The Project Manager is responsible for initiating, planning, execution (monitoring/controlling) and close-down of projects. The Project Manager is responsible for all aspects of the project through its successful completion. The Project Manager defines, schedules, controls, and adjusts all tasks and workloads for their projects. This role is responsible for guiding and ensuring their teams are adhering to the disciplines and sound project management practices as defined in the Project Management Plan as well as client and Dewpoint methodologies, where applicable. The Project Manager trains/guides all staff to adhere to these disciplines. This role is responsible for managing project issues and risks while ensuring that customer expectations are managed and project commitments are met. Project Managers communicate project status to customers, management and the Program Management Office.
Key Job Responsibilities
- Responsible for all aspects of the project, over the entire project lifecycle (initiation, planning, execution, control, close)
- Leads and directs projects, which often require multiple resources and low to moderate levels of functional integration and interaction with Stakeholders
- Interfaces with the project sponsor and other key stakeholders on a regular basis
- Conducts regular meetings with stakeholders, to present project status, issues, risks, accomplishments and next steps
- Interfaces with all areas affected by the project, including end users, business leadership, technology and vendors
- Ensures adherence to quality standards for project deliverables
- Assigns individual responsibilities, identifies appropriate resources as needed, and develops and maintains a project schedule to enable timely completion of the project
- Reviews and approves/denies time off requests, ensuring appropriate project coverage
- Manages and reports financial aspects of the project against assigned budgets
- Creation of all required project management documents, leveraging project team members as needed
- Assists with the creation and quality review of other project documents
- Plans, documents and manages scope, budget, issues, risks, changes, deliverables, communications, quality, and schedule for projects
- Holds project team members accountable for project delivery commitments
- Manage (e.g. tracking, updating, reviewing) dashboards and executive reports
- Establishing and maintaining a professional relationship with the vendor and holding vendor teams accountable for contractual commitments
- Work with the Program Manager to communicate project status across the organization
- Track risks/issues to closure and communicate the status to the PMO organization
- Exhibit executive presence and attend leadership meetings when required
- Establish and maintain required project metrics
- In the absence of Program Management Plan, develops project management standards and ensures they are followed
- Ensure that project lessons learned, and continuous improvement action plans are identified, captured, shared and implemented
Required
- Bachelor’s degree or a combination of education, experience and training may be considered in lieu of a formal degree
- 5+ years full project management experience implementing projects through a project life-cycle process
- Proven experience independently leading medium to large sized/complexity high-priority projects (minimum $1M+, 1year+), which often require considerable resources and moderate to high levels of functional integration and interaction with Stakeholders
- A proven background in successful project participation, scheduling and/or delivery
- Excellent customer service, communication, interpersonal and documentation skills
- Ability to conform to shifting priorities, demands and timelines through analytical and problem–solving capabilities
- Ability to elicit cooperation from a wide variety of sources, including management, clients and other departments
- Ability to learn and understand new technologies and how they apply to a project
- Experienced working in and promoting a collaborative work environment through teamwork and respect
- Superb organizational skills and keen attention to detail
- Communicate clearly and concisely with diverse audiences, in both oral and written contexts, and comfortable giving and receiving feedback
- Extremely high standards and a very low threshold for errors and inefficient processes
- Critical thinking and problem solving
- Decision-making and leadership capabilities
- Conflict resolution experience
- Experienced in facilitating meetings and presentations
- Proven decision-making and leadership skills
- Negotiation skills
- Experience mentoring and coaching project management staff
- Knowledge of performance evaluation and change management principles
- Proven knowledge of MS Office
- Proficiency in project management software tools (e.g. MS Project etc.)
- Proven leadership and organizational skills
- Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal
- Excellent problem-solving ability
Preferred
- Active PMP certification
Dewpoint Core Competencies
- Vision and Strategy - Supports Strategy and Vision and can clearly articulate to their team.
- Customer and Team Focus - Builds rapport within and between teams. Develops trusted relationships with customers up through the Director level.
- Effective Communicator - Able to convey technical concepts and rationale of ideas and decisions to teams with clarity in multiple ways.
- Adaptability - Able to respond to chaos and ambiguity within teams and between teams.
- Accountability - Owns problems, issues and outcomes within their team. Holds self and others accountable for achieving team results.
- Collaboration - Works effectively within team and across teams to solve problems and solution opportunities.
- Critical Thinking - Examines issues, ideas and situations to impact results and implement improvements.
- Coach and Mentor - Coaches others on tools, process, technologies, best practices and personal skills such as communication and collaboration.
Measured By
- Successful application and understanding of the core competencies
Minimum Physical Expectations
- Physical activity that often requires keyboarding, sitting, phone work, and filing
- Physical activity that often requires extensive time working on a computer
- Physical activity may require lifting under 25 lbs
- Physical activity that sometimes requires travel – car, train, and/or air
- Physical activity that sometimes requires bending, stooping, reaching, climbing, kneeling, and/or twisting
- Specific vision abilities required include close vision, depth perception, and the ability to adjust and focus
- Must hear and speak well enough to conduct business over the telephone or face to face (in English) for long periods of time
Minimum Environmental Expectations
- This position will require working indoors. Typical workweek is eight (8) hour workdays, five (5) days per week with some weekend work, as well as longer hours as needed.
Top Skills
What We Do
Founded in 1996 and headquartered in Lansing, Dewpoint has a long success record of helping to develop short- or long-term strategic technology plans to maximize current resources and better position organizations across numerous industries for the future. Its service-based solutions focus on helping clients transform and optimize IT support via strategic assessments, portfolio, program and project management, managed services, infrastructure optimization and applications development and maintenance. With particular expertise around the data center, Dewpoint also architects and supports its clients’ strategic initiatives such as data backup and recovery, data storage, virtualized environments, database services, performance improvement and overall architectural design and implementation. Dewpoint supports clients primarily in the Midwest and across the country.