Principal Project Manager

Job description / Role

Work Area: Consulting and Professional Services
Expected Travel: 0 - 10%
Career Status: Professional
Employment Type: Regular Full Time

COMPANY DESCRIPTION

SAP started in 1972 as a team of five colleagues with a desire to do something new. Together, they changed enterprise software and reinvented how business was done. Today, as a market leader in enterprise application software, we remain true to our roots. That's why we engineer solutions to fuel innovation, foster equality and spread opportunity for our employees and customers across borders and cultures.

SAP values the entrepreneurial spirit, fostering creativity and building lasting relationships with our employees. We know that a diverse and inclusive workforce keeps us competitive and provides opportunities for all. We believe that together we can transform industries, grow economics, lift up societies and sustain our environment. Because it's the best-run businesses that make the world run better and improve people's lives.

ROLE DESCRIPTION

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.

EXPECTATIONS AND TASKS

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.

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.
- 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

Requirements

WORK EXPERIENCE

- 5 - 7 years of project management experience in large scale, high risk, or strategic projects.
- 3 - 5 years of supervisory or coaching experience in team building and leading teams.
- Some level of international implementation experience required
- Management experience in managing medium size teams
- Management experience of medium to large size and multilayered teams is desirable
- Management of remote resources (global delivery or distributed organization)
- P&L of LoB in medium to large organization is desirable
- Cultural awareness and experience working across different cultures and nationalities
- Strong leadership and people management skills are desirable
- Leading in matrix organization and without formal authority a plus

EDUCATION AND QUALIFICATION / SKILLS AND COMPETENCIES

- 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.
- English: Fluent
- Required undergraduate university degree, preferably in commerce, engineering, information technologies or equivalent training and job experience.
- Master's degree, preferably in commerce, engineering, information technologies or MBA an asset

WHAT YOU GET FROM US

Success is what you make it. At SAP, we help you make it your own. A career at SAP can open many doors for you. If you're searching for a company that's dedicated to your ideas and individual growth, recognizes you for your unique contributions, fills you with a strong sense of purpose, and provides a fun, flexible and inclusive work environment - apply now .

SAP'S DIVERSITY COMMITMENT

To harness the power of innovation, SAP invests in the development of its diverse employees. We aspire to leverage the qualities and appreciate the unique competencies that each person brings to the company.

SAP is committed to the principles of Equal Employment Opportunity and to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with physical and/or mental disabilities.

Successful candidates might be required to undergo a background verification with an external vendor.

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.