Expert Agile Project Manager

Responsibilities:

Reporting to the IT PMO Director, the Agile Project Manager is responsible for ensuring that the projects are executed in line with all contractual obligations to the client in a professional, cost-effective and timely manner, ensuring that Finastra achieves (or improves upon) the planned financial return from the project; within this objective, you should give the client value for money.

The role of the Project Manager is to plan, execute, and finalize projects according to agreed deadlines and within the clients budget using Agile, Waterfall, or Hybrid methodologies. This includes coordinating resources and efforts of consultants and/or third-party contractors in order to deliver projects according to plan or apply strong change control management as required. The Project Manager will also define the projects objectives and oversee quality control throughout its life cycle. At all times establish and maintain good working relationships with the client, and reinforce the Finastra reputation. The Project Manager should be product agnostic, however, they may have specialties in certain business areas.

In a Scrum Master capacity, you will work with a broad set of team members focused on new product deployment into Cloud infrastructure, existing product support architecture, network operations, providing effective collaboration, facilitation, leadership and coaching skills supporting the agile development process and delivery of our applications. As an agile expert, you will be responsible for enforcing the agile tenets as interpreted by our team, removing impediments and promoting transparency.

This position requires commitment to exceptional results, a strong desire for continuous improvement and the ability to build a collaborative culture within our team. In this highly visible role, you will have significant interaction with product owners and regular contact with senior management. The individual will increase the teams efficiency, motivate, advocate for change that will ensure quality and timeliness.

Responsibilities & Deliverables:

Your deliverables will include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Produce and maintain project artifacts appropriate to the selected project methodology execute the project accordingly. Developing full-scale project plans and associated communications documents, as required.
• Establish effective and appropriate project governance for the project
• Manage the project staff and other resources assigned to the project.
• Report effectively on project progress, problems encountered and their solutions by means of a project status report and also ad-hoc reports as appropriate.
• Direct and manage project from beginning to end.
• Define project scope, goals and deliverables that support business goals in collaboration with senior management and stakeholders.
• Effectively communicate project expectations to team members and stakeholders in a timely and clear fashion.
• Liaise with project stakeholders on an ongoing basis
• Estimate the resources and participants needed to achieve project goals
• Identify and resolve issues and conflicts within the project team.
• Identify and manage project dependencies and critical path.
• Plan and schedule project timelines and milestones using appropriate tools.
• Track project milestones and deliverables.
• Control project financials thru an effective change control process and efficient resources management
• Proactively manage changes in project scope, working with the client and internal project teams.
• Ensure proper risk management by documenting all risks and ensuring effective mitigation strategy. Devise contingency plans as necessary.
• Coach, mentor, motivate and supervise project team members and contractors, and influence them to take positive action and accountability for their assigned work.
• Develop or enhance best practices and tools for project execution and management.
• Guide teams to a culture of focus, improving the organization of their work by mentoring them on how to use Scrum practices and adhere to Agile values to align with Finastras mission.
• Facilitate all standard Scrum/Agile cadence practices including Daily Stand Up, Sprint Planning, Release Planning, Sprint Retrospective, and Backlog refinement activities.
• Facilitating discussion, decision making and conflict resolution, assisting with internal and external communication with stakeholders, improving transparency, and federating information.
• Continually monitor progress of team members across department boundaries and provide support to engage employees to achieve goals
• Form partnerships across departments to streamline work processes and improve the speed at which the company can respond to and capitalize on opportunities
• Integrate technology into employee workflows to increase the speed and accuracy of changes to improve the results of these work processes, emphasizing continuous improvement
• Collaborate with other departments, individual contributors, and management to enhance communication and transparency.
• Identify roadblocks and guide the team to remove the impediments by challenging the status quo or right person to remove the impediment, escalate issues to expedite process correction

Required skills and experience:

• 5+ years of direct (recent) experience in a similar role
• PMP certification preferred
• PMI ACP certification desired
• Experience in implementation and support of complex enterprise systems
• Thorough understanding of project management methodologies and tools available
• Customer driven and have the ability to work within a team environment
• Strong organization and presentation skills
• English speaker
• Good skills and knowledge of servant leadership, facilitation, situational awareness, conflict resolution, continual improvement, empowerment, and increasing transparency.
• Ability to effectively communicate with a variety of people, such as engineers and non-technical coworkers
• Awareness and experience with widely successful Agile techniques: User Stories, ATDD, TDD, Continuous Integration, Continuous Testing, Paring, Automated Testing, Agile games.
• Self-starter with the ability to balance many tasks with changing priorities. Proven ability to handle a wide variety of tasks and successfully prioritize work
• Strong decision-making skills. Able to analyze different options and make a clear recommendation
• Excellent communication and mentoring skills, both written and verbal, and a passion for working in highly collaborative environments.
• Must be detail-oriented and able to work independently with minimal supervision
• Ability to quickly adapt to changing technologies and learn new skills
• A sense of ownership and pride in your performance and its impact on the companys success
• Critical thinker and excellent problem-solving skills

Education / Certifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field or equivalent work experience