Umar Ali
Verified Expert in Project Management
Project Manager
Toronto, ON, Canada
Toptal member since June 25, 2021
Umar has over 13 years of experience in the technology industry, focusing on Agile methodologies. He has worked with small and large organizations to deliver high-value products. Umar leverages Agile ways of working to improve software quality and push for the implementation of automation tools, process improvement, and cultural improvement that eventually allows for self-organizing teams, remote, onsite, and offshore, to flourish.
Project Highlights
Expertise
Work Experience
Agile Program Manager | Senior Scrum Master
Fiix by Rockwell Automation
- Coached and worked with multiple scrum teams in a Large-scale Scrum (LeSS) environment, helping them embrace agile working and problem-solving methods to improve time to delivery and predictability.
- Facilitated scrum events (scrum, planning, retros) and collaborated with other scrum masters to improve visibility at the program level within Fiix and the broader Rockwell organization.
- Collaborated with multiple business units across Rockwell Automation, tracking progress through team and program-level agile metrics.
Agile Coach | Scrum Master
Ada
- Facilitated Agile ceremonies, such as daily stand-up meetings, sprint planning, and retrospectives.
- Assisted and guided the product owner in defining and prioritizing user stories and backlog items.
- Guided and coached the team continuously to foster an Agile mindset. This led to more predictability and reduced time for delivery.
Project Manager | Scrum Master
Americana Technologies
- Joined the team as a project manager to help the company define its project and product management processes. Successfully set up Notion and Monday.com as project management and documentation tools.
- Took on the role of agile coach and scrum master as the team grew. Guided the team on Agile values and principles and leveraged Scrum to build and release an MVP.
- Assumed the role of product owner and defined user stories and epics. Worked with stakeholders to define acceptance criteria and collaborated with the chief strategy officer in user discovery activities.
Agile Coach | Scrum Master
Power Diary
- Trained C-level team members on the Agile mindset, methodologies, and practices via regular workshops. Coached team members, including C-level executives, on product development best practices.
- Coached and facilitated story refinement meetings between the product and engineering teams.
- Facilitated user story mapping sessions to map out features and identify missing use cases for new features.
- Conducted workshops on relative estimation methods such as t-shirt sizing and story pointing. Guided the team on various ways of breaking down user stories.
- Participated in various implementations of Agile and Lean methodologies, such as Scrum and Kanban.
- Identified, audited, and reviewed potential areas of improvement in the product development and engineering processes.
Scrum Master | Senior Project Manager
EMPG Labs
- Spearheaded Scrum and Kanban agile practices in various CRM sub-teams by implementing best practices and process tailoring to improve team culture and performance.
- Led and maintained a legacy application across five regions and developed a modern CRM application and a modern mobile app built on an updated technology stack, adhering to product management best practices.
- Performed conflict resolution, team reviews, and appraisals. Interviewed and hired new team members.
Scrum Master | Senior Project Manager
NorthBay Solutions
- Championed the adoption of Scrum best practices for numerous teams throughout the end-to-end project lifecycle from inception, requirements analysis, development, and project closure and delivery.
- Led process improvements and changes as a scrum master and agile coach for Fortune 500 organizations.
- Defined and delivered multiple high-value MVPs within budget in three to six months.
- Upheld, while working as an agile coach, scrum master, and product manager, a culture of self-organization, which led to teams flourishing and delivering maximum value.
- Managed and coordinated geographically dispersed teams and stakeholders across multiple time zones, like PST, CST, EST, GMT, PKT, IST, and AEDT.
Scrum Master | Project Manager
NETSOL Technologies
- Guided over five individual teams and provided organizational training and guidance on transforming Waterfall to Scrum and Disciplined Agile.
- Created and implemented effective strategies to improve the organization's development processes and increase organizational agility, which improved the quality of the primary finance and leasing product.
- Drove five initiatives that oversaw the implementation of modern tools and practices, such as static code analysis, continuous integration, and UI prototyping.
Project History
Agile Transformation for a Remote Healthtech Organization
Introduced an Agile mindset at various levels of the organization, which led to an increase in quality and reduced delivery of new features from months to weeks.
Introduced product management best practices and championed hiring a dedicated product manager.
Additionally, I facilitated user story mapping sessions to map out features and identify missing use cases for new features and successfully implemented Scrum for two self-managing teams.
Agile Transformation for a Large Enterprise Organization
Trained and guided teams on adopting Agile best practices in a transition from Waterfall to Agile, which led to a significant increase in quality (30 UAT bugs vs. 500 UAT bugs) and reduction in time to market (3-4 months).
I championed the effort to convert numerous projects at NETSOL from Waterfall to Agile Scrum and Disciplined Agile—this led to a 50% increase in productivity, 68% increase in profitability, a significant reduction in time to market (up to 3-4 months) as well as a drastic increase in overall quality (30 UAT bugs vs. 500 UAT bugs).
Gamified Video-streaming Platform BitMovio | Agile Project Delivery
https://youtu.be/rHLmCb21cusLaunched a consumer (web and mobile) MVP in four months with over 1,000 users and enhanced it every two weeks with incremental updates and delivered the accompanying web and mobile apps; BitMovio was later acquired by 1091 Pictures.
I also worked as an agile coach to educate the team and the client on how to prioritize and deliver high value in regular increments. Stakeholder and expectation management were also part of my responsibilities.
BitMovio had over 1,000 web and mobile users. For this project, we developed a web app using React and a mobile app using React Native and AWS services.
