Career.lk

Portfolio Manager

Pearson PLC is the world’s leading learning company that owns brands such as Financial Times, Penguin and Pearson Education with overall revenue of over $9.4 B in 2011. Pearson has over 40,000 employees working out of offices in over 70 countries.

Pearson Lanka is a leading provider of software development and remote infrastructure management services to multiple technology groups across Pearson. The industry leading cloud-based technology platforms of Pearson help educate more than 30 million students across the globe.

The 150+ strong engineering team based out of the Colombo office works dedicatedly to service Pearson technology companies located in North America, Europe and Australia.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Leadership and Management [40%]

• Manages, mentors and trains project managers and Senior Project Managers
• Maintains a strong partnership with Denver PMO, Dev management, QA Management and Product Management to execute the different portfolios run within the SL office.
• Manages internal client and stakeholders expectations
• Works with initiative leads for different portfolios to manage both dedicated and matrixed resources and communicate any changes on the resources to the Denver teams
• Coordinates and resolves issues escalated from projects running in SL
• Assists management with creation and scheduling of the product roadmap
• Facilitates project approval process with management, project documents and other related materials
• Works with finance on creation, tracking and reporting of the budgets for programs within the portfolio
• Maintains and manages the offshore metrics required for reviews and any course correction.
• Work with the Denver stakeholders to make sure the communication is flowed down to SL on the appropriate time for some of the key meetings like product committees, kick off of new portfolios etc.
• Champions Agile practices and ensures teams are getting better at continuous learning, continuous integration, test driven development, automation and other key agile practices.
• Work closely with the SL Ambassador for different portfolios to understand the change in priorities, blocking issues and mentoring them on some of the PM and product related areas.
• Work with SL PMs and understand the retrospective for the release, work with the management to determine and recommend external grades for the releases done by the SL teams.
• Work with the SL PMs to ensure the timely reporting of the time in the respective time tracking system like Oracle, Rally.
• Work with SL Management and HR on the people management aspects for SL resources like appraisals, interviews, identify and arrange trainings etc.
• Work with SL Management and participate actively on initiatives taken by them to make SL team successful.

Process [20%]

• Recommends and implements process improvements within the program management group and across business divisions as needed
• Researches and assists with training of software development and project management methodologies

Project Management [40%]

• Work closely with Denver Portfolio Managers to do the portfolio analysis on projects
• Maintains project schedules and costs across portfolio of projects
• Works with Portfolio Managers to understand ROI on portfolio and reporting them on SL offshore metrics
• Performs requirement analysis for feature enhancements of and changes to existing products
• Organizes, conducts, and attends meetings with product managers and key stakeholders to create project plan parameters by defining clear, attainable objectives and milestones
• Determines milestones, and what will be needed to meet milestone (time, materials, etc.), the scope of project and how the scope fits into the milestone timelines
• Creates tasks, works with project team to determine and refine estimates based on departmental abilities and constraints
• Authors, maintains, and applies detailed project plans to support software development, hardware installations, and a variety of integration projects
• Performs risk analysis for programs and projects within the program
• Provides detailed weekly status reports on all active projects within a portfolio
• Other duties as assigned

MANAGERIAL RESPONSIBILITIES Includes people, process or functions.

Oversee projects as assigned by the Sr Director Program Management and tasks allocated by SL Director and GM of software Engineering.

EDUCATION and/or EXPERIENCE

Masters Degree and eight to ten plus (8-10) + years of project management experience in IT or software development. Experience in managing multiple concurrent projects and/or portfolios. Project management experience relevant to agile and full life-cycle software development, implementing IT projects, and managing related integration projects required; OR equivalent education and experience to successfully perform the essential duties of the job.

KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS AND ABILITIES

• Intermediate experience or knowledge required in the following areas: technical writing
• Strong ability to foster and maintain a positive creative environment across project teams.
• Intermediate ability to manage project managers.
• Strong knowledge of Internet technologies, concepts and applied background in Software Development Methodologies.
• Strong knowledge of full life-cycle development.
• Advanced knowledge in agile methodologies.
• Strong ability to perform multiple tasks concurrently.
• Advanced understanding of resource allocation across projects
• Excellent customer service attitude, communication skills, and interpersonal skills.
• Advanced ability to resolve conflict within and across project teams.
• Excellent organizational and time management skills.
• Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Strong PC skills including thorough knowledge of Microsoft Office Suite.
• Ability to make timely and sound decisions.
• Ability to work efficiently in a fast paced environment.
• Ability to work independently.