The purpose of the Project Manager role is to manage Technology selection and implementation projects within the Group Retail Programme taking projects from startup, through definition and delivery to early life support.
Key Responsibilities
Manage the definition, delivery, business acceptance, go live and handover to operational support of a number of Technology projects in parallel within the Group Retail Programme.
Define the objectives, scope, approach, solution and deliverables of an IT project or IT workstream within a business project. As appropriate determine if feasibility studies or solution options analysis are required to identify the best solution to meet the business needs.
Create plans for discovery, definition and solution selection stages that move at pace while ensuring solutions are selected / defined that are realistic to develop, deploy and rollout to international teams.
Estimate project costs including developing assumption-based costs models and seek approval for the project budget.
Organise, lead and motivate the project team to achieve the project goals and output the agreed management and specialist deliverables using the most appropriate project management methodology to best achieve the project goals.
Proactively drive the project forward, champion the sponsor’s ambitions and ensure the project team understand and buy in to the goals of the project.
Manage teams that include dedicated team members, competency centre resources and 3rd parties. Deliver on time and to budget as these are key constraints of the Retail Programme.
Working with business project manager, subject matter experts, finance business partner and/or sponsor to prepare the IT Board papers including developing the cost benefits of the project.
Identify and communicate clearly the roles and responsibilities of each member of the project from the Sponsor downwards in an international context according to governance process.
Analyse and manage risks, issues, dependencies and change requests. Identify risk mitigation and issue resolution actions, get ownership and drive resolution.
Manage stakeholders to ensure that the project achieves the agreed success criteria.
Make sure the agreed solution is fit for purpose and supportable and is accepted into operational support.
Define success criteria and monitor and report progress against key performance indicators for the project.
Manage the plan, resource and budget for the project in accordance with client’s IT policies, standards and processes.
Provide a financial forecast each month with explanation of any changes as appropriate
Manage reporting and communication through Group Technology & Banners
Prepare and lead all project meetings including project team meetings, steering meetings (if appropriate), kickoff, closure etc.
Person Specification
Experience in Retail technology solutions
Knowledge of SAP or equivalent ERP system.
Strong project management experience (including but not limited to delivery, finances, stakeholders, communication) in Retail programmes
Knowledge of the criticality of Retail for the smooth operation of business processes and systems for logistics operations, inventory management and eCommerce.
Expert at record managing technology projects throughout the solution lifecycle.
Expert at planning technology projects from project startup including building up a project team from day 1 by requesting and mobilising all the resources needed for success.
Project management practitioner in PRINCE2 methodology (or equivalent) for small, medium and large sized projects.
Experienced at AGILE project management (SCRUM, SCRUMBAN etc) highly desirable.
Highly competent at creating Board approval papers for approval of projects including high quality Exec summaries for all aspects of a project initiation document and full investment appraisal.
Ensure benefits data provided by the business is robust and can with stand Board level challenge.
Strong commercial knowledge and 3rd party contract creating and contract management skills.
Highly proficient IT skills in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and MS project
Excellent written and oral communication skills for reports and presentations
Competent at project level financial management