Job Title: Senior Project ManagerJob Overview - Hybrid (but must reside in the Greater Houston Metropolitan Area)
The primary purpose of the Senior Project Manager role is to lead, oversee and ensure the successful delivery and management of single or multiple enterprise projects. The Senior Project Manager must do this within scope, to a certain quality, and within time and cost constraints. These factors may be clearly defined or may require dynamic change management to deliver business value. The Senior Project Manager will be responsible for the creation, organization, execution, and completion of specific projects. This includes managing relevant employees, setting deadlines, communicating with management about the state of the project, preparing reports for upper management regarding the status of the projects, ensuring projects stay on track and on budget, and adjusting, if necessary, to meet new requirements and scope changes.
Primary Responsibilities and Activities:
● Review project proposals or plans to determine a time frame, funding limitations, procedures for accomplishing projects, staffing requirements and the assignment of available departmental resources to various project phases.
● Identify and schedule project deliverables, milestones, and required activities and tasks.
● Provide leadership and motivation to project team members throughout the life cycle and confer with project staff to outline a work plan.
● Act as a coach to junior project managers, executives and others who need assistance and advice regarding project management practices.
● Establish a work plan and staffing for project activities, iterations, or phases, and arrange for recruitment or assignment of project personnel.
● Analyze project proposals to determine a time frame, funding limitations and appropriate processes for accomplishing projects.
● Review/approve the work plan of an external service provider or consultancy contracted to execute the project.
● Implement a project communication plan.
● Conduct risk assessment and mitigation.
● Monitor project activities, ensuring the currency, quality and integrity of information, while providing consistency in content and “look and feel” across the organization.
● Ensure that project goals are in line with business objectives.
● Ensure that project goals are achieved.
● Assign duties and responsibilities to project personnel and define the scope of their authority.
● Direct and coordinate the activities of project personnel to ensure projects progress on schedule and within budget.
● Review status reports prepared by project personnel and modify schedules or plans as required.
● Establish standards and procedures for project reporting and documentation.
● Benchmark project management performance continuously to identify the potential for improvements and increase capability in project and portfolio management.
● Manage the Relationship with the Client and all Stakeholders
● Analyze PMO policies regarding Customer Service and Efficiency recommending policy changes and process improvements as needed.
● Work onsite as needed (2-3 days in the office is required).
Primary Contacts:
● Project sponsor and key stakeholders.
● Project team/staff (including designated users or customers).
● Business Unit (BU) management and executives.
● Enterprise architects.
● Subject matter experts (such as in security or compliance).
● Infrastructure and operations staff.
● Cybersecurity.
● Business analysts.
● User/customer product owner.
● External service providers’ and consultancies’ project manager(s).
Job Requirements Education:
Bachelor’s degree in business information systems (IS), computer science or a related field, or equivalent IT experience. Program manager training and certification are desirable.
Certifications
● PMP Certification from the Project Management Institute or equivalent certification is desirable.
Experience
● Seven or more years of progressively responsible IT experience, with sensitivity and commitment to business problem-solving.
● Five years of successfully managing complex and risky projects.
● Five or more years of Business Unit or Business Unit-facing experience, with sensitivity and commitment to business problem-solving
● Experience in leading diverse teams.
● Experience and ability in using “soft skills” or “people skills”.
Knowledge and Skills
● Distinctive blend of business, IT, financial and communication skills. This blend is vital because this is a highly visible position with substantial impact.
● Ability to adapt to new circumstances in a changing business environment.
● Good understanding of current and emerging technologies, and of how other enterprises are using them to drive digital business.
● Knowledge of project management methodology and experience or familiarity with major, defined program management approaches (for example, that of the Project Management Institute or PRINCE2 and agile approaches).
● Significant knowledge of project planning/scheduling tools (for example, Microsoft Project and Open Workbench), with a solid track record of practical application.
● Exceptional verbal and written communication skills; expertise in setting and managing customer expectations.
● Effective influencing and negotiating skills in an environment in which this role may not directly control resources.
● Strong knowledge and understanding of business needs, with the ability to establish and maintain a high level of customer trust and confidence.
● Ability to support a tactical resource plan by mapping future demand to forecast project completions in the project portfolio.
Other Duties
● This Job Description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties, or responsibilities that are required of the employee for this position.
● Management may, at its discretion, assign or reassign duties and responsibilities to this job at any time.
Competencies/Key Behaviors
The job holder must usually demonstrate the competencies listed in Table 1 at a senior level.
Category Competency Key Behaviors
Organizational
Awareness ● Adaptability ● Business Process Knowledge ● Adapts to new circumstances (e.g., changes in the business or macroeconomic environment) ● Understands workflows and processes throughout the organization, including the people involved in the processes, their sequencing, and outputs of the processes.
Data Acumen ● Data Visualization ● Data Storytelling ● Data Literacy ● Applies data visualization techniques to communicate data through graphical representations ● Builds a narrative around a set of data to convey actionable findings from the analysis ● Identifies and navigates relevant datasets needed for reporting and analysis purposes
Cross-Functional
Collaboration ● Collaboration Opportunity Identification ● Consensus Building ● Meetings Facilitation ● Tactfulness ● Identifies areas/opportunities for collaboration within and across functions/business areas ● Brokers consensus among stakeholders with conflicting needs ● Facilitates value-added meetings with stakeholders ● Is tactful in contentious or politically sensitive situations
Decision-Making ● Responsiveness ● Persistence ● Pattern Recognition ● Proactively alerts team and/or manager when faced with unexpected roadblocks ● Makes progress when given unclear, contradictory or inconsistent information ● Identifies patterns and relationships in information to make decisions ● Makes rational judgments from the available information and analysis, and makes prompt, clear decisions that may involve tough choices or considered risks ● Takes responsibility for actions, projects and people, taking calculated risks rather than missing opportunities ● Takes initiative, acts with confidence and works under own direction, generating activity
● Learns how to use and apply different technologies quickly ● Adopts new technologies to become more personally efficient
Financial
Acumen ● Financial Foresight ● Organizational Financial Understanding ● Financial Accounting Knowledge ● Understands the impact of a decision on the business’ financial statements and financial well-being in the long term ● Understands the organization's sources of revenue and/or cost categories ● Understands core financial accounting concepts and metrics
Category Competency Key Behaviors
Process and Framework
Expertise ● Business Process Improvement ● Agile Expertise ● OCM Expertise ● Risk Expertise ● Reduces business process inefficiencies by applying appropriate frameworks (e.g., Lean, value stream mapping) ● Applies knowledge of agile and continuous delivery methodologies and frameworks in project, program and/or portfolio management work ● Applies guidance from common organizational change management frameworks (e.g., ADKAR, Kotter’s 8 Step Process for Leading Change) ● Applies guidance from common risk assessment and mitigation frameworks
Customer-Centricity ● Feedback Responsiveness ● Design Thinking ● Incorporates stakeholder and customer feedback to inform decision-making ● Applies design thinking methods to ensure customer needs and perspectives are addressed ● Devises solutions to meet customer requirements ● Incorporates end-user feedback appropriately to refine scope and address shortcomings throughout the life cycle
Growth Mindset ● Skills Diversification ● Openness to Feedback ● Seeks opportunities to diversify skills and experiences beyond current role and function/business area
Coaching and Motivation ● Coaching ● Team Incentivization ● Provides actionable feedback to improve team performance ● Motivates the team through work-based incentives
Additional Requirements
Applicants for this position will be subject to a criminal background check that includes being fingerprinted. This applies to any position with network access to Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) or access to an area where CJIS is received, maintained, or stored either manually or electronically (i.e., custodian, maintenance).
