Senior IT Project Manager

Initiative Director

The individual in this role is responsible for directing and coordinating major initiatives across technical, application, and business teams. This position involves managing all aspects of an initiative, ensuring that the appropriate phases are defined, and interdepartmental deliverables are coordinated. The role provides leadership, guidance, and support to teams, coaching them toward success while navigating the complexities of delivering software in a large, cross-functional environment. The individual helps assure value delivery and drives continuous improvement while managing and providing updates on the timing and expectations of the initiative.

Required Qualifications

• Four-year college degree or equivalent experience
• 6 years of successful project management experience
• 3 years of experience with information systems
• Experience successfully managing multiple initiatives simultaneously
• Experience managing projects using different approaches, software tools, and techniques (e.g., Waterfall, Agile, Blended, etc.)
• Proven problem management, arbitration, negotiation, and issue resolution skills
• Strong understanding and usage of agile fundamentals including scrum, sprint cadence, team roles, story definition, and story point estimation
• Demonstrated verbal and written communication skills
• Thorough knowledge of agile and project management software tools and techniques
• Proven presentation skills
• Proven ability to organize, lead, and influence the activity and performance of IT within the organization
• Promotes effective team collaboration among team sponsors, stakeholders, and end users to meet the goals and objectives of initiatives
• High comfortability with communicating directly to and with audiences at multiple levels
• Ability to simplify difficult concepts at a level appropriate to the audience, and to stay flexible and adjust the message if the message is not being received as intended
• Comfortable with questioning prioritization as issues arise and arranging priority discussions to resolve them

Position Responsibilities

• Manages and coordinates major initiatives across technical, application, and business teams, developing and maintaining project documentation, charters, work plans, and deliverables
• Identifies the scope, goals, dependencies, and critical success factors in consultation with business and IT sponsors
• May consult with business sponsors, stakeholders, and subject matter experts to guide business analysis and requirements documentation
• Assesses, plans, and implements mitigation strategies for identified risks and roadblocks; proactively escalating issues and devising contingency plans
• Maintains budget, scope, and timing, communicating status on milestones and deliverables, addressing performance issues within the team, helping the team remove impediments, and escalating when milestones are jeopardized
• Coordinates and communicates plans and activities across teams and stakeholders as appropriate to ensure a coordinated work effort and a cohesive team approach
• Seeks to deeply understand problems, evaluating and examining alternatives
• Conducts post-mortems and lessons learned
• Ensures resolution of outstanding issues and creates and maintains mitigation plans for risks
• Analyzes stakeholder views, managing upstream/downstream dependencies and identifying organizational change management needs
• Offers coaching, consultation, and mentoring to initiative team members, solving issues, and presenting solutions
• Supports product strategies and roadmaps
• Develops team members through coaching and by fostering a positive work environment
• Provides regular and open communication for transparency and awareness of progress and impediments
• Tracks metrics as needed
• Performs other duties as assigned to accomplish organization goals and objectives