Nishaat Bawa

Delivery-focused Project Manager, Agile Delivery Lead and PSM I-certified Scrum practitioner with 15+ years of experience across technology, financial services, start-up, higher education and creative production environments. Currently leading cross-functional delivery across Product, Engineering, UX, Release, Support and Client Success while coordinating discovery and delivery planning for the Partnership Salesforce migration into ROAM. Strong in turning complex initiatives into executable plans, clear ownership, realistic capacity, measurable controls and decision-ready reporting across scope, milestones, RAID, dependencies, budget and change.

PROJECT MANAGER / AGILE DELIVERY LEAD at COLLINSON GROUP (2025-11 – Present)

Selected programme: Partnership Salesforce Org Consolidation - Migration to ROAM

• Migration mobilisation: Lead delivery coordination for discovery and planning of a strategic Salesforce org consolidation, aligning Product, Technology, Operations and business stakeholders.
• Integrated roadmap: Maintain the lifecycle across Discovery, Elaboration, Delivery, Cutover and Hypercare, with milestones, Definition of Done, dependencies, accountable owners and decision points.
• Scope and backlog: Coordinate decomposition and refinement across functional processes, object and attribute mapping, security, Opportunity migration, integrations, hard-coded Salesforce IDs, tooling, data quality, reporting and technical debt.
• Stakeholder readiness: Facilitate discovery workshops and impact or assumption sessions to validate ownership, operational change, scope boundaries, dependencies and Discovery exit criteria.
• Governance ownership: Own the Plan on a Page, RACI, RAID, stakeholder and dependency maps, critical path, milestone reporting, readiness recommendations and Steering updates.
• Readiness support: Coordinate data clean-up, reporting inventory, architecture inputs, dependency clarification and technical-debt assessment before downstream design and build.
• End-to-end delivery: Lead work across multiple squads from intake, scoping and prioritisation through execution, release, stakeholder sign-off and post-launch stabilisation.
• Agile leadership: Facilitate sprint planning, daily coordination, backlog refinement, sprint reviews and retrospectives to strengthen flow and continuous improvement.
• Capacity and dependencies: Manage workload, milestones, scope, dependencies and blockers to protect commitments and support realistic planning.
• Metrics and forecasting: Use velocity, burndown, throughput, completion trends, RAG status, milestone forecasts and confidence scoring for leadership visibility.
• Launch readiness: Coordinate multi-region release support and hypercare while resolving delivery friction across Product, Engineering and operational teams.

PROGRAMME COORDINATOR / PROCESS ANALYST at OLD MUTUAL LIMITED (2024-03 – 2025-10)

Mass Foundation Cluster | Business Change Execution | Contract

• Programme planning: Created and monitored integrated project and programme plans, aligning timelines, resources, governance requirements and stakeholder responsibilities.
• Workflow visibility: Implemented and facilitated the SAT Integration Programme Kanban, improving task ownership, blockers and weekly coordination.
• Governance and control: Managed scope change, RAID governance and follow-up on risks, actions, issues and decisions; maintained governance-compliant initiative files.
• Executive reporting: Produced EXCO and Steering Committee packs, dashboards and decision-ready impact reporting.
• Data-led analysis: Led analysis and Tableau reporting for the South Africa and Namibia eForm offline solution and received recognition for TT3 Verifone close-out analysis.
• Ways of working: Designed a programme initiative planner, RACI and Team Culture Canvas to improve role clarity and coordination.
• Project finance: Managed forecasts, budget reviews, purchase orders, invoices, receipting, cost analysis and capacity planning.

PROGRAMME & OPERATIONS SUPPORT at VIRIDIAN (2020-12 – 2023-07)

Pan-African Entrepreneurship and Grant-Funded Programmes

• Multi-programme coordination: Managed schedules, recruitment roadmaps, expert engagement, cohort activity, stakeholder communication and reporting.
• Financial stewardship: Managed project budgets of approximately R25 million, including forecasting, accruals, reconciliations, supplier invoices and audit preparation.
• Audit and control: Completed year-end accrual tracking across project accounts with 100% accuracy and introduced payment and external-spend trackers.
• Contract governance: Introduced an SLA tracker and DocuSign, strengthening contract control, authentication and turnaround times.
• Cost optimisation: Reduced annual operating costs by R144,000 through a subscription audit.
• Commercial outcomes: Improved grant, deal-flow and international-payment tracking, supporting 85-90% conversion outcomes.
• Scalable operations: Developed trackers, booking schedulers and a Programme Recruitment Roadmap that reduced administrative effort and supported handover.

CAREER HIATUS | PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT at Career Development (2023-08 – 2024-02)

Purposeful career break focused on role transitioning, commencing a BCom in Project Management and completing formal Agile and Scrum training.

Senior Operations Specialist & Project Lead at Old Mutual Group Marketing & Communications (2019-06 – 2019-12)

• Implemented project, campaign, scorecard and agency-contract trackers; strengthened budget and contract controls; achieved completion of required contract sign-offs before year-end; supported Brand Suite, Ad Stream, Recognition Platform and internal media initiatives.

Marketing Assistant / Project Lead at UCT Graduate School of Business (2019-01 – 2019-06)

• Supported Executive MBA benchmarking and QS ranking submissions; implemented competitor and benchmarking reporting; coordinated digital signage, wayfinding, internal branding and marketing budget tracking.

Independent Project & Operations Consultant at Niche Solutions (2017-09 – 2018-12)

• Streamlined recruitment and marketing workflows and supported the launch, database implementation and system improvement of a recruitment website and talent-tracking tool.

Key Accounts & Traffic Manager at Grindrod SA (2016-04 – 2017-08)

• Managed client-facing creative workflows, production schedules, priorities and delivery across an in-house brand agency.

Earlier roles at Multiple (Independent Consulting, Tiger Brands, Woolworths, Devtrade) (2007 – 2016)

• Built foundational experience in marketing operations, recruitment, HR administration, office management, accounts administration and stakeholder support.

BCom in Project Management – MANCOSA (2024 – 2027)

Diploma in Human Resources Management – Varsity College (2009 – 2009)

Certificate in Marketing Management (2014 – 2014)