Technical Delivery Program Manager

Job description / Role

Role Purpose:

The UK IT & Digital delivery team is responsible for the management of business demand, delivery and governance of the UK CAPEX funded initiatives and to drive business growth .

The Programme Manager is responsible for leading large IT & Digital programmes across multiple domains leading complex multi-party teams, taking responsibility at board level. Their peer within the customer organisation will generally be Programme Manager with direct reporting to IT & Digital leadership team.

The Programme Manager will have day to day accountability for a budget which is generally >£2 million annual budget

The Programme Manager will engage through demands and requirements negotiations and be responsible for translating, often ambiguous requirements, into operational plans, engaging buy-in across all stakeholder groups.

The Programme Manager is responsible for setting the governance controls for the programme, ensuring these align to corporate, customer and local standards, with strong emphasis on assurance and gate reviews, defining the programme costs, operational budgets, staffing requirements, programme resources and programme risk & change strategy.

The Programme Manager is accountable for ensuing that the programme and all interrelated projects, dependencies, assumptions and risks are identified, stakeholder buy in achieved, stage plans created, managed and reported though the lifecycle of the programme, emphasis on alignment to time, cost and quality.

Key accountabilities and decision ownership:

Vision, Planning and Control:
- Plan, organize and lead all activities as required to successfully achieve Programme goals, projects and associated objectives.
- Setting up periodic SteerCos with senior management and leadership team to reports program updates and address key decisions and directions
- Ensuring programmes fit within the Vodafone Cloud & Infrastructure Operating Model, including full alignment with its governance and operating model.
- Ensure that all Programme's activities are consistent with the Programme's scope ensuring that the Programme's deliverables are on time, compliant with assigned budget and the expected level of quality and Governance.
- Monitor programme's and project's progress including responsibility for Budget and Finance management and addresses the adjustments needed for successful completion for given scope on time and within budget.
- Attend regular meetings with entities to align on the status of new and running programmes and projects.
- Develop program assessment protocols for evaluation and improvement
- Engagement of the team getting resources from other departments for the duration of the Programme

Organisation & Leadership:
- Clarifies the skills requirements of a project/program and builds a team capable of managing them.
- Manages the team in the successful delivery of the programme/project.
- Manages project planning and resourcing processes, balancing priorities.
- Takes on a coaching and mentoring role, motivating others and boosting moral.
- Key influences within the work environment during the lifecycle of the project/programme.
- Initiate and influence relationships with and between key stakeholders, external and internal.
- Produce project/programme stakeholder map, conduct analysis to ensure stakeholder needs are understood and met.
- Work to improve relations and provide continuing support to open communications with and between stakeholders.

Innovation, Change Management, Risk/Issue Management:
- Develop long-term IT & Digital strategies and significantly influence the cross-functional project development and delivery processes and standards.
- Apply a structured methodology and lead change management activities
- Leverage a change management methodology, process and tools to create a strategy to support adoption of the changes required by a project or initiative.
- Create actionable deliverables for the core change management plans: Sponsor Plan, People Manager Plan, Communications Plan, and Training Plan
- Provide support and coaching advice to execs and people managers to help them instil change in their teams, as well as directly supporting project teams during the transition period.
- Resolving cross-program issues and strategic issues with senior stakeholders.
- Identify all the risks and issues impacting programmes' results by effective Risk planning and mitigation.
- Perform risks audit, also influencing the factors causing risks
- Prepare contingency plans, escalating adequately risks and issues through correct channels

Reporting & Communication:
- Build-up and maintain an effective communication flow with all customers and IT Delivery partners within Programme scope.
- Coordinate economic evaluation/feasibility for managed programmes, sponsoring it to the approval board
- Collect all of the information needed, ensuring a complete alignment on programme's status and next steps among all involved stakeholders
- Ensure that all Programme information is appropriately documented and secured
- Update all documentation related to Programme's activities providing Senior Management with all information needed that allows rapid and informed decision making at all levels.
- Maintain overview project status for projects of the entity
- Ensures quality assurance standards & Programs are applied across the programme & project work streams and reported properly and periodically
- Financial Management - Benefits, Commercial, Partner & 3rd Party Management:
- Ensure that strategic outcomes expected by the projects/ programme are aligned to benefits realisation plan, and that benefits tracking process is in place and managed effectively.
- In the event of projects/programme scope changes materialising ensure that financial and investment plans are reviewed and adjusted accordingly.
- Maintain the business case for funding the project/programme and confirm the continuing business viability of the project at regular intervals.
- Be accountable for managing, forecasting and reporting on all related budget and expenditure.
- Costs control and optimization within limited budget programs or savings exercises

Requirements

Core competencies, knowledge and experience :
- Typically, >10 years relevant experience in end to end managing of major complex programs and its delivery in related field
- Exceptional skills in critical thinking , problem solving and reasoning .
- Outstanding knowledge of change management principles and performance evaluation processes
- Ability to operate at senior stakeholder level both internally and externally, demonstrating leadership and presenting at Executive & Steering board level .

Must-have technical / Professional qualifications:
- Background in Telco / Network / Digital & IT environment.
- Prince 2 Practitioner or PMP.
- Agile or SAFe certified
- MBA Degree is preferred.
- Experience owning program strategy, end to end delivery, and communicating results to senior leadership.
- Understanding and experience of working in a telecommunications environment.
- Highly competent in Microsoft Excel/PowerPoint/Visio/Project/Power BI.
- Excellent presentation and information/data visualization skills.
- International experience and background in service- and project- management in a complex business environment essential as well as ability to work across an international and distributed team

About the Company

At Vodafone, we are known for our technology, but the truth is, it is humanity that drives our business forward. With the global pandemic raising so many questions for tech brands, it has highlighted the leading role that we need to play.

We believe that, when working together, humanity and technology can find the answers and create a better future for all.

Working at Vodafone is all about helping people feel ready to benefit from new technology. We bring the future to even the most remote places, using technology to help families in disaster zones, showing young people that a phone is not just for fun and thinking about technology that doesn’t even exist yet.