Project Manager/ Remote(Denver, CO), 6+ Months Contract

Project Manager

Location: Remote Duration: 6+ Months Remote Role, Candidate Must Be Local to CO

General Requirements Summary

• A minimum of 4 years as primary project manager.
• A minimum of 3 years of business analyst experience.
• Experience and success in managing projects of all sizes
• 3+ years of experience in testing, writing test cases and general quality assurance knowledge
• Experience writing SQL queries and/or using TOAD
• In-depth knowledge generating process documentation
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills including technical writing skills
• Ability to form strong relationships with all stakeholders to facilitate transparent and frequent communication
• Ability to create cohesive supportive project teams
• Strong collaboration skills
• Detailed analytical and problem-solving abilities
• Experienced in systems analysis and process engineering/re-engineering
• Ability to build presentations and to present
• Ability to co-exist in a standard office environment
• The ability to pass a background check
• Preferred: Experience working in the public sector.
• Preferred: Experience working within the education sector

General Requirements

• The Contractor shall coordinate and prioritize all work to ensure that all deliverables and deadlines are met.
• The Contractor shall employ an internal quality control process to ensure that all deliverables are complete, accurate, easy to understand, and of high quality.
• The Contractor shall provide deliverables that, at a minimum, are responsive to the specific requirements, organized into a logical order, contain no spelling or grammatical errors, formatted uniformly, and contain accurate information and correct calculations.
• Contractor shall submit each deliverable to the Supervisor of the Project Management Office for review and approval.
• The Contractor shall retain all work papers generated for reference through the duration of the project and project acceptance.
• The Contractor shall participate in the review and revision process, until the Department provides written acceptance of a deliverable.
• The Contractor shall provide copies of any supporting documentation to the Department upon request of the Department and without charge.
• The Contractor shall respond to all telephone calls, voice mails and e-mail inquiries from the Department within one (1) business day.
• The Contractor shall enable all Contractor staff to exchange documents and electronic files with the Department staff in formats compatible with the Department's systems. The Department currently uses Microsoft Office 365 for PC.
• Contractor shall perform all work in accordance with all applicable federal and state statutes, regulations, and rules, as now and hereafter amended.
• Contractor may be privy to internal Department policy discussions, contractual issues, financial information, or other confidential Department information. Contractor shall also treat any such information as confidential.
• All work shall meet Department-approved format and content requirements.
• Contractor shall have and maintain all hardware, software, and interfaces necessary to access the Department's systems without requiring any modification to the Department's systems. Contractor shall follow all Department policies, processes, and procedures necessary to gain access to the Department's systems.

Project Requirements

• The partnership of this contractor and a CDE employee will allow the employee to also learn about the new MS Azure cloud environment. This individual and the CDE employee will determine which tasks each will perform based on the timing, availability, and the specific task. This will facilitate the learning of the employees on the ESSER projects as well and will reduce time to transition work to employees.

• This position administratively reports to the Project Management Supervisor. On a day-to-day basis, this position will work most closely with CDE's Data Services Unit employees, Application Development teams, Data Warehouse teams as well as other business unit customers of IMS. This position may also interface externally with districts and other organizations as necessary to ensure successful project delivery.
• The individual in this role, is expected to become the subject matter expert (SME) for each project to which they are assigned. The individual in this role may serve as BA, PM, QA tester as well as a leader, a coach, and a product owner throughout the project lifecycle. They become the senior authority in their area of expertise. They may be asked to attend and speak in depth to any audience. This individual is the go-to person for project summary and details for senior and executive decision making. They are expected to provide options, recommendations, risks, and benefits when consulted. Many of their projects have the potential for enterprise-wide impact.

• This position will work closely with all levels: executives, managers, and individual contributors. In this role, He/she must lead without direct authority over the members of project teams and must be comfortable facilitating meetings. He/she must have the ability to prepare and present information about projects and processes to all levels. Additionally, with all levels, he/she will need to negotiate deadlines and provide status updates. Diplomacy and professionalism are critical to the success of this role.

Business Analysis

Gather requirements using interviews, document analysis, requirements workshop, surveys, business process descriptions, use case development and scenarios, business analysis tasks, and workflow analysis. Listen to users and be able to represent their needs; keeping groups focused and making good recommendations

• Assess the viability of each (non-legislated) project. Develop high level requirements and recommendations for executive approval
• Evaluate, document and present options for satisfying all project requests
• Gather business requirements from all business units, using clear and concise language. Document business functions, process flows and maintain current documentation of detailed workflow diagrams, narratives, and intersections between the various user groups.
• Translate business and/or functional requirements into technical, system, and reporting requirements as needed
• Identify business trends utilizing real or representative data, compile analysis reports and deliver to the technical leadership team
• Consider and implement process changes where needed within IMS and make process improvement recommendations as appropriate for broader solution design

• Report on common sources of business and technical issues or questions and make recommendations for improvement. Be on the lookout for ways to improve, Client issues, and deliver better value to the customer
• Invest time into understanding education data, work with CDE business units to become familiar with the appropriate and legislated usage of student and educator data.
• Lead data modeling design sessions to assist with accurately defining requirements defined by the business users
• Create direct channels of communication to data warehouse and application developers that get the job done with minimal managerial interjection
• Own and develop relationships with stakeholders, working with them to optimize and enhance the outcomes
• Be able to work within different types of Software Development Lifecycle Methodologies, agile and waterfall, understanding that the majority of CDE's products are focused heavily on data. Reporting of data is key to our operations, so facilitating requirements generation and documentation in a very fast and "real-time" manner is expected.
• Analyze functional specs and design documents and work directly with sponsors, customer stakeholders, project managers, developers, and end-user groups to ensure software functionality and technical design requirements are met. Ensure the level of documentation is appropriate for the need, i.e., on longer software development projects, more documentation is appropriate. For reporting projects, scaled down documentation is necessary, while ensuring the key elements are documented while maintaining repeatability and consistency. This individual will need to know when and how to scale project documentation or artifacts based on project size, complexity and sometimes visibility.
• Develop comprehensive business and technical requirements suitable for the audience (technical/business).

Project Management

Provide project management support for projects as needed. This includes support through the entire life cycle of the project. Including processes and artifacts as needed by the project. Act as liaison between the IMS technical team and business unit subject matter experts, bridging the gap between technology and business language.

• Some projects are too small and do not need a project manager. Work with the development teams to determine if a project does not need the attention of a project manager.
• Implement a comprehensive management plan for designated projects and hold regular stakeholder meetings to keep all interested parties updated on project progress
• May also serve as BA, project manager, QA tester for projects.
• Serve as product owner in the absence of a customer product owner. Coach the customers to serve in a product owner role as needed