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Technical Project Portfolio Manager

Western Governors Universityposted about 2 months ago

$127,700 - $191,500/Yr

Full-time • Mid Level

About the position

If you’re passionate about building a better future for individuals, communities, and our country—and you’re committed to working hard to play your part in building that future—consider WGU as the next step in your career. Driven by a mission to expand access to higher education through online, competency-based degree programs, WGU is also committed to being a great place to work for a diverse workforce of student-focused professionals. The university has pioneered a new way to learn in the 21st century, one that has received praise from academic, industry, government, and media leaders. Whatever your role, working for WGU gives you a part to play in helping students graduate, creating a better tomorrow for themselves and their families. The salary range for this position takes into account the wide range of factors that are considered in making compensation decisions including but not limited to skill sets; experience and training; licensure and certifications; and other business and organizational needs. At WGU, it is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top of the range for their position, and compensation decisions are dependent on the facts and circumstances of each case. A reasonable estimate of the current range is: Pay Range: $127,700.00 - $191,500.00.

Responsibilities

Maintain Strategic Alignment: Works collaboratively with Enterprise portfolio management and business peers to maintain the strategic IT project portfolio alignment with Business and Ed Tech strategy.
Manage the investment portfolio and ensure that all planned investments are aligned with the business and Ed Tech stakeholders and have executive stakeholder commitment.
Continuously evaluate, prioritize, and optimize IT investment portfolio based on strategic value, business needs, cost/benefits, and critical risks across all product domains.
Ensure that Investment evaluation process meets investment standards and criteria and has the proper authorization level.
Continuously review the project investment portfolio to identify and exploit synergies, eliminate duplication across all domains and between individual programs.
Review and assess strategic project initiation deliverables such as business cases and strategic justification and risk.
Manage resources to support demand and ensure that the 'solution teams' efforts are properly scheduled and staffed.
Organize and direct the 'solution team' and third-party providers in the planning, development, implementation, and operations support of systems to support the assigned portfolio in alignment with the Ed Tech Roadmap.
Provide guidance, validation, and context to teams to assist with alignment to end state goals.
Manage communication and coordination with technology governance body to ensure alignment of project components to organizational strategic objectives.
Coordinate with leadership on the definition of strategic objectives to define portfolio objectives.
Provide recommendations to leadership based on project metrics for prioritization and ongoing optimization of the project portfolio.
Perform other related duties as assigned.
Integrated Planning, Process and Systems Management: Schedule programs and projects that best support the strategic vision.
Support Program and Product Management teams with the scheduling of projects based on financial and strategic justifications.
Support and coach Project Teams to ensure cohesive flow and dependency management.
Oversee the identification of direct and indirect dependencies.
Ensure risks, issues, and impediments are resolved in a timely manner by overseeing the Executive Action Team meetings.
Update and maintain the integrated portfolio roadmap based on latest changes on project and program level.
Facilitate integrated planning sessions across domains.
Communicate a multi-layered portfolio plan.
Coordinate with Leadership, Project Managers, vendors, and Business Consultants to allocate resources to areas within the portfolio in need of most improvement.
Balance the resources across projects and operating units to optimize benefits delivery to the business.
Manage project/request intake and tracking, governance and facilitate priority setting.
Coordinate with leadership to support project planning, scheduling, demand, and capacity management.
Provide oversight and product management of PPM tool.
Provide recommendations on resource allocation and manage coordination between resource managers.
Monitor and Report on Project Portfolio: Analyze and report on the performance of the project portfolio and individual programs throughout the entire lifecycle.
Continuously monitor and track the full IT project portfolio, its progress and performance.
Capture and report on the impact of portfolio against strategic goals and percentage of deviations from the portfolio plan.
Track and mitigate critical and portfolio-wide risks and issues and escalate to the appropriate Ed Tech leadership meetings.
Monitor overall risk profile of project portfolio.
Coordinate critical project interdependencies to safeguard the coherent and integrated definition, planning and delivery of the portfolio.
Provide senior Ed Tech and business leadership with accurate view of the project/investment portfolio based on appropriate performance targets.
Ensure life cycle assessment for selected portfolio components occurs.
Enable senior management to make rapid and informed decisions on the project portfolio.
Coordinate with project and program managers on the execution of components within a portfolio.
Coordinate with Enterprise Change Management office on the implementation impact of portfolio components.
Manage and implement continuous improvement opportunities for the project intake, prioritization, and reporting process.
Perform other related duties as assigned.
Quality Assurance: Ensure delivery across the project portfolio that is in line with quality standards.
Identify projects that require independent quality assurance.
Facilitate stage-gates for strategic high-risk projects in the portfolio.
Develop portfolio quality assurance framework, standards, and tooling.
Support the delivery of project quality assurance.
Ensure all high-risk projects have sufficient quality assurance to avoid disruptive deviations.
Monitor Benefits Achievement: Report on actual benefits realization based on the approval business case.
Initiate the process to monitor actual benefit realization in the business after project implementation.
Evaluate if business benefits significantly deviate from expected benefits, escalate issues to the appropriate party and implement lessons learned in the portfolio prioritization process.
Monitor percent of investments where realized benefits have been measured and compared to business case.

Requirements

5+ years of related experience with a bachelor’s degree, or 3+ years and a master’s degree, or equivalent combination of education and experience.
3+ years of experience with product and software development teams.
3+ years of experience in operations management with a strong focus on financial objectives and budget alignment.
Relevant certifications, or similar: Project Management qualification (PMP), Scrum Master Certification, Prosci Change Management Certified Change Practitioner.
Progressive product management experience.
Professional experience in strategic planning, resource management, and risk management.
Deep knowledge and understanding of the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC).
Proficiency in project management software tools or experience with modern PPM tools such as Planview, JIRA, etc.
Resource management experience in a matrixed organization.