Description
Role:
3 à 4 day at the office in Gent! (Belgium)
Language: English
Plans and manages project activities on European scale to ensure that goals and objectives of projects are accomplished within the approved baseline of scope, time and budget.
These projects can be both software development projects and infrastructure implementation projects.
Main Responsibilities:
- Has overall responsibility for planning, directing and coordinating activities pertaining to technology and business projects for a given business unit.
- Is responsible for managing the international team that implements the projects during the different phases of the project life cycle.
- Manages a dynamic team of individuals who constantly search for creative ways to elevate the capabilities of technology systems to meet business needs, partly by capitalizing on emerging technologies and partly by adapting technologies to the needs of the customer.
- Manage internal and external systems/application development projects within assigned areas from inception to successful implementation.
- Responsible for managing project stakeholders, scope, cost, schedule, procurement, risk, communication and quality (see below for more detailed description).
Stakeholder management
- Stakeholder mapping and management across the impacted business organizations and other involved internal/external parties within scope of the project.
- Keep close, direct contact with key end-user representatives to ensure technologies are providing valuable information-sharing capabilities to customers.
- Work closely with end users, business technologists and others to understand and prioritize business goals and information needs.
Scope management
- Ensures that project goals are accomplished and in line with business objectives, scope and level of effort
- Manage the project scope by applying the prescribed Change Management process.
Coordinate and respond to requests for changes from original specifications. - Review project proposals or plans to determine time frame, funding limitations, procedures for accomplishing projects, staffing requirements and allotment of available departmental resources to various project phases.
Cost management
- Estimate workload based on the scope and activities defined in the Work Breakdown Structure.
- Monitor the budget using Earned Value Management Technique.
- Define actions when applicable to stay within the approved cost baseline.
Schedule management
- Develop project strategies and plans, and identify the methods and tools required for the project.
- Establish work plan and staffing for each phase of projects and arrange for recruitment or assignment of project personnel.
- Responsible for assembling project plans and teamwork assignments, directing and monitoring work efforts on a daily base, performing quality review; and escalating functional, quality, timeline issues appropriately. Monitor progress against plan.
- Identify and schedule project deliverables, milestones and required tasks.
- Confer with project staff to outline work plan.
- Assign duties, responsibilities and scope of authority to project personnel.
- Direct and coordinate activities of project personnel to ensure project progresses on schedule and within budget.
Procurement management
- Coordinate the procurement activities to define the Procurement Management Plan.
- Conduct Procurement to make the appropriate decision on vendor and/or solution.
- Execute Control Procurement activities to assess whether vendor is delivering according to contract terms and conditions.
Risk management
- Perform risk management in order to minimize their impact on the project through risk identification, mitigation and control.
Communication management
- Develop communication plan defining the communication strategy with the different stakeholders.
- Review status reports prepared by project personnel and modify schedules or plans as required.
- Confer with project personnel to provide technical advice and to resolve problems.
- Get projects off the ground, and resolve issues with customers.
Quality management
- Develop quality assurance test plans.
- Direct quality assurance testing.
- Provide leadership and motivation to project team members throughout the project life cycle.
- Lead the effort in creative approaches to problem solving and quality deliverables supporting business needs.
- Ensure easy access to information that is useful to users.
- Understands how to leverage applications for competitive advantage
KPI's
- Projects delivered on committed date
- Projects delivered within budget
- Projects delivered according to scope and (functional and non-functional) requirements
- Projects with formal release approval/cancelled prior to implementation
- Projects that adhere to a common/standardized delivery methodology and defined estimating model and have agreed project/quality/risk plans
- Time allocation (Project Mgt/Analyze/Design/Build/Test/Deploy; Direct/Value-add/Administrative)
Qualifications, skills and experience required:
Mandatory
- Track project performance by analysing KPI's related to time and budget using Earned Value Management technique.
- Monitors project activities, ensuring the accuracy, quality, and integrity of the information, while providing consistency in content and "look and feel" across the enterprise. Assures this is aligned with the PMO expectations and requirements.
- Assures requirements are met as put forward by the PMO regarding project management and methodologies, gates, documentation, reporting, ...
- Responsible for overall coordination, status reporting and stability of project-oriented work efforts.
- Prepare project reports for management, clients or others.
- Coordinate project activities with activities of business units.
- Solid understanding of the software development process, including requirement gathering, analysis/design, development tools/technologies, release/version control, contemporary testing methodologies and deployment management
- Strong analysis, design and implementation experience with technologies
- Verbal and written communication skills; expertise in setting and managing customer expectations
- Strong customer focus and ability to manage client expectations
- Ability to communicate needs and schedules to IT and clients, as well as ensure that plans are in place and standards are adhered to
- Solid project management skills with ability to multitask and manage multiple small to large projects in a cross-functional environment
- Demonstrated ability to lead and motivate staff and to apply skills and techniques to solve dynamic problems (Conflict management).
- Ability to present and explain technical information in a way that establishes rapport, persuades others and gains understanding
- Strong teamwork and interpersonal skills at all management levels.
- Ability to travel to meet different stakeholders.
Desirable
- Solid understanding of current technologies, including Web enterprise Servers, Java, JavaScript, HTML, Unix, Perl, TCP/IP, SQL, Oracle, various Web tools and Common Gateway Interface (CGI), as well as exposure to three-tier Client Server development.
- Technical proficiency in hardware and systems software, as well as experience implementing packages and working with vendors