Christopher Browne

Christopher Browne

Project/ Product managerLondon, United Kingdom
+ Info

0

Connections
Christopher Browne

Christopher Browne

Project/ Product managerLondon, United Kingdom
About me
I am currently looking for contract Product/Programme/Innovation management roles. I have just under 12 years’ experience delivering digital products and innovations and enjoy taking on complex projects and delivering new products to market. Please find a breakdown below of my background (CV also attached): - Product management. Defining product vision, roadmap, and backlog. - Programme and Delivery management. Delivery and managing teams. - Digital transformation. Ensuring business and development processes such as agile are in place to allow the product to thrive. - Customer experience. Trends and strategy. I have also summarised my experience of the key sectors I have worked in (Mobile, Finance, and IoT). Apologies for the 'long' read, hopefully, this provides more of a background than my CV and can be easily skim read. Happy to jump on a call if easier. Kind regards, Chris 07768273326 Experience by role Product Management - Certified SCRUM Product Owner - Managed product backlog, requirements, prioritisation, roadmap and delivery for live global products. Ensuring requirements were supported by customer and market research, had a clear objective in line with the product vision and KPI's, associated metrics and any opportunity cost was understood and communicated to relevant stakeholders. These products included Nokia Xpress browser (~113million active users) and Nokia App Store. - Business case and performance tracking. With Lloyd's banking group, I developed the business case for a +£1million project with a monitoring and performance framework and target ROI calculated. - Future vision, strategy, and industry insights. During my time at Microsoft, I worked on a number of future product propositions and new product categories and how to introduce them to the marketplace. - Managed design requirements and delivery for a mobile operating system ('Meltemi') aimed at competing with Android in low-end mobile phones. At the time 'Meltemi' was a secret project with over 1,000 people working on it globally. - MVP concept and development for BP/ Castrol to help their sales staff to quantify and communicate Castrol's premium offer. - Managing offshore development teams whilst at Nokia and Designit/Wipro. - Evaluating when to leverage existing solutions and open source projects versus proprietary development. Whilst deploying a design system within Lloyd's banking group we leveraged a combination of open source and custom development within their regulated environment. - Product and experience focused with a technical mindset. Technology Design Lead at Fjord and academic background in Computer Science and Fine Art. - Experienced in relevant tools such as Jira, Confluence, GitHub Enterprise, Viso, Omnigraffle, Axure (wireframing and proto), Microsoft Office, SharePoint, Survey Monkey. Programme and Delivery Management - Running all stages of a project's lifecycle from initiation, definition, execution, performance, and control, to closing. - Facilitation and workshop skills. - Project planning. Plans, scoping, proposals, Statement of work resourcing, budgeting on projects ranging from £50k to +£1m. - Managing third party suppliers both on and offshore - Communication, reporting, and negotiation. Managing matrixed and complex stakeholder relationships up to C-Level executives. - Proactive risk management and mitigation. - Leading and developing multi-discipline teams. Optimising and growing existing teams as well as establishing new teams. I grew the Nokia servicing team from five to +20 people. I was an initial member of the Advanced Design team at Microsoft. Whilst at Fjord experienced maintaining quality and consistency whilst undergoing rapid growth, from an initial 20 people globally when to over 300 people in the period I was there. - Methodologies, processes, and tools. Experienced in Lean, Design thinking, Business model canvas, JTBD, Agile/SCRUM, Kanban, PMI/PMBOK, and Waterfall. Using a broad depth of knowledge, I aim to tailor the approach to the given team and business need whilst continually adapting and refining. - Ambiguity and uncertainty. Experienced in maintaining velocity when operating in rapidly changing environments or with imperfect information. - Domain development. Supported the project management discipline development within Designit agency, Nokia and Microsoft. This included developing tools (PMIS/SharePoint), templates (project plans, trackers) and processes. Digital transformation (Agile, Organisational optimisation) - Supported Nokia's product teams global transition to Agile. - Microsoft's Advanced Design's representative for the Phones business unit "Innovation opportunity review" model which looked to streamline how innovations were identified, developed and de-risked before entering product programmes. - Developed a Design System for Lloyds banking group that enabled shared assets across agile teams. This programme was a key component of Lloyd's wider digital transformation and was supported by organisational and process recommendations. - Partnering with BP/Castrol, my team developed an MVP product as part of their move