HR PMO Lead Project and Program Manager in Kingston upon Thames

The Lead Project and Program Manager is a key member of the HR PMO and will be responsible and accountable for the successful management and delivery of projects within the HR portfolio. Key to success will be reinforcing the project governance structure for the HR organization to ensure that projects are properly planned and structured for success with clearly defined work parameters, management tools, and articulated roles and responsibilities for key stakeholders.

Essential Duties & Responsibilities:

• Project Management: Manage medium-to-large sized projects of moderate-to-high complexity in the PMO portfolio, ensuring that they contribute positive business value and meet agreed on scope, cost, schedule, and quality objectives. Work independently with guidance from PMO leader as required. Responsible for all aspects of the development and implementation of assigned projects and provides a single point of contact for those projects. Takes projects from original concept through final implementation. Defines project scope and objectives. Develops detailed work plans, schedules, project estimates, resource plans, and status reports. Conducts project meetings and is responsible for project tracking and analysis. Ensures adherence to quality standards and reviews project deliverables. Manages the integration of vendor tasks and tracks and reviews vendor deliverables. Provides technical and analytical guidance to project team. Ability to solve complex problems and recommends and implements the solution. Follow and contribute to HR PMO project management methodology.
• Program Management: Tracks status of program deliverables and milestones. Where applicable, works alongside with the User Adoption Specialist in ensuring successful adoption of the project lifecycle and deliverables. Handles program level risk and issue coordination and the coordination of the regular project and program level reporting cycles. Coordination of project governance arrangements, post project reviews, and program level workshops.
• Agile Software Development: Serves as scrum master for the HR Global Systems development team/partner with Release Manager: Clears obstacles, establishes an environment where the team can be effective, ensures a good relationship between the team and product owner as well as others outside the team.
• Operational Excellence: Assists or leads process improvement initiatives.

Job Qualifications:

• At least 7 to 9 years' experience – overall experience.
• Management consulting experience.
• Technical skills (AI experience, data analytics, core HR Info System, etc.)
• HR experience would be a plus.
• Strong business acumen with financial and analytical orientation.
• Ability to balance multiple priorities, identifying and focusing on the most value-added work and meeting expectations with high quality deliverables.
• Superior standard of discretion and confidentiality; does not compromise the integrity of HR's role as the steward of highly sensitive information.
• Effective written and verbal communication skills with all levels of the organization.
• Demonstrates initiative and drive; self-motivated, organized, and detail oriented; creative and analytical.
• Capable of working independently; demonstrates sound judgment.
• Comfortable in a fast-paced, global work environment.
• Strong proficiency in MS Office and Microsoft productivity and collaboration tools (e.g. Planner, Lists, Loop) required.
• Strong knowledge of PMI (PMBOK) and Agile frameworks.
• Strong knowledge of project scheduling discipline.

Preferred:

• Project and change management certifications preferred (e.g. PMP, PRINCE2, APMG Change Management, Prosci or equivalent).
• Lean Six Sigma Certification.
• Certified scrum master.

Travel Requirements: 20 - 25% - International or Domestic (depending on project requirements).