Steven Thomas Email & Phone Number

London, Gb

London, Gb

London, England, United Kingdom

- Rescue: Part of rescue team to enable trade sale of FSB Technology by Private Equity owners; my role was to bring efficiencies in the delivery team of 172- Cost Savings: Halved cost of delivery team and halved headcount; consolidated locations so 85% of team were in the two key locations (England, India)- Product Development: Enabled product led development; went from 0% of capacity to 70%- Lean-Agile: Introduced a consistent Lean-Agile approach to software development- Customer on boarding: Reduced time to onboard new customers from 400 person days of effort to only 60 person days (15%) and from 6 months elapsed to 3 months elapsed (50%)- Platform stability: Halved both the monthly number of Priority 1 support incidents and unscheduled server restarts

London

Responsible for managing budget of £65 million, and portfolio of work by 550 staff.• Opened the Financial Times office in Bulgaria and grew the product development team in Sofia from zero to over 160. This reduced departmental costs by £3 million for re-investment elsewhere, while also allowing overall capacity to increase by 100 staff. The main department affected by this change reduced from seven locations to one. Used the Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) model. Established the Financial Times as a desirable employer in the Sofia market. • Championed Data Driven Delivery: reduced Production Lead Time by 23% i.e. iniatives were delivered faster; finished 81% more initiatives per year; improved predictability of estimates by 30%. • Introduced the Objective-Key-Result (OKR) approach. This, and Data Driven Delivery, increased Focus by 30%. • Reduced annual investment planning from 390 person days to 20 person days. • Strengthened the delivery management function. Introduced a Delivery Golden Path to make onboarding of new staff easier and longer term to increase consistency of approach. Introduced a career path for Delivery managers from Junior to Director. Introduced Programme Management as a sub-discipline. • Managed the full departmental budget on behalf of the Chief Product and Technology Officer.

[Concurrent]

London, United Kingdom

[one extension then recruited into a permanent role]

London, United Kingdom

Staff 90.- Won the contract for the BBC Weather Service via a European Union (EU) procurement process. The cross functional team of 15 (commercial, legal, meteorologyl, technical) was spread across the UK, Germany, and the Netherlands. - Led the team of 90+ to transition BBC Weather to MeteoGroup technology and services. Mobilised and managed a team spanning the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Ukraine, Russia and Poland. Set up 24/7 Service Desk and Meteorological teams. Responsible for all aspects of the delivery including product, technical, meteorological, service management, commercial, marketing and legal.- New contract enabled trade sale of Meteo Group by Private Equity owners

London, United Kingdom

Budget £2.5 million per annum in addition to permanent staff costs, 30 Staff. Increased revenue +3% by optimsing the sales approach using a bespoke web based order management system (gPlan). Launched the Digital Audio Exchange (DAX) - a platform the gives advertisers a single buying point for digital music brands across connected mobile devices in the UK. Led the research and development of Global’s personalised radio offering (MyRadio). Regenerated the mobile offering with a new generation of apps on iOS and Android enabling greater listener engagement and associated commercial return. Created Global’s digital targeted advertising infrastructure using teams in Romania, Israel, USA and the UK. Introduced a Lean-Agile approach to programme management and software development.

Budget £12 million, 70 Staff. Led major transformational change programmes for BBC News. Transformed the collaborative working practices within BBC News by building and rolling out Journalism Portal (JPortal). Managed change for 12,000 Journalists globally. Realised both financial benefits and significant creative benefits. Delivered Democracy Live website and editorial service with a 70-person team in 10 organisations – including parliaments - across the UK and Europe. This digital media offering for BBC Politics was pivotal in BBC License Fee negotiations. Winner of the Media Guardian Innovation Award for Best Use of Web Platforms 2010.

Budget £8 million, 105 Staff. Managed the Software Engineering team responsible for the core applications and services that supported the www.bbc.co.uk website, a site with over 30 million visitors a month. Managed the highly scalable web platforms for Identity, User Generated Content, Content Management, and Programme Information, Voting, Mobile and Blogs. Matrix managed the web development team of 105 engineers that delivered the award winning iPlayer (v1). Introduced consistent Agile process across department of 350 people. This process was adapted to local needs and combined elements of Scrum, XP, and BBC practice.

London, United Kingdom

Budget £3 million, 30 Staff. Led a development team specialising in e-commerce solutions within Financial Services. Delivered a family of web based personal financial planning tools for Egg the Internet Bank (“Egg Money Calculator”, “Debt Manager”). 2 year duration; team of 30 from three organisations. Delivered an innovative web-based trading platform for Baltic Exchange. 2 year duration; team of 15. Introduced highly effective Agile development approach based on DSDM and XP. Established Project Office and supporting systems.

Facilitated introduction of Extreme Programming (XP).

Budget NZ$1 million, 8 Staff. Managed the software side of a small IT consultancy that then created a product in Start Up mode. Created award winning shrink-wrap product range in IT security (MarshalSoftware) leading to successful trade sale of product range. Increased software development annual turnover by 300%.

Launched the polytechnic’s first degree programme: Bachelor of Information Systems (BInfoSys). Wrote the curiculum, got government approval, and hired the teaching staff.