About the Opportunity

Summary

The Senior Agile Project Manager will be responsible for supporting complex projects/products and programs using pre-existing knowledge, skills, templates, and expertise in various organizational and implementation methodologies within Northeastern ITS. They will support all phases of the project/product lifecycle using project/product management practices. This position is responsible for concurrently managing multiple projects/products with multiple teams across multiple business areas in a matrixed reporting structure.

The Senior Agile Project Manager Delivers multiple complex projects/products (and sometimes programs) that impact multiple business areas. Manages timeline and financials along with risks, issues, decisions, and changes. Manages risk/issue escalations and drives resolution. Manages resources in a cross-functional matrixed environment. Is responsible for executive level reporting and communication. Mentors other PMs and contribute to the project/product management discipline or other process improvements. Focuses on the needs of the team and ensures value is provided to the customer. Establishes clear boundaries in which the team can work. Assists with removing roadblocks and manages the process and culture to ensure team progress and continuous improvement. Mentors the team with Agile knowledge to ensure Scrum and other relevant methodologies are understood and applied. Helps the Product Owner enact effective backlog grooming techniques; facilitate sprint planning, daily scrum, and sprint retrospectives; produces sprint burndown and other metrics. Liaises with architecture and operations when there are dependencies to systems and infrastructure.

Regrettably, the university is unable to work sponsor for this role, now or in the future.

Minimum Qualifications

• Experience with a distributed delivery model, leading diverse teams, and collaborating in a multi-cultural environment for end-to-end engagements.
• Program management experience in scaled digital implementation leading high performing teams within IT and consulting environment.
• Effective systems thinking skills and ability to identify interconnectivity across multiple streams of work.
• Demonstrated experience navigating a large organization, showcasing the ability to influence storytelling and data.
• Comfortable with C-suite reporting relationships and presenting to C-level executives, senior business leaders, and technology leaders.
• Knowledge of best practices in design thinking
• Experience with a variety of methodologies like scrum, Kanban, Scaled Agile frameworks (SAFe, etc.), waterfall, and hybrid.
• Effective leadership, analytical skills, and negotiation skills.
• Effective conflict resolution skills.
• Financial industry knowledge.

Key Responsibilities

Partner with Product Owner or Director to prioritize work through the backlog and other scrum artifacts.
• Reviewing sprint progress to ensure the latest work status is captured and updated as appropriate.
• Ensuring teams manage work and priorities effectively, all team members are engaged, and all work is captured in the backlog

Enable Teams to realize their mission and objectives and deliver on their OKRs/KPIs
• Driving members to anticipate and resolve potential blockers (e.g., technical/ people constraints), and ensuring impediments and blockers are removed or escalated as needed.
• Ensuring that Teams and Portfolios are interacting with dependent stakeholders effectively.
• Challenging the status quo when needed and encouraging experimentation and innovation.
• Measuring squad performance over time – e.g. value delivered, burn-down charts, cycle time etc.

Identify continuous improvement opportunities and best practices to progress the work of the team
• Engaging and partnering with Agile CoE to help identify and deliver against training needs to support Agile practices.
• Observing and engaging with individual team members to identify opportunities to improve Agile performance and effectiveness, bringing a continuous improvement and "MVP" mindset to the team’s work.

Work with teams to embed and reinforce Agile practices and behaviors and ensure their maturity and deliver successful projects
• Working with senior leadership to facilitate and lead Agile ways of working within the teams.
• Facilitating Agile sprint ceremonies as appropriate including Sprint Planning, Daily Scrums, Sprint reviews, Sprint Retrospectives and backlog refinement
• Providing thought leadership and constructive feedback to team members to help drive Agile maturity, knowledge, and effective communication.

Enable the Organization’s new ways of working and embed Agile principles in the day to day
• Modelling behaviors to support the organization’s transformation to a new way of working.
• Assessing team members and stakeholders in adopting agile ways of working
• Actively curate a culture supportive of continued learning, transparency, and empowerment

Project Planning and Execution:
• Develop project plans, Set goals and manage project timelines, scope, and resources using agile frameworks.
• Facilitate communication between stakeholders, including customers, team members, and management ensuring transparency on project goals and progress.
• Identify and Mitigate project Risks, Impediments and dependencies, proactively addressing challenges to ensure project success.

Position Type

Additional Information

Northeastern University considers factors such as candidate work experience, education and skills when extending an offer.

Northeastern University is an equal opportunity employer, seeking to recruit and support a broadly diverse community of faculty and staff. Northeastern values and celebrates diversity in all its forms and strives to foster an inclusive culture built on respect that affirms inter-group relations and builds cohesion.

All qualified applicants are encouraged to apply and will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, color, national origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, disability status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.

To learn more about Northeastern University’s commitment and support of diversity and inclusion, please see www.northeastern.edu/diversity.