Assignment description
INTRODUCTION
We are looking for an experienced programme manager to help our team adopt much more disciplined programme management practices to get our work done. Our team is part of our Global Marketing organisation primarily based in Stockholm and working on a range of projects that can be short (i.e. 2-3 months) and long (running over more than 1 year). Some of these projects are critical in transforming our organisation. The team have a good deal of subject matter expertise and relationships with the key stakeholders but do not have any formal PM experience or qualifications. As a result we are currently lacking clarity around scope of projects, objectives, stakeholders, governance, status and timelines. This is impacting our ability to deliver and it’s not altogether clear to us the totality of what we’re working on, which projects are going well/badly and that others (including senior management) have confidence that these key initiatives are fully under control. We are therefore looking for someone who can work with us very closely for a number of months to help to address this.
RESPONSIBILITIES
We are looking for help in 3 primary areas that are understandably inter-related:
- Take inputs from the team on current and planned projects to translate them into PM material including project scopes/charters, gantt charts, status reports and other key documentation. The team will be able to verbally describe these projects at length so that task is to understand these and then commit them to a visual form to both help the team better manage the projects and communicate with outside stakeholders.
- Develop templated documentation that can be re-used for multiple projects that are either planned or not yet foreseen. Essentially we’re looking for a set of PM assets in a library that we are able to use going forward in an accessible way.
- Teach, through the above, the team key principles and practices of competent programme management so that, as a team, we become much more effective in delivering our work.
We would like to work with someone who has worked in a similar capacity in the past including providing evidence of documentation produced approximating what we’re looking for. This is an absolute necessity as we want the PM to have done this multiple times in the past in different contexts in order that we obtain the benefit of this experience. Ideally the person would also have worked within a marketing organisation/function so that they are familiar with marketing concepts, practices and vocabulary
EXAMPLE PROJECT (FOR ILLUSTRATION)
We are rolling out the Google Marketing Platform (https://marketingplatform.google.com) across our organisation. We’re doing this in order to enable more data driven marketing and to create visibility around our marketing performance. This programme is highly complicated as there are considerable hurdles to be overcome such as a lack of understanding of the benefits of GMP, resistance because of our historical tendency to outsource marketing activities (such as media buying), lack of resources on the ground, very decentralised organisational structure, GMP itself constantly evolving, etc. Most important our business regions (Europe, APAC, NA, LATAM) are actually responsible for rolling it out but we, in the global organisation, provide overarching support in facilitating that rollout. So the need for strong PM is critical so we can better communicate the objectives, responsibilities, stage gates, obstacles/risks, and to design a project plan that is clearly understood (including dependencies).
EXPERIENCE & REQUIREMENTS
- At least 7+ years experience in a programme manager role
- Fluent English language skills (both verbal and written)
- Worked for extended periods (either as employee or consultant) in large enterprises
- Ability to work in a team to co-produce deliverables
- Excellent visual storytelling skills (making the complex simple)
Additional information
- We do not have standardised PM software. Some people use MS Project but not in a serious way. Others have used Trello boards and experimented with Monday.com and others like that. Note that we are adopting Microsoft 365 at scale now so Outlook, the Office products and Teams are in widespread use so any considerations around software should be conscious of this.
- Our organisation runs on Microsoft Powerpoint. You rarely see Word documents but every meeting has Powerpoint decks. Again it’s an important consideration as this is our primary communication vehicle.
- We use tools like RACI at times but not comprehensively. Our use is much more adhoc. We don’t have any particular PM frameworks like Prince2 that we use.
- Like in any large company people, especially senior decision makers, are time poor so the need for a very visual form of project management is critical
- Currently we have at least 3-4 programmes underway that this person can get involved in and help so will need to work on these simultaneously switching at times between them.