Paul Barnes, Project Manager in Farnham, United Kingdom

Paul Barnes

Project Manager

Location
Farnham, United Kingdom
Toptal Member Since
October 30, 2018

Over a 25-year career, Paul has been fortunate enough to work with great clients like Disney, Tesco, BBC, John Lewis Partnership, and others. Through those engagements, he has witnessed the challenges that businesses have in designing, developing, and launching new digital products. Paul helps owners, founders, CTOs, and heads of businesses deliver bespoke software that meets their needs, de-risks their exposure to uncertainty in change, and maximizes return on investment as quickly as possible.

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Project Highlights

Tesco
Led R&D team to research, A/B test, and deliver multiple new product features into mobile apps.
Sun Savers
Delivered an MVP launch of a digital and print loyalty program to the web and mobile platforms.

Expertise

Agile Project ManagementAgile Software DevelopmentCertified ScrumMaster (CSM)Design ThinkingKanbanRetail & WholesaleScrumeCommerce

Education

Bachelor of Science Degree with Hons
Oxford Brookes University

Select Certifications

Project Management Professional (PMP)
Project Management Institute (PMI)
Certified Scrum Master
Scrum Alliance

Work Experience

2020 - 2022

Product Manager

Flaconi
  • Took responsibility for driving product improvements through the retail media and discovery funnels of the shopping experience.
  • Implemented Algolia search for three online stores increasing product discovery by 8x.
  • Implemented Criteo for retail media placements and supplier brand room initiatives as part of a €26 million marketing program.
2019 - 2020

Delivery Lead

Thames Water
  • Decreased planning time, improved the leakage repair cycle, and contributed to the Water Services Regulation Authority (Ofwat) leakage reduction target.
  • Improved the fragmented end-to-end leakage journey from detection, scheduling, planning, repair, and reinstatement.
  • Implemented and coached a continuous discovery capability based on design thinking principles.
2018 - 2019

Delivery Manager

Dunelm
  • Managed the delivery of a replatform and digital transformation program.
  • Coached and servant-led two squads delivering click and collect and checkout capabilities.
  • Worked across multiple streams to collaborate on product delivery within the enterprise.
2018 - 2018

Technical Program Manager

TALKTALK
  • Managed multiple work streams and a budget of £1.2 million strategically to enable GDPR compliance across the online platform involving around 6 million client records.
  • Collaborated with two product managers and three scrum teams to create online functions for customer consent, subject access requests, and the right to be forgotten.
  • Built relationships with cross-functional stakeholders and senior leadership teams to provide project progress, status, and risk reports.
  • Liaised with the UK and offshore teams in India throughout the project lifecycle and negotiated the statement of work with finance and procurement.
2018 - 2018

Delivery Manager

REED EXPO
  • Provided interim delivery management of a replatform and digital transformation program.
  • Coached and servant-led four product teams during Q2 execution and Q3 planning activities.
  • Identified incremental delivery improvements in collaboration with the senior leadership team.
  • Ran the recruitment process for a permanent delivery manager.
2017 - 2017

Delivery Lead

Equal Experts
  • Joined the BBC team to deliver a startup and data mining capability to enable researchers, producers, and content writers to uncover new content.
  • Led and coached a business intelligence team at GVA to use scrum and other agile techniques as a product-managed approach to software delivery.
  • Increased the speed of delivery of mission-critical data by 90%.
2017 - 2017

Delivery Manager

Governmental Digital Services
  • Led and coached three agile teams to deliver back-end services and front-end, browser-based user experiences for a digital identity solution.
  • Coached teams in agile best practices to deliver lean products using Scrum, Kanban, XP, and other agile techniques within a regulated environment.
  • Delivered the initial phase of improvements to the existing digital identity solution, enabling an EU cross-border digital economy.
2016 - 2017

Agile Project Manager

The Sun
  • Served as the technical lead for a £1.7 million digital platform project incorporating web, iOS, and Android apps as part of a wider £20 million print loyalty program.
  • Embedded agile best practices across project teams using coaching to develop full-stack digital products using Scrum, Kanban, XP, and lean techniques.
  • Delivered multiple concurrent projects end-to-end within a wider program portfolio, including Java, Salesforce, microservices, and Cordova stack. Delivered MVP iOS and Android apps to market and met print deadlines.
2015 - 2015

