John H. Email & Phone Number

Reading, England, United Kingdom

United Kingdom

Working with a wide range of clients from established blue chip companies to start-ups, across industries from retail and finance organisations to pharmaceuticals and publishing, both in person and remotely. Launching and leading client discoveries, presenting an assessment of the findings to key stakeholders, and delivering rapid high-impact training, followed by ongoing coaching to embed the learning and remove impediments to business agility.Working with a premium retail brand to enable their re-platforming and separation from a major trading partner. During this project, COVID hit and online grocery shopping quadrupled, so I had to support the rapid growth of teams and employees, upskilling of existing staff and training new starters. Wrote and delivered a fortnightly program of learning for a retailer’s team leaders, on topics such as facilitation, feedback skills and conflict management. Instigated effective quarterly planning within a data management department as their teams increased from 2 to 8, helping set the direction and priorities, reducing risk, removing confusion and duplication and enabling clear timeframes for delivery to be presented to the senior team.I have repeated this successful delivery model with two different start-up to scale-ups: one a car finance company, the other a real-estate agency. Both expanded rapidly from a handful of employees to well over 150 in the space of two years. They required a consistent training approach for new joiners and development teams, as well as being able to plan on a larger scale with longer planning horizons.

Swindon, United Kingdom

Training teams or coaching and mentoring individuals at all levels within the organisation around the adoption of Agile Values and Principles, the Scrum framework, Lean principles & the Kanban framework, Story Mapping and Writing User Stories etc. I have also provided training in general management techniques such as delivering and receiving feedback, delegation, prioritisation and estimation, and have developed a “Catalogue of Coaching Services” that I offer internally to help gradually transform the company into a more Agile organisation.

Hungerford

Restarted two teams one UK based and one offshore (but in multiple countries) that had got into bad habits when using the Scrum framework. Introduced them to Story Mapping and Specification by Example techniques to reduce misunderstanding around requirements and acceptance criteria.This helped improve collaboration between team members, particularly those situated in different countries. Once trust was reestablished and confidence levels amongst team members increased, I introduced them to and implemented with them, Lean and Kanban to help improve their processes.Established an internal Business Agility Community of Practice. Within this I worked with Product Owners and Business Analysts to understand their priorities and established regular sessions for them on topics such as Lean Startup, MVPs, and writing User Stories. Additionally I organised Meetups for local Agilists, bringing in expert speakers to talk about a variety of subjects.

Andover

Brought together and trained a disparate group working as individuals and turned them into a highly motivated self-organising Scrum team which successfully delivered Salesforce.com to internal Telesales teams. This enabled those teams to create new income streams, improve conversion rates and increase sales revenue for the company.A key driver of the success of the transition to an Agile mindset across the business was the work I undertook with a range of stakeholders to support their understanding of the Agile Manifesto, its values and principles. For example, I ran User Story writing workshops with Product Owners and helped them to create product visions by using product boards. I taught the development teams how to estimate using planning poker and affinity estimation, which led to better understand of their velocity per sprint and stopped them from over-committing and under-delivering to the business.I then moved to a new team tasked with transforming Simplyhealth’s digital presence, introduced Lean and Kanban and then worked with them to create a Definition of Done that included Test Driven Development and Pair Programming. My main focus was to ensure that the team delivered within agreed SLAs whilst continually seeking to improve our ticket cycle time and functionality lead times.

Uk Wide

Using the experience I had of both traditional project management and Agile methods, and the knowledge of hurdles encountered when transitioning to Agile I worked with clients who had decided to implement Agile; in particular the Scrum framework. I supported our clients through the whole implementation of Scrum, from delivering tailored training sessions and workshops to prepare the team and wider business for Scrum, to defining, establishing and then supporting the project teams.

Whitehall, London

The project was to deliver a high profile application as part of the security for the 2012 Olympic Games and hence an externally defined non-negotiable delivery timeline. I transitioned the project away from PRINCE2 to an Agile approach using the Scrum framework. I worked to start up a new team to form a seamless working relationship across both the public and private sector which delivered the project successfully. To ensure this success I needed to manage multi-site multi-discipline teams scheduling, undertake complex stakeholder management, develop multi-million pound business cases, and demonstrate financial and budget management. I was also responsible for contract management and renegotiation.

Leeds, United Kingdom

I provided advice, guidance and support to programme and project boards, project managers and project teams on the use of APM Techniques, MSP, PRINCE2 and LCC’s corporate project management methodology “Delivering Successful Change” (DSC). I also developed and delivered training packages in support of DSC. In this role I was given several under-performing projects to review, and I was able to improve these through group training sessions for projects teams and one-on- one coaching with individual project managers.

Bradford, United Kingdom

As project lead for two IT based, departmental business change projects, a key part of my role was supporting and improving failing teams. I re-invigorated two under-performing small teams with the Environmental Services Division, and transformed their ways of working from inefficient paper based systems, making one team over 20% more efficient in the process and increasing their revenue stream.

Worldwide

In my final appointment I was the Operations Officer of a Sandown Class Single Role Mine Hunter. I was 3rd in Command of the ship and Head of the Warfare Department. I was responsible to the Commanding Officer for effectively and efficiently planning the ship's programme: from exercises through to live operations as well as refit and repair periods and both foreign and domestic port visits. As a divisional officer I had line management responsibilities for 8 junior rates.