Head of Portfolio and Project Management Practice

Head of Portfolio and Project Management Practice

Role

Responsible for both the Project Management and Portfolio team you will lead a ‘project delivery centre of excellence’, delivering great outcomes through effective project management. Not only will you be responsible for setting high standards and coaching to ensure things are done well, but also manage the governance process, ensuring we do the right projects in the right order.

Accountabilities

• Responsible for the creation and ongoing leadership of the Project Management Practice and Portfolio Team.

• Responsible for the creation and ongoing development of the following deliverables used by all project delivery roles. These will be developed by the Practice and based on the requirements of the Portfolio Office, Heads of Function

• Standards

• Ways of workings

• Skills map of practice members and training needs analysis

• People learning development plans

• Ensure alignment of the investment portfolio with business strategy & objectives and with emerging IT and digital opportunities. Assess ‘investability’ (objectively and independently) and make investment priority recommendations to maximise value for the TP Group taking into account cross-project dependencies and impacts to enable great business outcome.

• Responsible for maintaining robust relationships with all key stakeholders: eg. Heads of Function, Delivery Managers in order to support the practice members in the delivery of best practices and standards. 

• Ensures that the requirements are understood and solutions are reflected in a balanced investment portfolio. Negotiates at a senior level on trade offs between requesting business’ requirements and what’s right for the Group.

• Analyse, recommend and implement corrective action by engaging and influencing senior management. Supports and challenges delivery, highlights issues.

• On the job coaching, support and guidance for Project Managers who have struggling projects or who are stepping up in project complexity. (This can include taking over the project to get it back on track)

• Support for End to End teams in the resource management of Project managers and Coordinators to facilitate the development of Project management skills within Group IT.

• Will be responsible to organise the practice with the capability and resources required to support the number of projects required in line with the GTS/Business roadmap.

What are we looking for?

• Recognised PMO (eg P3O) and project qualifications encompassing both Waterfall and Agile methodologies

• Experience in managing a project portfolio in a large, complex enterprise

• Significant Project Management experience 

• Significant experience of leading and coaching a Project team 

• Working in a complex organisation with multiple senior stakeholders

• Experience of Professional Practices

• Coaching, Mentoring and Developing People

• Excellent people management and influencing/communication skills;

• Planning at project, programme and portfolio level

Preferred

• Managing Successful Programmes or equivalent

• Management of Risk or equivalent

• Extensive experience of programme and project delivery would be a distinct advantage;

• Change management experience would be an advantage.

• Broad appreciation of Programme and Project  Management & Quality Assurance

• Portfolio Management

• IT project management

• PPM Tools (PlanView)

If you think this role suits you and you're up for the challenge, please apply as we would love to hear from you!