Project Piloting & Agile Methodologies
MBA Strategic Project Management plus PSPO and SAFe 5 certifications, backed by five years as Project Manager and Product Owner at Pichet. Frame, plan, and steer multi-team programs with risk control and stakeholder alignment.
My definition
Project piloting, in my own definition, is the discipline that breaks a strategic intent into a portfolio of deliverables, each one framed with a backlog, a budget, a risk register, and a stakeholder map. Combined with agile methodologies (Scrum, SAFe, Lean) it becomes the operating system of a multi-team programme, the layer that turns a board OKR into shippable sprints and into milestones defendable on the business side.
I run 2 complementary modes I alternate by context. Top-down portfolio governance (PMO, bi-weekly COPIL, RACI matrices, OKR cascading), what I practised at Pichet on the 903 person-days ESB programme. Bottom-up Scrum for product squads (2-week sprints, daily, sprint review, retrospective) - installed between 2022 and 2024 on the middleware cell. Same foundation in both modes: explicit risks, named stakeholders, measurable milestones. MBA in Strategic Project Management (2023-2025), PSPO certification, SAFe 5 PM/PO badge, and 5 years as PM/PO at Pichet form the theory + practice cover.
In 2026, project piloting has shifted: Lean Portfolio Management now embeds AI agents that scan code repositories, market trends, and team sentiment to flag portfolio risks weeks before a human would. This is the line LeanWisdom takes in its 2026 SAFe playbook: portfolio strategy becomes the organisation's "fast brain", and OKR cascading wires natively with AI capacity tools - see Portfolio Strategy in the Age of AI & Agility. The PM/PO who cannot pilot this human + agent mix becomes the bottleneck.
My evidence
Anecdote 1 : Steering the DAM Bynder rollout for 1,400 users
5 previous attempts had failed and burned 360 KEUR. The group needed a Digital Asset Management deployment without restarting from zero.
I designed a 6-step independent benchmark methodology, ran the vendor selection, negotiated SLA and reversibility clauses, and orchestrated 17 weekly onboarding sessions.
Bynder shipped on schedule for 1,400 users with full vendor lock-in mitigation in the contract.
The benchmark playbook became reusable for future SaaS migrations at the group.
Anecdote 2 : Akeneo PIM SaaS migration
5 years of Akeneo PIM evolution from v1.4 self-hosted to SaaS, with a 2024 cutover that had to be zero-downtime.
As Tech Lead then PO I built the migration backlog, coordinated agencies + vendor + business, and ran the rsync-based transition pipeline.
Migration completed without commercial impact on the property listing flows.
The transition kept the team's autonomy intact: the SaaS contract was negotiated with a clear knowledge-transfer plan that avoided vendor capture.
My self-critique
Senior, doubly validated: MBA Strategic Project Management on the portfolio side + 5 years in the dual PM/PO hat at Pichet on the execution side, plus the SAFe 5 PM/PO and PSPO certifications. Practical coverage across three rhythms - top-down portfolio (PMO, COPIL, RACI), bottom-up Scrum on 15+ squads piloted, multi-team governance (ESB programme of 903 planned person-days). What still needs strengthening: animating Lean Portfolio Management beyond 8 parallel initiatives, and shifting from operator to coach posture once the team reaches piloting maturity.
Required for any CTO or EM role. it is the dual of leadership: leadership pilots people, project piloting pilots flow. Without it, board-level commitments do not translate into dated deliverables and tech arbitrations stay invisible delivery-side. It is also what lets me commit to contractual customer milestones (cf. DAM Bynder rollout) without depending on an external PMO.
Key milestones along the journey: CTO · Founder · technical director (1999) → Engineering Manager · Project Manager / Product Owner · Technical Lead (2019) → SAFe 5 Certification (Product Manager & Product Owner) (2022) → CTO · Founder · technical director (2024). Now at 5/5 (Expert). The continuity of these contexts signals a robust acquisition, battle-tested by repetition and diversity.
My daily reflex
Name the kill criteria systematically before every kickoff - the hardest piloting decision is never starting, it is stopping. The risk register lives in a single source, never scattered in slides.
To peers stepping up, I sum it up in three principles: prefer a verifiable short cadence to a perfect plan, document the decision the moment the meeting ends, and pick the framework by context (Scrum when uncertainty dominates, Kanban when the flow is known, SAFe when cross-team dependencies are heavy), never by habit.
My evolution in this skill
Project piloting is what lets me hold a portfolio of 5 to 10 concurrent initiatives in the next CTO role. It turns strategy into a prioritized backlog, guarantees the delivery of board commitments, and authorizes contractual commerce (milestones + SLAs). Without it, strategy stays theoretical and leadership loses its ability to measure team impact.
At 18 months, the observable goal is to pilot 8 to 10 concurrent initiatives with a stable quarterly cadence, an on-date delivery rate >= 80%, and an active risk register actually used by sponsors. The Senior-to-Senior+ shift is less about the operator gesture and more about the LPM coach posture: delegate the run, animate the portfolio.
Annual rereading of the SAFe Lean Portfolio Management materials, systematic Liberating Structures practice for facilitation. MBA Strategic Project Management active until 2025. Monthly CTO Craft cohort for the cross-organizational angle.
SAFe Agilist (SA) or Lean Portfolio Manager certification targeted in 2026, triggered by the target context (regulated industry vs. SaaS scale-up). Product impact measurement training (Reforge Product Strategy or Pendo) planned 2027.
Quarterly personal review of my own delivery cadence, annual rereads of Measure What Matters (Doerr) and Accelerate (Forsgren), continuous follow of Marty Cagan and Lenny's Newsletter. Per-project lessons-learned journal. wins, misses, recurring patterns.
