The Director of Project Management, will represent the Project Management Office of the national Marketing and Communications team and will be responsible for maintaining the frameworks, policies, and procedures that enable our team members and external partners to successfully deliver projects. In this role, you will strive to standardize the execution of projects within an independently-owned portfolio of campaigns and projects, ensuring successful execution through effective facilitation, tracking, and capacity reporting. The Marketing and Communications team is made up of audience-focused cross-functional agile pods, containing designers, writers, and other roles, together with other specialist team members outside of the pod structure. This role requires someone who is skilled in both agile methodologies (e.g., SCRUM, Kanban etc.) and waterfall approaches to running projects, and has familiarity working on both creative and technical projects. In this role, you will bring order to complex situations and will effectively manage relationships within the organization- across functional teams and levels- to deliver the best work most efficiently. You will report to the Managing Director of Project Management and will work closely with a broad range of business partners across the organization.
Project Management Office
Your responsibilities will include, but are not limited to the following:
- Support the MD of Project Management in shaping and executing the PMO’s vision, frameworks, and tools used across the Marketing and Communications team
- Assess trends and conduct analysis to inform iterations and optimizations to PMO, systems, and frameworks
- Serve as the system administrator for the team’s project management platform, Workfront:
- Provide overall maintenance, including adding new users and deactivating old users
- Develop trainings to onboard new team members on best practices and techniques
- Manage portfolio and program organization based on agile pod structure
- Develop custom reporting to track team velocity and manage resource allocation
- Identify process pain points to ensure that all project management is effective and supported by our project management software, Workfront
Project Management Stewardship
- Serve as project manager for a portfolio of cross-functional initiatives and campaigns aligned to audience-centered pods
- Facilitate project progress meetings and collaboration between all departments - communicating and documenting project information though Workfront
- Groom and manage the backlog of work specific to your assigned cross-functional agile pod(s)
- Develop global project plans that meet organizational objectives and timeframes
- Create and maintain artifacts that support the plan, including: timelines, backlogs, milestones, project communication
- Manage resources efficiently by establishing a resource allocation plan across projects
- Establish communication methods that allow key contributors (i.e., designers, content producers, partners) to efficiently manage their workloads
- Assess the scope of projects, including the direct and indirect costs of completion
- Collaborate closely with IT on the technical implementation of projects
- Manage and communicate the status of active and pending projects to all stakeholders on a regular basis
- Manage issue escalation and resolution, including operating principles for when and how emergency projects get tackled
- Evaluate and mitigate risk and incorporate contingency planning
- Advanced proficiency with agile as well as waterfall project management methodologies
- 5 years of project management experience including digital projects required; account experience a plus
- Proven track record of managing and creating detailed project plans and successfully delivering project results across a diverse group of stakeholders
Work Demands
- Travel required approximately once per quarter
Skills
- Operates effectively, and with a sense of possibility, in a fast-paced, deadline-driven environment to drive results
- Ability to manage multiple projects concurrently and independently
- Ability to operate successfully through change and ambiguity
- Ability to build relationships and influence others to achieve outcomes
- Detailed knowledge of Excel, PowerPoint, Workfront, JIRA and MS Project (or other project management tool) highly preferred
- Extremely detail-oriented and organized
- Exceptional written and verbal communication and presentation skills; ability to bridge communication among technical and non-technical project staff and partners at all levels of the organization
- A passion for ensuring that kids growing up in low-income communities have the opportunity to get an excellent education