Vikas Agarwal
Verified Expert in Project Management
Project Manager
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Toptal member since November 7, 2022
Vikas is a program manager, agile coach, scrum master, Kanban practitioner, author, and speaker with 23 years of experience. He has worked as a developer, product owner, and business analyst. Vikas has delivered from small-sized projects to multi-million dollar deals across the US, UK, Japan, UAE, Australia, and Asia, spanning multiple domains, including education, banking, CTRM, B2B, and B2C. He believes in enhancing business agility and creating a psychologically safe team environment.
Project Highlights
Expertise
Work Experience
Scrum Master via Toptal
Owens Corning - Digital Center of Excellence
- Managed the complex product portfolio of the three product lines—roofing, insulation, and composites.
- Optimized the processes and delivery flow while maintaining hierarchy and organization structure complexities.
- Created, along with the product team, yearly, half-yearly, and quarterly goals, ensuring that the same gets communicated to engineering teams.
- Worked, along with the engineers and architects, on improving the coding practices and code review guidelines and defined the DevOps roadmap.
- Brought an evolutionary change by reducing the delivery lead time and optimizing the time to market (TTM). Under my leadership, the delivery lead time was reduced from 144 days to 12 days.
- Created a requirement categorization framework and capacity allocation models. With this framework and model, the team was able to set the right expectations with the stakeholders.
- Managed an exceptionally complex team mix of contractors, employees, freelancers, and vendors. I created a collaborative, creative, and psychologically safe environment. I also managed conflicts and ensured the team was motivated to deliver as expected.
- Spearheaded some of the critical initiatives like "Find a Contractor," "Pick Your Shingle," "Design & Inspire," widgets, Ruby upgrade, expansion of the digital footprint from the US to Canada, and others.
Enterprise Agile Coach
BusinessNxt
- Optimized, along with product, engineers, sales, and leadership, their core product implementation process and reduced the implementation lead time from four months to three weeks. This reduced costs and gave them an edge over their competitors.
- Coached the team to transform from a project mindset to a product mindset and think value over milestones. The release cycle was reduced from one month to seven days.
- Conducted planning meetings to create a product enrichment roadmap. This created a sustainable pace of adding value to the existing product, thus gaining a competitive advantage in the business landscape.
- Led the agile transformation of the teams by blending the agile frameworks with their existing processes to ensure minimum resistance to its adoption.
- Changed the team's approach from "sign-offs" to continuous client collaboration. This raised the client's satisfaction index from 1 to 4 on a scale of 5.
- Removed silos and create transparency for better collaboration, fewer conflicts, and better quality deliverables.
- Coached the leads to shift from commandism and controlism to trust and relationships.
- Created a metrics-based model to assess delivery frequency and quality and introduce improvements.
Enterprise Agile Coach and Scrum Master
Majid Al Futtaim
- Onboarded 27 teams on Scrum and six on Kanban to achieve business agility, sustainability, survivability, and predictability. Created a roadmap to fill gaps in agile practices and developed an enterprise transformation plan.
- Defined a continuous product discovery process to carve out up to five strategic initiatives per quarter. Created a product prioritization framework on the RICE model and coached the product owners on product backlog management.
- Integrated Atlassian-based tools and created a push-pull reporting framework to bring transparency. Reporting included parameters like commitment reliability ratio, average velocity trends, lead and cycle time, waste management, flow metrics, etc.
- Launched customized training and in-house certification programs to mentor and coach the teams on Agile, Scrum, and Kanban, including story writing, backlog prioritization, and Elephant Carpaccio.
- Spearheaded Agile ceremonies such as lookahead planning, backlog grooming, sprint planning, daily scrum, sprint retrospective, sprint review, product release review, release retrospective, replenishment meetings, and flow review meetings.
- Coached the product owner and product team on better ways of creating compelling user stories, splitting them to make them more atomic, and writing compelling stories in BDD form. Coached the product owners and teams in user story mapping and prioritization.
- Introduced the Fish model to deliver cross-team strategic initiatives. The model helped the team to handle dependencies by analyzing the demand pattern and rate.
