoption of DevOps practices including CI/CD pipelines and an automated testing framework that reduced cycle and lead times, and improved change failure rates.
  • Led a workforce transformation effort resulting in a $450,000+ budget reduction while increasing the internal knowledge/expertise for web services.
  • Led the expansion of a strategic innovation network including 500+ startup companies, 40+ Venture Capital groups and targeted deal flows.
  • Product owned for one week a “flash build” leveraging real time customer feedback resulting in a patent pending prototype with 50+ new features.
  • Led a delivery team for emerging technology and disruptive trends workshop attended by than more than 1,300 leaders and executives.
  • Managed a $550,000 personnel budget with 10-15 IT direct reports.
  • Coordinated 30+ agile projects utilizing advanced technologies including Computer Vision, near field communication, and a robot operating system.
  • Developed underwriting applications resulting in the automation of 70 million+ transactions with a savings of 471,000+ hours and $17 million+ per year.
  • Led the development for a JavaScript and .NET application resulting in $450,000+ annual savings.

Sergeant and Team Lead

2002 - 2010
United States Army Reserves
  • Received Army Commendation Medal, Army Reserves Components Achievement Medal, and Army Good Conduct Medal for efforts and leadership during the Operation Iraqi Freedom deployment in Iraq.
  • Promoted to Sergeant during deployment to lead the fueling operations team supporting mission-critical personnel and equipment.
  • Coordinated over 300 missions for logistics support operations.

Toyota Financial Services Agile Transformation and Process Improvement

Led training and coaching efforts to train over 500 team members and leadership, and boot-up over 50 new agile teams to support the successful development and delivery of a new financial services platform.

Led training efforts, including training and leading two new trainers, for over 500 people in foundational and advanced agile, scrum, and lean product development principles, techniques, mindsets, and frameworks. Booted-up over 50 new agile teams using a 2-day training, 3-day workshop, and an embedded coaching model to establish practices and behaviors consistent with high performing teams. Directly coached and collaborated with DevOps and cloud engineering teams to improve the flow and quality of support to product delivery teams.

Toyota Telematics Platform - Toyota Safety Connect and Destination Assist

Led adoption and maturity of agile practices to successfully deliver a telematics platform program, including Toyota Safety Connect and Destination Assist products.

Booted up eight new cross-functional engineering teams to develop and deliver a new telematics platform, Toyota Safety Connect, and Destination Assist customer-facing products. Implemented Scrum@Scale patterns to scale product management, backlog refinement, prioritization, and impediment/dependency resolution. Established communities of practice focused on cross-team DevOps patterns, tools, and technologies. Collaborated with development team members on the research and implementation of the TDD/BDD automated testing approach, which led to improved quality and a reduction in technical debt. Led kaizen activities to identify and remove waste, created visual controls, and established continuous improvement behaviors to evolve team practices.

Keurig Dr Pepper Agile Transformation

Established a DevOps mindset focused on the flow of value at the enterprise level by leading the change from subjective to objective measures such as cycle time, lead time, change failure rate (CFR), and mean time to recovery (MTTR).

Managed a team of three agile/DevOps coaches focused on transitioning the organization from a traditional project delivery approach to a value-based product management approach. Stood up four product teams and established a platform team model for resource/skillset constrained technology areas. Facilitated the creation of impediment and a cross-team organizational debt backlog. Organized a leadership action team with senior leaders to focus on removing the impediments and reducing the organizational debt items for teams to deliver more efficiently and effectively. Introduced objective measurements for the organization and teams to identify constraints in their delivery systems, and apply the theory of constraints to continuously improve their end-to-end flow of value.

Process Improvement for Multi-organization Product Development

Improved the product development process and organizational design between multiple organizations.

Worked with the team to identify root causes of the software development problem using the A3 problem-solving approach. Identified three root causes that were leading to slower delivery of expected features, quality issues, and overall stakeholder dissatisfaction. Collaborated with the team, leadership, and stakeholders to plan and implement four countermeasures focused on 1) removing dependencies, 2) eliminating waste caused by 24+ hour feedback delays due to timezone differences, 3) moving development work closer to the customer and team with more contextualized context of product and customer needs, and 4) improving prioritization and decision making processes.

Automation of Legacy System and Processes

Led development of an automated transaction system across multiple lines of business replacing legacy system and processes.

Designed and developed a new system that automated transactions for underwriting operations across auto and fire lines of business. These processes previously relied on a legacy system and manual processes to complete transactions. The effort led to the automation of 70 million+ transactions with a savings of 471,000+ hours and $17 million+ per year. The new joint operating model also led to approximately $450,000+ annual savings.
2010 - 2012

Master's Degree in Business Administration (MBA)

University of Illinois - Champaign, Illinois, USA

2002 - 2007

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Information Systems

Eastern Illinois University - Charleston, Illinois, USA

OCTOBER 2019 - PRESENT

Toyota Accredited Agile Trainer

Toyota Connected

APRIL 2019 - PRESENT

Professional Scrum Product Owner I

Scrum.org

APRIL 2019 - PRESENT

Professional Agile Leadership I

Scrum.org

AUGUST 2018 - PRESENT

ICAgile Certified Professional

ICAgile

AUGUST 2018 - PRESENT

Professional Scrum Master II

Scrum.org

JANUARY 2018 - PRESENT

Professional Scrum Master I

Scrum.org

JULY 2016 - JULY 2018

SAFe 4 Certified Agilist

Scaled Agile

JUNE 2011 - DECEMBER 2019

Chartered Financial Consultant (ChFC)

The American College

Tools

Flow, Jira, Confluence, VersionOne, GitHub, MURAL

Paradigms

Scrum, Kanban, Agile, Agile Product Management, Agile Project Management, DevOps, Lean

Platforms

iOS, Android, Windows, Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Industry Expertise

Insurance, Automotive, Telematics

Other

Training & Training Content Development, Coaching, Performance Optimization, Training, Release Planning, Remote Work, Story Mapping, Process Improvement, Value Stream Mapping, Agile Transformation, Digital Transformation, Team Leadership, Enterprise Coaching, Flowcharts, A3 Problem Solving, Product Design, Product Development, Fintech, Kaizen, Mobility, Squarespace, Microsoft 365, ZenHub, Agile Coaching, Executive Coaching, Organizational Design, Operating Models

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