Scrum Master for Invesco | S&P 500 Organization
Managed a cross-regional remote team across seven time zones (PST, CST, EST, GMT, PKT, IST, and AEDT) to improve team collaboration, communication, and coordination while promoting Agile Scrum best practices.
I worked as a scrum master and agile coach to improve the adoption of Agile and coordination across a geographically dispersed team.
The adoption of Agile best practices led to increased quality, reduced production bugs, and more efficient team coordination.
Multi-tenant SaaS Application for Measure | Agile Project Delivery
Developed a multi-tenant SaaS application over the course of eight months and delivered regular increments in two weeks for internal testing purposes.
We adopted an Agile Scrum approach to regularly refine our product backlog to deliver features for internal testing every two weeks. I led the development and delivery of the application from its discovery phase to completion.
Next-generation App Development for the P\S\L Group
Provided back-end APIs in Python for a next-generation enterprise application used by PSL Group and set up the DevOps infrastructure.
The project was successfully delivered after an eight-month period.
QA Automation Framework MVP for Invesco | S&P 500 Organization
Led the development effort for a customer QA automation framework for Invesco (S&P 500) using Agile Scrum best practices, resulting in 50% of enterprise application use cases being successfully automated.
The MVP was successfully delivered within four months and was then deployed to production.
Collectible Marketplace That Bridges Real World and Digital Assets
http://americana.ioLaunched an MVP for an online marketplace aimed at collectors of real world paraphernalia with digital assets in the form of NFTs.
Americana is also an active part of the collector and art community, hosting events and collaborating with artists to create unique works of art that will be exhibited and vaulted with Americana.
My role with Americana was project manager, scrum master, and product manager. I worked across multiple domains to develop an MVP marketplace.
Education
Master's Degree in Information Systems and Management
Warwick Business School - Coventry, England
Bachelor's Degree in Business Information Technology
Curtin University of Technology - Perth, Australia
Certifications
Advanced Certified Scrum Product Owner (A-CSPO)
Scrum Alliance
Advanced Certified Scrum Master (A-CSM)
Scrum Alliance
Certified Scrum Master
Scrum Alliance
Certified Agile Leadership — Essentials and Organizations
Scrum Alliance
Certified Aware Leader
Agile Leadership Journey
Certified Scrum@Scale Practitioner
Scrum@Scale
Scrum Certified Product Owner (CSPO)
Scrum Alliance
Skills
Tools
Slack, Zoom, Jira, Confluence, Atlassian Suite, Atlassian, Asana, Google Docs, Figma
Paradigms
Agile Leadership, Scrum, Management, Agile, Agile Project Management, Agile Product Management, Agile Software Development, Implementation Project Management, Agile Workflow, Agile Delivery, Kanban, Iterative Delivery, Iterative Development, Requirements Analysis, Waterfall Development, B2C, Lean, B2B, Change Management, Rapid Prototyping
Platforms
iOS, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Blockchain, Monday.com, Android
Other
Team Management, Agile Coaching, Business Process Re-engineering, Business Process Refinement, Remote Work, Stakeholder Management, Expectations Management, Scrum Master, IT Project Management, Scrum Coaching, Google Apps, Microsoft Office, Mentorship & Coaching, Client Presentations, Custom Solutions, Project Management, Mobile Applications, Web & Mobile Applications, Agile Program Management, Web Applications, Digital Project Management, Software Development, Business Process Improvement (BPI), Business Plan Consulting, Software Project Management, Cross-functional Collaboration, Cross-functional Team Leadership, Team Leadership, Project Delivery, Hybrid Frameworks, Hybrid Project Management, Leadership, Timelines, PMO, Delivery Management, Risk Management, Certified ScrumMaster (CSM), Agile Sprints, Sprint Planning, IT Projects, Status Updates, Agile Practices, User Stories, Sprint Ceremonies, Agile Product Delivery, Sprint Retrospectives, Project Scheduling, Scrumban, Planning, Project Tracking, Project Reporting, Issue Management, Remote Team Leadership, Software Development Management, Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), Stakeholder Engagement, Reporting, Delivery, Conflict Resolution, Agile Transformation, ClickUp, Consulting, Solution Design, Mobile UX, Mobile UI, Mobile Development, Mobile App Development, Estimation & Planning, Project Planning, Project Estimation, Project Timelines, Staffing, Distributed Team Management, Waterfall Methodology, SaaS, Startups, Process Improvement Project Management, Software as a Service (SaaS), Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Feature Backlog Prioritization, Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO), Business to Business (B2B), Release Management, Backlog Management, Mobile Apps, Backlog Grooming, QA Testing, Coaching, Web UX, Web Design, Web Project Management, Web Development, Marketplaces, User Experience (UX), Product Management, Quality Assurance (QA), Business Requirements, Agile Scaling Frameworks, Scrum@Scale, Product Ownership, Scrum Product Owner, Information Technology, Programming, Business, Business Information Systems, Process Flows, Microsoft Teams, Product Roadmaps, Early-stage Startups, CRM Systems, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Technical Project Management, ZenHub, Lean Startups, Video on Demand (VOD), Flutter, Strategic Planning, Direct to Consumer (D2C), Project Management & Delivery, IT Services, QA Automation, Scrum Testing, User Interface (UI), UI Design, Product Owner, Story Mapping, Mentorship, Requirements & Specifications, Project Discovery, Project Portfolio Management (PPM), Hardware Development, Consumer Electronics, Best Practices, Roadmaps, Product Discovery, Process Improvement, Media, Video Streaming, Less, Large-scale Scrum (LeSS), AI Chatbots, Feature Prioritization, Program Management
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