- Set up an SLA-based model (a service-level agreement) for L1, L2, and L3 support eCommerce applications and ensured that the process transformation to the new model was painless.
- Evaluated the Plandek tool for agile reporting dashboards. Created a DORA (DevOps Research and Assessment) metrics dashboard, including deployment frequency, lead time for changes, change failure rate, and time to restore services.
- Collaborated with the release manager to establish the release management process and integrate the release with sprint planning. With the improved workflow, the team could identify delays and quality gaps in their sprint planning.
Program and Portfolio Manager
Majid Al Futtaim
- Managed the Carrefour Redesign program. It involves rebranding the Carrefour app and UX redesign based on market research and customer surveys to improve the overall customer experience.
- Migrated order management service from an SAP Hybris Monolith platform to micro-service-based architecture. It improved flexibility, innovation, scalability, performance, and agility.
- Launched the virtual wallet functionality to customers. This helped them receive instant refunds, thereby retaining money within the ecosystem and enhancing customer experience.
- Launched scalable to scalable substitution feature that allowed substitution for scalable items within a 15% weight range. It helped to decrease the incomplete orders rate by 3000 orders per week.
- Launched the "Fulfilled by Carrefour (FBC)" initiative, enabling sellers to use the logistic capabilities of Carrefour. FBC initiative established a symbiotic relationship between Carrefour and sellers and improved customer experience and branding.
- Enabled and launched Self-Service Return(SSR) that helped customers submit return requests from the Carrefour App without calling Customer Support. The SSR covered approximately 200K AED per week of refund in terms of monetary value.
- Launched "Dynamic Delivery Promise, Delivery Fee, Deliver Now, and Slot Optimization" functionalities for improved on-time delivery across key UAE countries. The feature improved NPS, Branding and provided a better Customer Experience.
- Set up and expanded the India Development Center by participating in marketing and branding the Majid Al Futtaim brand in the Indian IT Market. Worked with staffing team in multiple events to attract the best talent in the industry.
- Created remote working policies and helped in the process transformation of the hybrid model of working. The hybrid model attracted talent from multiple cities and reduced employee attrition by 15%.
- Marketed and branded the Majid Al Futtaim (MAF) brand by participating in public webinars and conferences. Propagated the Fish model (implemented at MAF) to deliver cross-team strategic initiatives.
Senior Program and Agile Project Manager
Publicis Sapient
- Led a digital transformation, technology, and user experience project for Ontario Government, Canada.
- Managed the PEAK project to design the ground-breaking pilot and peak performance pricing to leverage smart meter energy consumption data and other data sources to drive awareness and dialogue around electricity usage.
- Achieved the MEA Award for the app and is a DRUM nominee. This project has become a case study for digital transformation and is showcased on Publicis Sapient's main page. https://www.publicissapient.com/work/ontario-energy-board.
- Transformed the NGL (natural gas and liquids) business for Plains Midstream Canada to follow industry best practices and implement the system to support the growing business.
- Spearheaded the Openlink RightAngle implementation at Plains Midstream Canada and developed a data warehouse, mobile applications for truck schedule tracking, Power BI and others.
- Created an implementation approach for Baker Hughes MDM Implementation to move their data platform from legacy to MDM Informatica on the cloud. The project was run in three fusion workshops for one week in Dubai, London, and Houston.
- Served as India delivery lead for the RightAngle support and customization team and Scrum Master for myPilot Digital mobile application customization team. The project is executed from Knoxville, USA, with teams across the USA and India.
- Executed the business continuity planning during the COVID-19 pandemic breakout across all organization locations.
Program Manager | Scrum Master
Publicis Sapient
- Worked as Scrum Master for Entergy, one of the major power utility vendors in the US across Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Orleans, and Texas. The project included Microsites, Win App, and Mobile App for the power utility.
- Worked as Scrum Master to create a customized solution for the client's upstream business while managing multiple vendor teams across Boston and India. The project's critical challenge was to tackle the 200% variations in the estimates.
- Served as the India delivery lead, grew the team capacity from less than 30 to more than 100, and generated three times a jump in client revenue. The project was executed in Germany and India.
