Gambling Commission

Dec 2023 - March 2024 - UK Government– Senior Product Manager

• As a  Senior Product Manager at the UK Gambling Commission, I demonstrated expertise in product management by creating and delivering data-driven product roadmaps, defining MVPs, and ensuring continuous iteration.
• Leading as PO multidisciplinary teams of up to 40 members, providing strategic oversight and fostering a culture of Agile, Scrum, Azure DevOps, and user-centred practices. Engaging effectively with stakeholders, they set and communicated product visions and standards, proactively managed risks and dependencies, and solved problems within a strategic context, particularly in data management and architecture.
• I applied business analysis, user research, content, and UX design principles, ensuring compliance with WCAG. Large digital projects, such as Agile 101 and Azure DevOps 101, delivered websites and web applications for licensing and fee collection and managed data engineering and data-science initiatives.
• These efforts resulted in teams embracing Agile/Scrum methodologies, achieving faster deployments, reducing inefficiencies and defects, and establishing user journeys and service standards. They utilised technologies including Azure Cloud, Power BI, and Contentful CMS, effectively managing and collaborating within multidisciplinary teams to drive product and customer value.

UKHSA

Oct 2021 - May 2023 - UK GOVERNMENT Scrum Master / Agile Delivery Manager

In this role, key contributions included adaptive planning, prioritisation, stakeholder engagement, and conflict resolution in a complex environment. A culture of open communication and collaboration was fostered, enhancing team dynamics and success. Active coaching and mentoring within the digital project management community supported professional development.

• Utilised skills encompassed Agile methodologies, GDS Agile Delivery, DDaT standards, Scrum, Kanban, IT Service Management, DevOps, Cyber Security, and more.
• Projects spanned data and platform engineering for Covid epidemiology, Covid-19 DataStore management, and rapid response to the Omicron variant, among others.
• Notable outcomes included 36 sprints, 20 production releases, resolving 3352 blockers and 2236 impediments, and extensive sprint planning and design sessions. Specific technologies included AWS, Azure, Jira, Confluence, and various project management tools.
• Teams ranged from 6 to 28 members, with collaboration involving suppliers like Deloitte, BAE Systems, and Accenture.

Information System Architect

2019 - 2020

Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation

Reporting to the CEO. Responsible for Leading, designing, implementing & documenting new information & data architecture including end-to-end design, configuration & deployment of solutions & software to enable the Foundation to fully utilise the potential of Office 365 & other related business software. Strong user design focus on the project, ensuring that stakeholders are actively engaged in the project development, design & implementation.

KEY ACHIEVEMENTS

• Leveraging charitable status for discounting or free services & applications
• Delivery of Project Management & Operations process task workflow Method Solution
• Data architecture for Heritage Foundation’s 26000 Property Assets, (Housing & Commercial) Property Management Data for process and income.
• Lead for transformation programme for Property & Landlord Consent from paper & excel records to a digital platform Salesforce with future Business intelligence and Data Analytics capabilities.
• Both Delivery & technical hands-on roles for Office 365 – SharePoint, Onedrive and Power Platform, Configuration & Adoption
• Solution Delivery of Service Portal for residential & commercial tenants

I worked as an Information System Architect, Product Owner, and Scrum Master at Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation. I led the design and implementation of the organisation’s information and data strategy, focusing on Office 365, SharePoint, and OneDrive deployment. My responsibilities included stakeholder engagement, project management, and transformation programme management. Key projects involved creating a new information and data architecture, deploying the Office 365 suite, digitising property and landlord consent records with Salesforce, and developing a service portal for tenants. Achievements included enhancing Office 365 utilisation, engaging stakeholders effectively, managing data for 26,000 property assets, transitioning from paper to digital records, and improving service delivery via a new service portal. I supported varied team sizes, sometimes over 200 users, and reported directly to the CEO.

Head of Data and Business Technology 

2018 - 2019

KEY ACHIEVEMENTS

• Set Business Vision, 5 year strategy and yearly business plans
• Defined Enterprise Architecture – Open Source Software Pentaho PDI, Data Model, Atlassian Suite
• Accomplishment team Agile mindset and working toward Business Agility for the rest of the organisation. 
• Completed MVP (Platform X) within 7 months on time, on budget and with required quality. 
• Implemented DevOps – CD/CI/CR 
• Delivered Test-driven development (TDD) with automated testing.
• Recruited and built teams of people. 
• Achieved Cyber Essentials Certification for the organisation.
• Achieved NHS Digital Data Security and Protection Toolkit standard for IG Governance and Compliance.
• Maintained and renewed the approval of Section 251 of  Health and Social care Act for the organisations National Clinical Audit. 
• Driving the release of ICNARC Case Mix Programme Dataset Version 4.0

Chief Information Officer

2016 – 2017

KEY ACHIEVEMENTS

• Set strategy for resource management to respond to the charity’s business priorities in a cost-effective manner. Provided in-depth knowledge of the charity’s business and Information strategies, and what objectives and business benefit must be fulfilled.
• Set strategy for monitoring and managing the performance of Information-related systems and services, in respect of their contribution to the charity’s performance
• Development a project and application for ensuring members schools are fully briefed on the security and safety situation, are provided with up-to date country information, training with the FCO and UN.
• Implemented ECISConnect.org (Linked-in for International school) with a pipeline of 100,000 users by the end of 2017.
• Lead the re-design of the corporate website to be launched in the winter of 2017.
• Recommended and implemented Office 365 – Most Products, Exchange, Skype for Business, SharePoint, and BI.

Head of IT

Sept 2011 - Sept 2014

KEY ACHIEVEMENTS

• The first dedicated IT leader, directly managing 3 that grown to 7 over 3 years and over 20 outsourcing partners covering 2 sites with multiple IT functions.
• Created and implemented of strategies and policies (ITIL) for the next 5 years, lined to an £38m company to £80m.
• Replaced the legacy infrastructure with the first 4 months in order to support the new ERP (Storage, Sage Line 300 & 500, Netnapp, Vmware, Cisco, VOIP, mobile, cloud & exchange – server migrations (P2V and V2V) and applications virtualisation).
• Lead and implemented a new ERP as the pervious implementation of the legacy ERP failed within the first 6 months
• Designed and implemented BRAD using Pentaho – PDI – Business Intelligence & Data Engineering  
• Designed and implement RIO H&S System.
• Maintained ISO 9001

KEY ACHIEVEMENTS

• Delivered Strategy & Design  
• Selected and Delivered EPR – Electronic Patient Record System
• Delivery of training of System 
• Implement of one the UK’s first 100 Hosted Virtual Desktops projects.

Computacenter   

June 1998 - June 2005

Responsible Systems Engineer/Team Leader /Project Manager, Intermigration Projects Leader, Hardware Installation, Software installation, Scripts Author and Technical Adviser. 

British Telecom

July 1997 - Dec 1997

I joined BT as a Technical Adviser for the Group Motor Transport Department, specialising in the deployment of Microsoft Windows NT 4. I advised on different ways of deploying not only Windows NT but also any operating system and software. During my time at BT I used a lot of Microsoft BackOffice Family products. I was only 18 year old and already using GHOST imaging tools and developing an understand for the future, on what would become VMware Virtualization.

I also started to use Paypal in 1997!