Agile Technical Project Manager

Macmillan Publishing
  • Managed the discovery phase of a business transformation project involving a vendor procurement exercise to determine the suitability of solutions.
  • Completed the vendor management process and identified cost-effective solutions successfully using agile project delivery methods.
  • Focused strongly on user research and user experience, building experiments and testing with users.
2013 - 2015

Senior Agile Project Manager

Tesco
  • Served as the project manager and scrum master for the Mobile Centre of Excellence (MCoE) to support Tesco Grocery and Digital ClubCard apps.
  • Supported the engineering teams in India to deliver mobile technology innovation and gain proof of concept approval for production.
  • Assigned to build and lead a new team of engineers, including developers and solution architects, to create apps with Xamarin (C# framework).
  • Set up, led, and managed a team of eight developers in the UK (five new hires) and India.
2011 - 2013

Senior Agile Project Manager

The Collinson Group
  • Managed a £2.3 million budget to deliver multiple agile projects for a key strategic loyalty software product and its delivery to global clients.
  • Led three agile teams to deliver a core product, mobile apps, and APIs within a pre-defined roadmap and two client implementations into a live service.
  • Managed up to 20 developers, business analysts, quality assurance, UI/IA designers, technical architects, and product owners globally.
  • Delivered numerous client projects based on bespoke loyalty solutions, including a scalable RESTful API back end, a responsive web front end, and an iOS mobile app.
  • Sustained agile and PMP principles across projects, in addition to scrum and Kanban, to achieve a high level of quality output.
2010 - 2011

Project Manager

Club Penguin (Disney)
  • Led a solution delivery to enhance and support a massively multiplayer online (MMO) game, including the new channel implementation.
  • Built a project team and managed relationships with internal and external teams while producing mobile apps and communication plans.
  • Delivered the first mobile initiative for a popular MMO game that subsequently made the top ten on the iTunes Store in various markets.
  • Improved studio processes with PMO best practices, which resulted in clear visibility for capacity planning and cross-project efficiencies.
2007 - 2009

Project Manager

The Collinson Group
  • Managed Waterfall and Agile software development projects for global clients and web application products for internal and external clients.
  • Recovered a failing project to deliver an affiliate-tracking platform, reducing costs by 50% in the UK market worth $5 billion and improving revenue strategies.
  • Worked for the Latitude product within the group of an insurance business, specifically Columbus Direct, a loyalty product sold to financial and insurance clients to offer loyalty and reward benefits.
  • Delivered numerous client projects based on bespoke loyalty solutions, including a scalable RESTful API back-end, a responsive web front-end, and an iOS mobile app.

Project History

GDPR Program

Delivered the limited scope GDPR project within a four-month deadline and budget, with the successful transition and handover.

I took responsibility for delivering the GDPR needs of the consumer digital web channel within a wider GDPR program for TalkTalk. I worked to an incredibly tight deadline to ensure that GDPR compliance could be achieved on time for the introduction of legislation.

Tesco

Led R&D team to research, A/B test, and deliver multiple new product features into mobile apps.

I led the innovation team to identify solutions to customer problems and opportunities. I also collaborated with product owners to source, select, develop, test, and procure vendor technology. I implemented Apple Watch, NFC, Bluetooth, indoor location, and voucher technology.

Sun Savers

Delivered an MVP launch of a digital and print loyalty program to the web and mobile platforms.

I served as a technical lead for a £1.7 million digital platform project incorporating web, iOS, and Android apps as part of a wider £20 million print loyalty program. I embedded agile best practice across project teams using coaching to develop full-stack digital products using Scrum, Kanban, XP, and lean techniques. I also delivered multiple concurrent projects end-to-end within a wider programme portfolio including Java, Salesforce, microservices, and Cordova stack. I finally delivered MVP iOS and Android apps to market and met print deadlines.

Education

1992 - 1996

Bachelor of Science Degree with Hons in Computer Science

Oxford Brookes University - Oxford, United Kingdom

Certifications

JANUARY 2010 - PRESENT

Project Management Professional (PMP)

Project Management Institute (PMI)

JANUARY 2010 - PRESENT

Certified Scrum Master

Scrum Alliance