Senior Project Manager Job Detailed Description

Senior Project Manager
 
PURPOSE:  The Senior Project Manager (SPjM) is responsible for planning, scheduling, and tracking of multiple projects in McGraw Hill’'s Digital Platform Group (DPG).  These projects may be related and/or part of a larger program of projects.  This role will partner with engineering and technical product management to provide leadership in delivering innovative digital solutions to our customers. This role will lead one or more teams, consisting of cross-functional agile teams or site-reliability engineering teams. This position will not only focus on the planning, communication and coordination of projects but also beyond the end date to the transitional and operational elements. In addition, this role will lead release management for McGraw Hill’s Connect platform. This position requires a technical understanding of the software development lifecycle and software infrastructure.
 
ESSENTIAL ACCOUNTABILITIES: 

Essential Accountability	Percent of Time
Chief promise keeper for projects keeping an end to end perspective for the teams.  Ultimately responsible for delivery of projects by driving commitments to completion on time, on budget, and on quality.	20%
Champion agile methodologies throughout the development process and adherence to the DPG SDLC - this will include being Scrummaster to one or more agile or site reliability teams, and/or scrum of scrums across multiple teams.	20%
Ensures projects do not start without proper initiation according to the DPG SDLC including roadmap prioritization, documented charter, and dependency identification.  Clearly understand how projects fit into the programs and platform they are a part of.	10%
Own and manage communication plan across projects, which may span multiple internal and external teams. Track key decisions in decision log to ensure visibility and traceability to key decisions made.  Proactively removes impediments to ensure successful delivery of team commitments.  Owns and drives issue resolution and risk mitigation.	15%
Responsible for coordinating the successful release of team projects including documented release plan, detailed deployment plans, and production support plans.	10%
Manage major and point releases across the Connect platform teams. Includes coordinating across multiple teams to track that software is tested and ready to be released, managing communications before and during the release, communicating and coordinating with the business to sign off on the release.	25%

 
OTHER REQUIRED ACCOUNTABILITIES:

• Facilitator of efficient meetings and follow up
• Open and clear style of communication to foster flow of ideas and build consensus across the project
• Cross-disciplinary understanding of software development, site-reliability engineering, product management, and quality engineering. Understanding of the software development lifecycle.
• Accurate reporting on project status and project updates using the DPG tools and processes.  Understands tools needed for both project and program management and that data is properly and timely updated (e.g. decision log, issues log, risk log, JIRA, Confluence, Slack, etc.)

 
KNOWLEDGE & EXPERIENCE: 

• Bachelor's degree in Business, Information Technology, Computer Science, Education or related field preferred. 
• In depth knowledge of software development and adoption, ideally in Ed Tech
• Project Management experience required demonstrated by 5-7 years as Project Manager.  Exposure to agile project management environment is required.  Scrummaster experience is required.
• Certified Scrum Master (CSM) certification is a plus
• PMI Agile Certified Practioner (PMI-ACP) certification is a plus
• Scaled Agile experience is a plus.
• Project Management Professional (PMP) certification is a plus
• Self-motivated and well-organized; able to prioritize tasks and work well under pressure.
• Demonstrated skills in leadership, negotiation, conflict management, communications, organizational and critical thinking
• Experience in consulting working with business partners, external vendors utilizing both traditional and rapid/lightweight project management is desired
• Ability to travel up to 15% 

 
COMPLEXITY: 

• Be able to work with cross-functional teams in an agile software development environment.
• Be acutely aware of cross-project and cross-team interdependencies and communicate accordingly to expose potential risks and escalate issues across impacted projects and teams
• Be able to lead disbursed team members across offices/time-zones
• Be able to adapt to changes in business opportunities and business priorities
• Be able to manage discussions to set project expectations and project priorities
• Be able to own and drive issues and risks to resolution/mitigation
• Be able to proactively remove impediments to ensure successful delivery of team commitment