- Created project plan, estimation, project costing, deal financial sheet, and project delivery model to implement and support RightAngle implementation of Plains–Crude and NGL products. Set up project governance and execution model.
- Worked on creating the capability of the software delivery group model for RightAngle implementations.
- Worked for a multi-million, multi-geo, and multi-year Openlink Endur implementation RFP. Worked on Hadoop initiatives RFP for Chevron.
- Created the BCP plans for Germany-based clients. Execution of the business continuity plan during the Bangalore Office Movement.
Program Manager
Publicis Sapient
- Set up the design team in London, Houston, and India and coordinate with power users for scope definition, management, and sign-off on design deliverables. Led QA, Cutover, and Warranty Support.
- Managed C-Level client relationships, performed weekly, on-demand project reporting, and conducted monthly and phase-end reviews. Created SOW/ project budget for design, QA, and cutover.
- Set up QA organization with a global team of 48 people and managed testing across nine international locations with a total participation of 250+ users in testing and acceptance.
- Handled all aspects of project management and set up multi-geo team/user coordination and communication model and testing processes, power user acceptance criteria, and test coordination methodologies.
- Executed all types of testing, including assembly testing, expert testing, interface testing, functional testing, end-to-end testing, full data testing, regression testing, operational testing, performance testing, and user acceptance.
- Set quality tools to monitor the quality of QA, development, and design by setting up defect metrics, stabilization metrics, and system health reporting processes.
- Worked on and attained client financial approvals for scope enhancements and team augmentation.
- Reported project status to the decision review board every month. Conducted and facilitated monthly and phase-end project reviews with internal and external stakeholders.
- Set up semi-automated client billing and invoice reconciliation processes across Run Support and change enhancement projects for better client reporting.
- Managed CMMi L3 certification program for Run Support organization. Set up project processes for enhancement projects under Run Support and managed their execution.
Program Manager
Publicis Sapient
- Managed the interface track that included developing and enhancing interfaces to and from RightAngle (AR/AP, pricing, Shipnet, exchange, volume only, Demurrage, and GARM interface).
- Set up environment-setup and support processes, build and release processes, code merge processes, work request processes, and infrastructure support processes for Release 1 and subsequent releases leveraging Microsoft Project.
- Established and managed performance testing track. The track included finalizing the performance testing scope with the users, defining performance benchmarks, and selecting tools for performance testing and test execution.
- Maintained team engagement rules with all dependent teams across India, San Ramen, and Houston.
- Created BCP and DR plans for Chevron; performed audits, tests, and execution of the BCP plans every year.
Project Manager
Nucleus Software Exports
- Selected to spearhead and establish the collections system competency, focusing on the improvement and independency of implementing the collections system module within the business unit.
- Developed and maintained relationships with preferred customers of the banking and NBFC sectors.
- Managed major accounts such as ICICI Bank, BAJAJ Auto, HDB Financial Services, Reliance, Bank of Makati, Philippines, Dubai First (Dubai), L&T Finance, and CFC (Kuwait).
- Played a key role in client-business meetings, bagging enhancements worth 50+ person months in the current financial year (first quarter) and the project for the implementing collections system for Credit Cards at one of the major Banks.
- Played a key role as project leader in successfully improving the system performance of the collections system to suit the product implementation for voluminous customers.
Project Manager
NTT Data
- Appointed as a lead estimator for the Center of Excellence for Estimation. Streamlined the estimation models necessary for placing bids for new projects belonging to Category A, B, and C.
- Worked closely with Keane Federal team (focused on US Government Projects), converting a Win of $60 million against bids.
- Led the project for CMMI L5 v1.2 Re-Appraisal Program along with the piloting of MS Project Server.
- Piloted tools like Sharepoint Services, @RISK, QSM, and eTaskMaker that can further improve project estimation and project management.
Project Manager
Infosys
- Acquired best practices and deployed project leadership skills to bring a five-month delayed project to getting delivered with a delay of only one month.
- Implemented Finacle at IDBI Bank with a team of 32 people.
- Oversaw project monitoring and tracking, project status reporting, reviews of code, test plans and program specifications, quality goals, and controlling non-compliances and team development and team building activities.
