Principal Project Manager

Job description / Role

Requisition ID: 59444
Work Area: Consulting and Professional Services
Expected Travel: 0 - 30%
Career Status: Professional
Employment Type: Regular Full Time

As market leader in enterprise application software, SAP helps companies of all sizes and industries innovate through simplification. From the back office to the boardroom, warehouse to storefront, on premise to cloud, desktop to mobile device - SAP empowers people and organizations to work together more efficiently and use business insight more effectively to stay ahead of the competition. SAP applications and services enable customers to operate profitably, adapt continuously, and grow sustainably.

The Principal Project Manager is responsible for the overall management of a Class A, Class B or Class C type project throughout its lifecycle. The Principal Project Manager has the qualifications and business acumen to manage large scale, high risk, strategic projects that span organizational boundaries including multiple business units and service partners/vendors.  They provide leadership to cross-functional teams responsible for delivering defined project outputs to time, budget and project quality criteria. Principal Project Manager also ensures adherence to project management methodology practices, provides project manager mentoring, performs Project Management Reviews and reinforces the enterprise knowledge management through the communication of lessons learned and best practices development.

The Principal Project Manager assists during the Bid Phase of the customer engagement by providing input into the proposal especially in the area of delivery model (e.g. SAP Advanced Delivery management model for delivery of particular customer project), project structure, organization, scoping, estimation and risk assessment.

The Principal Project Manager has ability to manage complex projects or smaller programs that require coordination of work between various parties like third party sub-contractors, SAP Custom Development, SAP Global Delivery, SAP Active Global Support.

Opportunity Management
* Define appropriate delivery model for customer project based on SAP Advanced Delivery Management as a composition of RDS, pre-defined services, on-site delivery, Global Delivery, Custom Development as needed to deliver on customer success
* Scope and estimate the engagement
* Determine required resources for the project
* Assess, document and communicate risk for the engagement
* Position SAP delivery methodology - ASAP in the engagement

Delivery
* Conduct the project planning activities and manage the execution of large scale, high risk, or strategic projects according to plan (Opportunity Management, Initiating to Closing...)
* Evaluate complex situations accurately and identify viable solutions that create successful outcome for the customer.
* Manage relationship with project stakeholders, including internal and external clients, keeping stakeholders informed of progress and issues in order to manage expectations on all project requirements and deliverables.
* Manage and communicate a clear vision of the project's objectives, and motivate the project team to achieve them; create a project environment that enables peak performance by team members.
* Ensure proper use of methodology, tools and procedures
* Ensures proper governance is in place to best meet project objectives
* Balance the trade-off of the triple- constraint (time, cost and scope) to realize the expected business value.
* Evaluates strategic options and alternatives for delivering or offering services in a more efficient or cost effective manner.
* Builds customer relationships with the clear expectation to deliver follow-on business or identify opportunities within an account. Deals with difficult issues at the customer and finds win-win solutions for both Customer and SAP.
* Proactively identify changes in work scope and ensure appropriate planning measures are taken with internal and external stakeholders to reassess and amend the scope of work requirements, budget and timeline.
* Manage the financial aspects of the project: budgeting and estimate to actual variance.
* Analyze risk, establish contingency plans ad identify trigger events and responsibilities for initiating mitigating action.
* Communicate and/or escalate project issues early to account management and delivery management.
* Determine what constitutes successful closure for all parties. Gain acceptance and sign-off by all parties when closure is attained.
* Plan and execute formal Quality Gate process following the Q-Gate approach in ASAP methodology.
* Proactively manage project stakeholder satisfaction to position and secure customer reference and success story.

Coaching and Mentoring
* Perform Project Management Reviews and mentor project managers on project management methodology, standards and processes.
* Coach to clarify assignments and deliverables to project team; review quality of work and manage integration of team members' work; provide performance input to project team members' functional management.
* Takes responsibility from time to time as team lead and supports respective line manager(s) in people development tasks

Knowledge Management
* Maintain project documentation and updates to relevant knowledge management bases; analyze lessons learned and share with the organization's project management community.
* Participate in the development of project management best practices.

Requirements

* Excellent understanding of SAP solutions and of the consulting business processes and functions.
* Highly developed business acumen.
* Liaison and consultative skills: negotiating skills within a context of high political sensitivity and conflicting interests.
* Strong writing, mentoring, decision making, communication, and meeting facilitation skills; ability to utilize a combination of formal authority and persuasion skill sets.
* Ability to train and mentor project managers or teams in project management methodologies.
* Knowledge of the strategic and operational issues of the project management business unit.
* A clear vision of what determines a successful project for the customer and for the enterprise.
* Knowledge of and competency in project management processes including planning tasks, resource allocation, risk management, time management, financial management, HR management, quality management, monitoring and reporting, documenting and record keeping.
* Adaptability and flexibility to manage deadline pressure, ambiguity and change.
* Strong leadership, organizational and interpersonal skills; the ability to work well with people from different disciplines with varying degrees of technical experience; competence in clear concise and tactful communication with senior executive management, clients, peers and team members
* 5 - 7 years of project management experience in large scale, high risk, or strategic projects.
* 3 - 5 years of supervisory or coaching experience in teambuilding and leading teams.
* Demonstrated experience leading cross functional teams within a formalized methodology.
* Demonstrated expertise in creating and maintaining project deliverables such as, project charter, project management plan, status reports, project timesheets, communications plan, budget and schedule.
* Demonstrated experience in managing issues, scope and quality while bring projects to successful completion within the cost and time requirements.
* Some level of international implementation experience required

About the Company

Headquartered in Walldorf, Germany, SAP is the world's largest business software company with more than 51,500 employees at sales and development locations in more than 50 countries worldwide.

Our global development approach focuses on distributing development across the world in strategically important markets. A global network of SAP Labs spanning Bulgaria, Canada, China, Germany, Hungary, India, Israel, and the United States, enables SAP to operate locally, yet organize globally.

As the global technology research unit of SAP, SAP Research significantly contributes to SAP's product portfolio and extends SAP's leading position by identifying and shaping emerging IT trends through applied research and corporate venturing. SAP Research has highly skilled teams in 11 research centers worldwide.