Project Description
Shiraan Fernando
Program Director
Areas Of Expertise:
- Project and Program Management
- Agile Transformation
- Digital Transformation
- PMO
- Portfolio Optimisation
- Team Capability Building
- Digital Technologies
- Business Case and Financial modelling
- People Leadership
- Innovation
- start-up scaling and Culture coaching
Education:
- Postgraduate Certificate in Management
- Bachelor of Commerce (Finance)
- Bachelor of Science (Computer Science)
- Digital Business Strategy – MIT
- SAFE 5.1
About Shiraan Fernando
Shiraan joined Seven Consulting’s Sydney team in May 2020. He is an experienced Program Leader with significant experience leading some of Australia’s largest digital initiatives along with supporting PMO implementations. He has worked extensively in delivering industry-leading B2C digital programs and brings with him experiences in large-scale agile transformation, strategic program delivery, technology design, portfolio optimisation, PMO, team capability scaling, and multiple experiences managing in-house or vendor-built software development initiatives. He is a skilled and passionate people leader with experience in building E2E delivery teams that are agile and successful in complex environments. Prior to joining Seven Consulting, Shiraan held a number of leadership positions, including General Manager, Program Manager, Project Manager and Iteration Manager.
What Shiraan brings
- Significant experience in delivering large-scale technology transformations supported by “right-fit” Agile methodologies and leading edge technology strategies.
- Extensive experience in building core capabilities and developing long-lasting high performing teams.
- Experienced in delivering PMO implementations covering E2E project lifecycle management and portfolio optimisation.
- Strong influencing skills with the ability to quickly develop relationships and provide effective leadership to deliver value.
- A can-do attitude and an eagerness to exceed program KPI’s.
Key Clients:
- Invocare
- City of Melbourne
- ipSCAPE
- HunterWater
- Optus
- Volt Bank
- Telstra
- Sirca
- Woolworths
- Cisco Systems
- Ingenia Communities
Key Achievements:
As Program Director at Ingenia Communities, Shiraan was tasked with completing a comprehensive E2E Assurance Review of a critical CRM transformation program. The primary goal was to ensure the program is proactively optimised for efficient high-quality delivery, along with establishing an ongoing quality assurance framework to regularly review quality, opportunities, efficiencies and benefit realisation. As part of this preliminary design review, Shiraan completed an E2E audit of the program, team and operating environment resulting in 31 recommendations which were accepted by Ingenia for execution. Recommendations span the life of program delivery and include 18 pre-commencement recommendations that ensures the program is “setup for success”.
As Program Director at Invocare, Shiraan was tasked with delivering Year 1 of a 5-year business transformation program. During his engagement he successfully completed program recovery and uplifted delivery to enable the business transformation goals. His scope of work included the delivery of 4 programs of work aimed at accelerating the Simplicity Funerals business into the goal of being Invocare’s leading Digital channel with the objective of taking 50% of the direct cremations market. To achieve this, Shiraan led a revamp of Branding, Product, Marketing, Technology, Workflow and Real estate capabilities. Within his engagement, Shiraan established the 5-year business plan, completed the rebranding of 3 underperforming sites to Simplicity, led the establishment of future greenfield sites, implemented model store concept designs, revamped marketing strategies, established the foundations for consistent national workflow, launched a refreshed 5 product suite including a pilot launch of Online Cremation products and led the creation of future-state technology designs that shift Invocare into an industry disrupting “DIY” capability. The program was successfully handed over to BAU operations for execution from year 2.
As Program Director – Project Methodologies at City of Melbourne, Shiraan was tasked with developing right fit Agile methodologies to enable City of Melbourne in implementing dual-operating capabilities that services its digital/innovation desires, functions seamlessly within highly regulated government frameworks and optimises portfolio delivery for maximum benefit realisation. Using his in-depth knowledge of Agile, Waterfall and PMO, Shiraan was able to design a single right-fit Project Management Framework which fits into the CoM project lifecycle and includes best practice templates, tools and governance.
As Program Director at ipSCAPE, Shiraan implemented E2E Agile Software Delivery capability into an organisation looking to transition from start-up into a market leader. The scope of the program covered the full breadth of E2E Software Delivery from Prioritisation, Discovery, Governance through to Build, Test and Release. Shiraan was instrumental in revamping ipSCAPE software and product teams leading to significant improvements in culture, delivery, team capability, quality and customer satisfaction. Acting in an informal CTO capacity, Shiraan led the review of Application architecture and set-in-place strategies for Digital Application Modernisation. Utilising his experiences in PMO, Scaled Agile and software; Shiraan established the foundations of portfolio optimisation, innovation and E2E delivery which has been recognised by the board of directors for making a notable contribution to ipSCAPE’s future and its technology vision.
As Program Director at Volt Bank, Shiraan was tasked with overseeing a comprehensive review and uplift of Program Delivery capabilities to support the Neobanks technology-centric visions. As part of his engagement, he completed an audit of delivery capability and established an uplift program focused on Portfolio Prioritisation (capital allocation frameworks within constrained environments), uplift in content and accuracy of portfolio reporting, and led a cultural/capability shift towards active portfolio management across dependencies, risk, milestones, and resourcing. Shiraan’s was brought into turn-around the fledgling start-up however was not able to complete the assignment due to Volt Banks ultimate closure.