Systems Analyst
Nucleus Software Exports
- Handled the project implementation and support for GMAC (General Motors Acceptance Corporation) spread across boundaries of Thailand, China, Indonesia, India, Taiwan, and Australia.
- Awarded the General Motors CIO Supplier Award for FinnOne implementation at GMAC China, evaluated for quality execution, which encompasses timely completion within budget, reflecting total teamwork.
- Implemented FinnOne across SBM (Mauritius), Shinsei Bank (Tokyo), SIFL (Singapore), and ICICI Bank (HLS Phase II).
- Tested disaster recovery and business continuity planning for FinnOne application for ICICI Bank, Mumbai.
Team Leader | Solutions Development, Implementation and Support
HCL Technologies
- Developed the event management web portal for India Trade Promotion Organization (ITPO), New Delhi.
- Handled the development of the online electronic and mutual transfer systems for the Apparel Exports Promotion Council (AEPC), New Delhi.
- Led the conceptualization and development of SMARTCHAIN, a demand chain management system. The product caters to the B2B and B2C market segments.
Developer and Team Leader | In-house Development and Server Maintenance
Timex Watches Limited
- Monitored the database backup, handled crash recovery, and upgraded from Novell 3.11 to Novell 5.0.
- Migrated existing systems from Forms 4.5 to Forms 5.0.
- Handled system development for the quality control gauge room and the personnel information systems.
- Performed system enhancement and support for inventory management, financial management and accounting, watch dispatch, purchase order, watch repair service center, and work-in-progress systems.
- Provided on-site support for the authorized service workshop system developed using FoxPro at the Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, and Kolkata offices.
Project History
Agile Transformation of an e-Retail Business
With the improved processes, agile practices, and project management, the business could reach a target of USD$5 billion gross merchandise value (GMV).
During the project, I onboarded 27 teams on Scrum and six on Kanban to achieve business agility, sustainability, survivability, and predictability.
Chevron ATLAS Global Release
Transformed the Chevron Corporation oil trading platform from a legacy system to an Openlink Rightangle system.
In the London release, I played the additional responsibility of QA Lead, being responsible for quality control. I spearheaded all testing types, including sanity, functional, system integration, end-to-end, regression, and performance testing.
Launch of the Oshawa Electric Board Pricing Pilot Program for Oshawa Power
https://www.opuc.on.ca/oshawa-power-launches-new-electricity-pricing-pilot-for-oshawa-residents/Launched a peak performance mobile application platform to help residents to take charge of their electricity costs while also helping Ontario's power system run more efficiently.
The peak performance app was designed to help customers shift their energy use and reduce their electricity costs. The program features new pricing structures that offer cost savings during off-peak times. To help customers shift to the cheaper off-peak times, it includes energy management tools such as an advanced web portal, feedback and alerts, specially-trained customer service representatives, and an interactive state-of-the-art smartphone app called Peak. Each participant can customize their suite of tools. The goal is to support customers by offering best-in-class information and delivering it how and when they need it. At the end of the pilot program, Oshawa Power recorded a 4% electricity shift in the participants' consumption.
Kanban Implementation in an Order Management System
Implemented Kanban in an order management system and improved the lead time from 52 days to 18 days or less. The engineering touch point averaged 11 days. Achieved better predictability and created visibility for the dependent teams.
The initiative started with the implementation of Kanban for the Order Management Team. The Systems Thinking Approach to Introducing Kanban, STATIK, was used to visualize the work, business risks, and dependencies on the Kanban board. The work was divided into work item types and classes of services; this helped manage expectations and set correct priorities for the team. During the journey, the entire team was trained in Kanban. It created transparency and set up proper service level expectations by tracking the lead time distribution and cumulative flow diagrams.
Finally, the team achieved a predictability of 18 days or less to complete any scope item and three days or less to complete any product defect prioritized in the backlog.
FinnOne Implementation Across the Globe
Performed approximately 20 FinnOne installations across the globe within two years.
Clients included ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, HDF, SBM Mauritius, Shensi Bank Tokyo, SIFL Singapore, Baja Auto Finance, L&T Finance, Bank of Makati, Arab Bank, CFC Kuwait, and General Motors Acceptance Corporation (GMAC) India, Thailand, Taiwan, China, Indonesia, and Australia.
