Toby Freeman Email & Phone Number

Taunton, Gb

Bristol, England, United Kingdom

The SW LT are responsible for operations across the BJSS Bristol and Exeter offices (~230 people). This covers P&L, recruitment, people leadership, delivery leadership & quality, technology leadership, project resourcing, and winning new business. Within the SW LT, I am accountable for ensuring my Capability team is supporting the SW region’s vision and its people’s needs in the following areas:- Implementing & maintaining expected delivery quality standards- Ensuring our people understand what is expected of them on a project- Defining effective recruitment processes- Promoting communities and environments where individuals can share knowledge, receive feedback and learn from one another.- Visibility of L & D opportunities- Raising awareness of the great work we do both internally and externally.I also have Account Management responsibilities for a SW client. In addition to stakeholder engagement & commercial negotiations, notable achievements include:- In a DM role, successfully delivered remediation work on time and budget on a product in danger of losing service due to the use of out-of-date AWS cloud components.- Developed a tool for calculating fixed-price engagement costs for planning proposals- Worked closely with the BJSS Managed Service function to rebuild their reputation with the client through targeted service improvements, improved and more effective communication and concentrated management of client expectations.- Utilised my domain, delivery and analysis experience to contribute toward several bids for new work.

Bristol, England, United Kingdom

Responsible for defining the BA Capability strategy across BJSS (~150 BAs).- Collaborated with the regional BA CLs to define and release our Analysis delivery principles. These serve as quality guidelines for BAs on our projects and are the basis for conversations around best practices and assurance.- Defined the BJSS Analysis recruitment process and job description.- Developed a Capability Map, defining skill progression levels for use in recruitment & development- Collated training and learning opportunities, tying them back to the Capability Map

Bristol

Led the Bristol Analysis Capability, overseeing 50% growth (with no resignations) during my tenure.- Ran monthly meetups with the team, which included knowledge sharing, project check-ins and Analysis discussions.- Emphasised and promoted the need for Product-led approaches and thinking within the team, as client POs/PMs often needed considerable support and development in their role.- Represented BAs in resourcing conversations. - Redefined the recruitment process, removing redundant stages and refining interview questions and scenarios.- Produced and delivered onboarding for new BAs.- Line Management of Bristol Analysts

Bristol

Consultant Analyst to deliver a cloud-based (AWS) B2B portal as part of a programme to allow businesses to make more financially-efficient use of their energy production and consumption.- Provided coaching and direction to a client product team inexperienced in product management, supporting a primary stakeholder new to product ownership- Collaborated with architects, SMEs, UX designers and product owners to support elaboration of basic roadmap.- Produced and maintained the product backlog, performing prioritisation, running elaboration and estimation sessions with development team.- Promoted collaboration between programme teams to ensure the impact of requirements were fully understood.- Provided best practice leadership to other analysts in the programme to demonstrate what ‘good’ looked like.- Performed technical gap analysis and produced API designs for consumption by multiple teams in the programme.

Analyst over two concurrent projects for commercial and military use. On the first project I inherited a large, disorganised backlog which I quickly groomed and prioritised to provide precision on short and medium term goals for the development team. Encouraged the team to follow more stringent Agile practices, such as defined iterations and retrospectives to provide the client with greater clarity on what was being delivered and when.Worked very closely with the client SMEs to design and develop a new Analytics dashboard. Utilised product management experience and worked closely with a data scientist to research the insights and behaviours required, producing prototypes that were presented and discussed with the client. The dashboard was instrumental in securing the first end-user for the product.The second project was a discovery engagement to investigate the provision of a replacement for an existing commercial/military communication application.Undertook several discovery tasks to learn more about the existing system and the MOD's use of it. This included desk-based research into existing design patterns and UI, wireframing for prototyping and interviews & workshops with stakeholders and users.Despite the initial remit being a 'like-for-like' replacement, discovery identified the problem-space was not the existing product, but the entire process around how the MOD used the system.Working with the delivery team, we specified and produced a POC that provided insight into a replacement for the existing system, but also covered several of the problems identified in discovery. The team were also able to present a set of recommendations on the direction of any further development ensure that the solution more closely fulfils and solves the MOD's problems.

Digital Consultant working with a large UK budget airline to redevelop their e-commerce website.Responsible for elaborating and maturing existing stories and requirements into a ‘ready’ state. In a challenging environment with considerable dependencies and constraints, this involved managing numerous external inputs and influences to ensure his team’s workstream could be delivered effectively.A major requirement of the consultancy team was to map and tie together third-party development in the programme to existing stories and requirements of the project, the absence of which was causing delays and problems in delivery. I quickly built domain understanding and liaised with business and technical stakeholders to build a user story map to drive out and demonstrate and highlight potential blockages and dependencies in the delivery of the product to the project leadership.

Bristol, United Kingdom

A strategic role within the team, driving the roadmap for several domains within the product and worked with closely with my teams to ensure features were delivered according to my vision. Collaborated with our UX function to develop and deliver a consistent, sophisticated customer-centric user experience across the entire product.

Bristol, United Kingdom

Product Owner on a mid-market multi-national HR IS. I have progressed as the product and development methodology has evolved and was promoted to manage the ‘Core HR’ functions of the application in February 2015. Responsible for the product roadmap in a Agile Scrum environment, combining customer priorities, ADP's business strategy, market direction and research. This role requires excellent influencing and negotiating skills as I am constantly collaborating with stakeholders to ensure the delivery of the most effective implementation of a user story, based on requirements, the roadmap and the current functionality available in the product. I am the de facto SME for the product and UX teams in the office and am often called upon to provide product presentations to new starters to introduce them to the product.I have supported several sales visits, providing insight for potential clients into road map and demonstrations of forthcoming functionality Empower scrum teams to take greater ownership of the work they produce, which has improved quality and reduced turnover compared to project’s other off-shore teams.Collaborate with larger PO team to constantly improve internal processes and drive quality

North Somerset

As a Business Analyst I was part of a team responsible for the transition of a UK-only product into a multi-national product, able to satisfy the needs of multiple countries with the minimum of localisation.I produced a complete functional description of the product for use in the planning and initial development of the 'baseline solution'. This included the identification and safe removal of all country specific items. Subsequently, I was responsible for the requirements gathering and development of localised versions of the product in two international markets, successfully delivering both to pilot. Highlights of these projects included: - Delivery of a two-week training and familiarisation course in Sao Paulo- Producing UAT scripts, defining the issue tracking process and providing 1st line support for pilot.- Coaching overseas stakeholders in the agile methodology, encouraging close collaboration and increased ownership

Exeter, United Kingdom

Exeter, United Kingdom