away from large-scale development projects towards smaller rapid test, learn and scale projects. - Ensured any digital transformation is underpinned and supported by appropriate business process and product culture. Customer experience (UX, Innovation, Design thinking, Strategy) - Design thinking and service design tools and methodologies. Working in leading innovation and design consultancies has given me a broad knowledge of design tools (user research, personas, user journeys, service maps etc.) and methodologies to identify, frame and meet customers’ needs through engaging experiences. - Thought leadership. Have s¬¬poken at international conferences including EuroIA in Paris, Polish IA summit in Warsaw and MEX (mobile experience) in London. - Whilst working at Nokia I was the Services team's representative for the 'Next Billion' strategy review that involved ethnographic research in rural Kenya. - Developed a trend forecasting tool for Samsung that covered both future technical enablers and socioeconomic factors. This was used to support product concept creation and roadmap prioritisation. - Technology Design Lead for an EU funded research project involving design for connected objects / Internet of Things (IoT). - Led the innovation sandbox programme in the Nokia services team. Experience by Sector Mobile and Apps - Media and entertainment. BBC iPlayer mobile, Eros (Bollywood), Nokia Xpress Now (news aggregator), Time Out. - Localized global apps. Nokia Xpress browser (~113million users), Nokia App Store. - Mobile operating systems. Meltemi, Nokia Asha, NokiaX (Android/AOSP). - Device manufacturers/ OEMs. Samsung, Nokia, Blackberry. - Operators/ Telco. Deutsche Telekom (T-mobile), Vodafone, Orange, Telefonica (O2) Finance (DS cleared) - Spent the last year (2017) working with Lloyds Banking group on a number of projects from a future vision for how open banking could disrupt their mortgages business to a large scale concept and delivery of a 'Design system' to enable asset re-use, consistency, and efficiency across their agile product teams. IoT and Hardware - As Technology Design lead at Fjord, I worked on an international IoT research project (EU funded). Following this work, I was invited with a college to speak at the EuroIA conference in Paris and the PolishIA Summit in Warsaw. This was also later covered on Bruce Sterling’s WIRED blog. Project overview can be seen here: https://vimeo.com/24505857 - Worked on a wearable health and performance platform concept with McLaren that leveraged their Formula 1 technologies (sensors and data platform) into new sectors. - Advanced Design in Microsoft. Focused on concepting, prototyping and testing future consumer products such as new device form factors, audio devices and video capture for VR. - Worked on mobile phone HW/SW alignment whilst at Nokia.
Work history
    Designit logo
    Designit logo
    Senior Project ManagerDesignit
     - London, United KingdomFreelance
    RESPONSIBILITIES: • Managed the design and development of a Design System enabling reuse of shared assets and knowledge across multiple teams in Lloyds Banking group as a key part of their digital transformation program. Initially a small vision piece of work, I modelled and communicated a strong business case and grew the project to +£1million from an initial 100k. Establishing a partnership between Designit and another Wipro company to form a multidisciplinary team of 15 people across design and development. Ensuring that the tools created were also supported by improved business processes and organizational structure. • Managed the design of a custom product from concept to MVP and testing. The objective was to help Castrol's (BP) sales staff communicate their premium offer and support building a relationship and partnership with their customers whilst also gathering business and market insights. • Supported the Project management domain development within Designit London. This included building project trackers and plan templates.
    N
    N
    Traveling and VolunteeringNone
     - AsiaFull Time
    Following a short trip building emergency shelters in "The Jungle" refugee camp in Calais, I took a year off to travel and volunteer. During this time, I coordinated search and rescue efforts in Lesvos for refugee boats coming from Turkey, trekked to Everest Base Camp, worked on Earthquake reconstruction in Nepal and youth leadership, clean energy and community resilience in Borneo. Whilst the types of work was varied throughout the year a common theme of leading and motivating people in rapidly changing environments remained throughout. It was also a great opportunity to learn from others, develop and challenge myself.
+ Show more
Skills
  • Project Management
  • Delivery Management
  • Product
  • Mobile Applications
  • User-centered Design
  • Programme Management
  • Digital Innovation
  • Digital Transformation
  • Agile
  • Lean UX
Education
    University of Plymouth logo
    University of Plymouth logo
    BSc (hons) Digital Art and Technology (2:2)University of Plymouth
     - London, United Kingdom
    Combined discipline of computer science and media arts. Final year project was developing a relaxation game using biofeedback input and custom hardware. This went on to win first place in the HSBC business ideas challenge.