Author, Speaker, and Public Trainer in the Agile Community
Participated in Agile conferences as the author of several Serious Scrum publications, created content for Kanban University, and received a content creator certificate from KMM.
• https://kmm.plus/en/contributors/27/?badge=42.
Authored Serious Scrum publications and wrote on multiple blogs on handling Scrum dysfunctions:
• https://medium.com/serious-scrum/definition-of-done-vs-steps-of-doneness-c4c3b30ebf31
• https://medium.com/serious-scrum/can-we-start-the-sprint-on-tuesday-dd67d33f7213
• https://medium.com/serious-scrum/weekly-status-reports-may-not-create-transparency-cef6fae5cd4c
• https://medium.com/serious-scrum/have-you-understood-scrum-or-have-you-understood-scrum-3581f10f2edf
• https://medium.com/serious-scrum/is-the-llp-meeting-now-called-the-daily-scrum-818309cc6aa7
• https://medium.com/serious-scrum/knock-knock-can-you-make-me-a-scrum-master-500a83f5bf90
Launched articles at the Kanban Diary publication:
• https://medium.com/kanban-diary-by-agile-booyah/just-created-a-kanban-board-in-jira-are-you-really-kanban-354ef120cda7
• https://medium.com/kanban-diary-by-agile-booyah/you-have-got-a-genie-with-cos-83a955f6f204
• https://medium.com/kanban-diary-by-agile-booyah/rip-story-points-velocity-improve-predictability-how-7634377de165
Speaker at the conferences:
• Kanban India Conference 2021
• Agile Freestival 2020
• Agile India Conference 2022
Education
Master of Business Administration (MBA) in Information Systems
Institute of Productivity and Management - Uttar Pradesh, India
Professional Diploma in Software Technology and Systems Management in Computer Science
NIIT - New Delhi
Bachelor's Degree in Environmental Science
University of Delhi - New Delhi, India
Certifications
Accredited Kanban Trainers (AKT)
Kanban University
Professional Scrum Master III (PSM III)
Scrum.org
Team Kanban Practitioner
Kanban University
Kanban Management Professional (KMP)
Kanban University
Scaled Professional Scrum (SPS)
Scrum.org
Professional Scrum Developer (PSD I)
Scrum.org
Professional Agile Leadership (PAL I)
Scrum.org
Professional Scrum Master II (PSM II)
Scrum.org
Professional Scrum Product Owner (PSPO I)
Scrum.org
Professional Scrum Master I (PSM I)
Scrum.org
Project Management Professional (PMP)
Project Management Institute (PMI)
Skills
Tools
Jira, Confluence, Project Management & Work Tracking Tools, Flow, Slack, GitLab, Figma, Microsoft Project, SQL, Microsoft Power BI, Zoom, Microsoft Excel, GitHub
Paradigms
Scrum, Agile, Kanban, Lean Project Management, Agile Leadership, Agile Project Management, Agile Product Management, Functional Analysis, Agile Software Development, B2B, Requirements Analysis, UX Design, Management, Change Management, Business Continuity Planning (BCP), DevOps, Gamification, Design Thinking, User Testing, User Acceptance Testing (UAT), Agile UX, Agile Delivery, Agile Workflow, Testing, Unit Testing, E2E Testing, Planning Poker, Azure DevOps
Platforms
Oracle, Amazon Web Services (AWS), iOS, Android, Businessmap (formerly Kanbanize), ProductPlan, Azure, Oracle Application Server, Monday.com, WordPress
Industry Expertise
Digital Marketing, Banking & Finance
Other
Project Management, Program Management, Agile Coaching, Agile Program Management, IT Project Management, Scrum Master, Lean Portfolio Management, Portfolio Management, Project Management Professional (PMP), Stakeholder Management, Project Planning, IT Projects, Project Scoping, Project Tracking, Project Closure, Project Support, Project Analysis, Dashboards, Reporting, Web Project Management, Technical Project Monitoring, People Management, Resource Management, User Experience (UX), Feature Backlog Prioritization, Backlog Management, Sprint Planning, Agile Sprints, Estimations, Estimation & Planning, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Consulting, Product Management, Team Management, Business Analysis, Process Improvement, Stakeholder Engagement, Communication, Project Timelines, Quality Assurance (QA), Technical Project Management, Web & Mobile Applications, Coaching, Process Optimization, Planning, Workflow, Business