Bilal Iqbal

Bilal has been involved with IT since the late 1990s. He started out with computers as a hobby and managed a DOS-based community bulletin board service (BBS) back in 1998. He then hosted his own Multiuser Object Oriented (MOO) system, text-based virtual reality chat rooms, over the internet. During this period, he worked on various platforms including DOS, Windows, and Linux. He also pursued several technical certifications from Microsoft, Cisco, CIW, and CompTIA to enhance and broaden his knowledge of information technology. Bilal also held the Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) designation from 2001 to 2007 before giving it up to pursue other interests.

While pursuing his Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering, Bilal realized the importance of strategically planning, managing, and executing the activities both in daily life and professional settings. This further refined his career goals, and his focus shifted towards the management aspects in a technical environment. This also resulted in the move from pursuing a pure engineering degree to a combined engineering and management degree.

It was only in 2002 that Bilal attended a seminar hosted by one of the local Project Management Institute (PMI) chapters. This was an introductory seminar on project management which challenged the traditional view of managing large pieces of work. Upon further exploration, Bilal realized the true potential of project management and aggressively pursued further learning in this field. He went on to exploit numerous learning opportunities and gained extensive hands-on experience in project management through various work engagements. Bilal was fascinated to discover Agile delivery methods in 2006 and has since been heavily involved in implementing and advocating Agile practices and methodologies to deliver the right product/service at the right time.

Bilal also gravitated towards leading process improvement initiatives due to his keen interest in maximizing efficiencies within the organization by eliminating overhead and minimizing operational costs. Consequently, Bilal acquired skills and experience in Lean Six Sigma, Rummler-Brache, and Kaizen methodologies to complement his project management background. It was, however, Organizational Change Management that truly rounded off Bilal’s specialized skill set in project management and process improvement. Over the years, Bilal found that a majority of projects and initiatives lack the ‘sticky’ factor, leading to a lack of adoption or high levels of resistance. It was through this discovery that he truly understood the people-side of product and process changes being implemented. This led him to study and adopt some of the best practices in change management, as laid out in Kotter’s Change Model, Prosci Change Methodology, and Lean Change.