Business Systems - IT Project Manager

At WHSmith our people are at the heart of everything we do. They are the ones that go the extra mile for our customers. The ones that enable our growth. That’s why our IT team works closely with stakeholders to develop and implement technology solutions.

As a Project Manager you will be accountable for leading the delivery of technical IT initiatives that support the organisation’s strategic objectives. The Project Manager will manage cross-functional teams and suppliers to deliver on time, within scope and budget, while maintaining high standards of governance and stakeholder engagement.

Main Responsibilities

• Work with the procurement team to agree contracts / Statements of Work for the provision of goods and services
• Engage with the Project Management Community of Practice to drive continuous improvement to process and practice

Key Accountabilities

• Project Delivery - Accountable for the successful delivery of change projects to agreed time, cost and quality.
• Team Leadership – Lead cross functional resources and partners, driving collaboration and accountability.
• Stakeholder Management – Build and maintain strong relationship with key stakeholders, managing expectations and ensuring effective communication of progress and issue resolution.
• Governance – Accountable for operating within the WHSmith ways of working and governance framework to maintain compliance to standards
• Change Management – Accountable for ensuring the change delivered if adopted into the organisation and creates minimal disruption to WHSmith.
• Risks and Issues Management – Proactively drive the team to identify and manage risks, dependencies and issues
• Quality Outcomes – Accountable for ensuring that deliverables meet the requirements an standards through effective testing and acceptance criteria.
• Service Management - Drives the transition of the project outcomes into Business as Usual, often across multiple functions to ensure business and service acceptance
• Budget and Financial Management – Accountable for the development project budgets and tracking / reforecasting through the life of the project. Always ensuring financial transparency.
• Technical Oversight – Accountable for ensuring that all solutions comply with the WHSmith architectural and security policies and standards
• Release Coordination – Own and develop robust rollback and recovery plans for all phases of the implementation

What we are looking for:

Experience and knowledge

• Excellent organisation skills, often juggling multiple priorities, and the ability to command respect from the existing team is imperative
• Analytical skills to critically evaluate information gathered from multiple sources, reconcile conflicts, decompose high-level information into details, abstract up from low-level information to a more general understanding, distinguish presented user requests from the underlying true needs, and distinguish solution ideas from requirements
• Facilitation to lead requirements gathering workshops
• Skills to work with the vast array of stakeholders and to manage/set expectations
• Domain knowledge; to have instant credibility with business unit colleagues and work effectively with them

Skills/capabilities

• Minimum 3-5 years of proven experience managing complex IT projects (infrastructure refresh, data or cloud implementations)
• Experience of managing projects through the entire lifecycle
• Familiar with ITIL / Service Management processes and frameworks
• Strong understanding of IT infrastructure components (storage devices, virtualisation, cloud, network and end point management).
• Professional Project Management certification (e.g. PMP, Prince2, AgilePM) is desirable
• Strong understanding of project management methodologies (e.g. PRINCE2, Agile, Waterfall or Hybrid approaches)
• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills
• Experience of working in matrix and multi-vendor environments

Behaviours

• Establishes and maintains constructive and collaborative relationships with all business areas
• Proactive in planning to achieve targets and objectives
• Continuously and proactively improves the quality of service delivered to all customers (external & internal) and business partners
• Respects individual’s views and positively contributes to a learning environment in which individuals are supported and encouraged to excel
• Behaves consistently and with integrity at all times, realising everyone’s potential to get the best possible result

How we reward our teams:

• Hybrid Working Model from home and in the office
• 4pm Friday Finish
• Flexible Working
• 25 Days holiday, plus your Birthday off, plus Bank Holidays with an opportunity to buy extra days holiday
• Family Friendly Leave
• Competitive Pension Contribution
• Sharesave Scheme
• Annual Bonus based on company and personal performance
• Competitive Salary and Car Allowance
• Private Medical Insurance
• Staff Discount Card for stores and online