to Business (B2B), Software Project Management, Workflow Tools, Remote Team Leadership, Project Portfolio Management (PPM), Process Improvement Project Management, Documentation, Legacy Software, Business Process Automation, Workshop Facilitation, Mobile Applications, Product Roadmaps, Front-end, Back-end, Fintech, Team Leadership, Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), Process Documentation, eCommerce, Communication Management, Business to Consumer (B2C), Discovery Workshops, UX Flows, User Interface (UI), Milestones, Finance, Hybrid Project Management, Waterfall Methodology, Web Development, Mobile App Development, SOP Development, Process Management, Engineering Management, Certified ScrumMaster (CSM), Leadership & Coaching, Branding, Social Media, Content Creation, Digital Marketing Strategy, APIs, Task Automation, Disaster Recovery Plans (DRP), Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery (BCDR), Software as a Service (SaaS), Business Transformation Project Management, Operations Management, Business Strategy, Project Management Operations, Search Engines, Core Banking Systems, ERP Implementation, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Enterprise, HTML, User Research, Environmental Science, Programming, Change Leadership, Process Transformation, Agile Transformation, Projects, Process Design, Agile Product Delivery, Digital Platform Development, Product Launch, Launch Strategy, Value Chain, Customer Experience, Customer Engagement, Digital Product Management, Product Owner, Project Initiation, Strategic Initiatives, Test Planning, Monitoring, Scope Management, Time Management, Cost Management, Risk Management, QA Testing, QA Test Plan Management, QA Automation, Regression Testing, Integration Testing, System Integration Testing (SIT), Production Support, App Support, Testing & Maintenance, Product Vision, Product Growth, Feature Prioritization, Feature Roadmaps, Feature Analysis, Backlog Grooming, Sprint Ceremonies, Sprint Retrospectives, Sprints, Agile DevOps, Agile Practices, Project Estimation, Cost Estimation, Analytics, Mobile, Web, Scaling, Vendor Management, Enterprise Metrics, Metrics, Digital, Platforms, Agile Deployment, Jira Administration, Scrum Product Owner, Product Ownership, Microsoft Project Online, Microsoft Project Server, .NET, BizTalk, IT Program Management, IT Infrastructure, Performance Testing, Cutover, Go, Project Charter, Data Warehousing, Data Analysis, Machine Learning, IT Consulting, Project Consultancy, Training, Training Content, Training Videos, Training & Training Content Development, Technical Training, Soft Skill Training, Microsoft Teams, Jira Administrator, Databases, Functional Testing, IT Contracts, Offshore Team Management, Distributed Team Management, Client Management, Client Relationship Management, Implementation, FinnOne, Accounting, Stakeholder Analysis, Stakeholder Mapping, Feasibility Studies, Development, Client Success, Oracle Projects, International Projects, Large-scale Projects, Process Flow Design, Work Process Design, Scope, Scope of Work (SOW), Timelines, Costing, Cost Modeling, People Development, Manual QA, End-to-end Implementation (E2E), UI Testing, Test Cases, Integration, Software QA, Project Design, Project Review, Project Delivery, Project Controls, Cost Control, Cost Analysis, Teamwork, Global Team Management, IT Management, Finacle, System Integration, Delivery, Quality Control (QC), Cloud, Financial Modeling, Technical Program Management, Technical Support, Technology Strategy & Architecture, Project Coordination, Data Migration, Vendor Selection, Organization, Digital Transformation, Digital Transformation Program Management, Websites, Web Applications, Scrum Coaching, Process Flows, Optimization, PI Planning, Google Cloud, Continuous Improvement, Analysis, Process Analysis, System Administration, Business Continuity, ASP.NET, C, C#.NET, Novell NetWare, Notion, Business Agility, Pitch Decks, CSS, JavaScript, Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), Project Engineering
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