As Program Director at HunterWater(HW), Shiraan led the delivery of three critical programs that supports HW’s “Beyond 2024” vision. Programs were delivered in a 9-month period and included the integration of new Billing Systems, A high-profile regulatory change in banking partner and the implementation of HW’s core customer self-serve systems. Under his leadership, he created program structures that enable delivery to KPI’s and delivered programs on-time, under-budget and with a notably high customer satisfaction score. As part of the engagement, he also delivered HW’s first Agile delivery framework along with designs to implement HW Digital Portfolio Prioritisation Frameworks.
As Program Director at Optus, Shiraan led the implementation of Greenfields EPMO capability for Optus. Reporting into the C-Level, within this engagement he was in charge of Business Case formation and subsequent organisational build of a 100+ EPMO Org unit. In addition to this, Shiraan led the team of PMO Specialists in building ground-up capabilities for the E2E EPMO covering Project Management Frameworks, best-practice program governance, resource capability uplift strategies and curriculums, quarterly portfolio prioritisation with a focus on benefits thinking and executability, implementing BI reporting capabilities and rolling out EPMO support services such as Dependency Management, Quality Assurance, and Scheduling. The Optus EPMO was a 9-month program executed during challenging COVID environments. The program is now live and recognized as a core strategic pillar of Optus 200m+ program delivery capability.
As General Manager at Telstra, Shiraan executed organisational strategies resulting in an exponential growth of program backlog with over 6 Agile release trains producing monthly software releases across numerous asset portfolios. As part of these strategies the programs of work grew from delivering 300k of initiatives to over 45m and an average of 95 projects a year. With strong experience in Agile and Offshore development, his strategies produced a reduction in costs by over 20% and aided in building an agile organisation with the ability to flex-up and down to meet demand. As a passionate technologist, Shiraan set in place Mobile-First technology roadmaps leading to the delivery of pioneering cross-platform strategies supported by cloud services. His teams continue to be acknowledged as high-performing, fun and innovative teams delivering some of Telstra’s key strategic programs. As a passionate people leader, he actively mentored and promoted staff producing multiple staff Excellerate awards, long staff tenures and notably low turnover rates.
As Program Manager at Telstra, Shiraan scaled the team from 13 resources to over 100+ resources across three countries and 6 sites. He transformed the team from traditional processes into high-performing agile teams delivering high-value software on a continuous basis. His team was recognised as one of Telstra’s most mature IT agile divisions and encompasses mature agile culture, mindsets, and methodologies. As program manager, Shiraan designed the team to drive E2E “Release Train” Capability and was instrumental in hiring and establishing a strong “can-do” team culture that produced highly passionate, customer focused, sales driven teams.
As Program Manager at Telstra, Shiraan led some of Australia’s largest Digital Programs from concept through to post-production support. His programs include Australia’s #2 SmartPhone utilities app, #1 Tablet utilities App and Global Top 20 digital assets. As a digital leader he provided leadership in driving foundational digital capabilities such as DevOps / E2E Automation, Cross-Platform Architecture and Cloud-based scalability. On the R&D side, Shiraan has been part of programs delivering pioneering technologies such as WIFI Mesh/ Bluetooth Beacon / IoT / ChatBots / Voice and AI. As a passionate technologist, he also drove the formation of Brainwave innovation incubators which linked his teams to well established university programs.
As General Manager at Telstra, Shiraan lead a team of program managers in delivering a core portfolio of Telstra highly publicised 2020 Digital Vision. These applications include amongst others, Telstra Air – a nationally rolled out hardware and software program delivering seamless mobile WIFI services, HomeDashboard – A customer-centric designed app creating seamless in-home experiences and Telstra Locator – Australia’s largest IoT finding network. Under his management, these programs were able to quickly ramp-up and incrementally deliver value to market resulting in Go-Lives as early as 3 months from formation.
As Lead Project Manager at Telstra, Shiraan delivered a significant portfolio of projects with a proven ability to manage up-to 14 concurrent projects. Some of these projects include the Mobility Acceleration Programs (1.0, 1.1, 1.2) in which he drove the projects through the financial and benefit modelling as well as the delivery of project benefits to market. As Lead PM, Shiraan also delivered the first version of Telstra 24×7, TFM, Snapp. Shiraan also led the formation of Telstra’s Cloud Platform and delivered the solution and costing phase for what would become one of Telstra core strategic pillars.
As Senior Project Manager at Sirca, Shiraan enabled the legal and corporate separation of Sirca into two organisations. He was responsible for the Project Management of a C-Level project team including a high-profile board of directors. Within this role, he effectively drove his project team through the regulatory processes and achieved a zero-impact separation of Sirca.
As Business Analyst and Project Manager at Woolworths, Shiraan managed the delivery of the SalesLogix CRM system including process analysis, process implementation, training, product support and light touch in-house development. Other projects he ran include assisting with Woolworths Metro Transport Model implementations. He was also PM for the Pyramid Workforce Management system which included the management of an in-house development team as well the subsequent implementation across a highly complex and unionized Woolworths Logistics workforce.
As Finance Administrator at Cisco, Shiraan managed the divisional finances for Cisco’s ANZ Facilities team. With responsibility for a USD 20M+ budget Shiraan was in charge of maintaining financial diligence and improving divisional budgets allocations. Within this role he applied technology to the tasks ultimately building an IT system with supporting processes that automated workload and reduced budget variances through improved metrics and effective workflow.
