Mainframe Project Manager

Contract Project Manager Job Specification:
The Project Manager's role is to initiate, plan, execute, control and close projects according to the established Project Management Methodology. This will ensure project meets or exceeds timeline, budget, and quality expectations, including requesting resources and coordinating the efforts of departmental staff and third-party contractors or consultants to deliver projects according to plan. The Project Manager will work with County Directors and/or Department Heads and stakeholders to define the project's objectives and oversee quality control throughout its life cycle. The successful candidate will be one who utilizes leadership skills, sound judgment, and discretion to positively influence project teams and overall project success. Responsibilities are described below and may be dependent on the specific assignment. The Project Manager will be responsible for leading an enterprise multi-disciplinary team, assigning individual responsibilities, enforcing accountability, developing and maintaining a schedule and timeline to ensure timely completion of the project; Maintain industry standard project management documentation, agile methodology and metrics to ensure project meets service delivery expectations; Work directly with internal and external project stakeholders & SME's to document workflow and process to deliver successful implementation while managing project scope. The Project Manager will also work to define the resource roles, objectives and provide oversight throughout the project's life cycle. The successful candidate is highly organized, communicates well, utilizes leadership skills, sound judgment, and discretion to positively influence project teams and overall project success.
The successful candidate will play a primary role in following expert areas of Project Management:
• Communication: Ability to relate and communicate positively, effectively, and professionally with project stakeholders at all levels. Ability to establish an effective communication plan through various communication channels and project correspondence (project plan, presentations, project status, reports as required).
• Project Planning: Execute the tasks as defined in the project plan in order to achieve the project goals.
• Project Performance Monitoring: Measure project performance using appropriate tools and techniques to monitor the progress of the project, identify and quantify variances, perform required corrective actions as appropriate.
• Change Management: Manage changes to the project scope, schedule, and costs using appropriate verification techniques to keep the project plan accurate, updated, and reflective of authorized changes as defined in the change management plan; facilitate customer acceptance. Ability to make course corrections when necessary using structured and well-defined change management protocols and change control procedures.
• Setting Expectations: Ensure a common understanding by setting expectations regarding the project plan to align the stakeholders and team members. Implement approved actions and workarounds to mitigate project risks in order to minimize the impact on the project.
• Client and Vendor Relationship: Establishes and maintains client and vendor relationships.
• Resource Allocation: Manage resource allocation proactively by ensuring that appropriate resources and tools are assigned according to the project plan.
• Methodology: Champions best practices and methodologies to establish a solid foundation on how to execute the project. Ability to apply development methodologies such as Agile, Waterfall or Hybrid as well as managed services best practices to ensure compliance and security across operations. This includes endpoint security, network security, cloud security and policy management.
• Contract Management: Formalize and facilitate closing final acceptance for the project from the sponsor/customer by ensuring that the delivered product(s) and services comply with the agreed deliverables lists, scope, and any organizational procedures from all parties involved.
• Risk Management: Proactively assess, identify and communicate project risks and come up with a mitigation plan of action.
• Customer Satisfaction: Measure customer satisfaction at the end of the project by capturing customer feedback using appropriate techniques to gain, maintain, and improve customer long-term relationships.
• Knowledge Base: Contributes to knowledge through activities such as sharing documented lessons learned, documented deliverables, and facilitation on trainings, discovery and working sessions.
• Customer Service: Understands quality customer service standards for own work and monitors and manages work of team members, providing feedback as appropriate. Ability to follow direction and recommend process improvements throughout the course of the project.
• Motivation: Engages and motivates others in the attainment of the project's vision. Influences others by enthusiastically sharing the future vision as a means for them to attain their goals. Ability to establish commitment among team members on project milestones. Celebrates, either formally or informally, the accomplishment of goals.
• Scope Management: Gather requirements, identify, document & manage scope.

Experience and Education: Required:
• 5-8+ years proven project management experience including scope and requirements definition, problem solving and process improvements, leading modernization efforts from mainframe to new tech platforms.
• Proficiency with MS Project, MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Visio
• 5+ years' experience utilizing Software Development methodologies such as Agile, Waterfall or Hybrid as well as managed services support structure and best practices.
• Ability to recognize personal skills, abilities, limitations and strengths, taking appropriate action to pursue developmental activities to strengthen skills and experience. • Ability to work in a fast-paced environment and to adapt to frequent change.
• Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Strong communication, organizational, analytical, problem-solving and interpersonal skills that promote teamwork and collaboration.
• Ability to advocate a creative atmosphere, facilitates productive meetings, and envisions a final product and user adoption early in the design and/or development process.
• Ability to develop cooperative relationships to achieve results through a win-win relationship.
• Ability to establish alliances with other departments and organizations by recognizing dependencies.
• Awareness of cultural diversity and can embrace and capitalize those differences; applies knowledge in decisionmaking process.
• Ability to identify project risks by defining risk strategies and developing the risk management plan.
• Participates as part of a team, understanding the various work styles of others and their roles on the team. Demonstrates enthusiasm and commitment to the goals and objectives of the team. Seeks help from other team members as appropriate.

Highly Preferred:
• Bachelor's degree in Business Administration, Computer Science, or related field.
• PMP or Scrum equivalent certification.
• Previous functional/technical government program experience either as an internal consultant or with a consulting/software organization
• Previous project management, and public sector program administration and/or implementation experience in a government setting.
• Previous experience working in a government setting managing multiple projects comprising of an enterprise effort related to retiring legacy applications with a focus on modernization using Microsoft technologies

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