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Software Project Manager
Company Name: 
GrowthZone
Contact: 

Submit resume to careers@growthzone.com

Date Posted: 
Thursday, May 23, 2019 to Thursday, August 1, 2019
Job Description: 

Planning, leading, organizing, and motivating development project teams

The Software Project Manager is responsible for planning, leading, organizing, and motivating development project teams to achieve a high level of velocity, performance and quality in delivering agile projects that provide exceptional business value to users. The PM will be responsible for managing several concurrent high visibility projects, along with a regular queue of individual tickets and tasks using agile methods in a fast-paced environment that may cross multiple business divisions.

The PM may play several different roles in actual practice:

- Leading and managing large, complex enterprise-level projects consisting of Agile teams and/or requiring integration with other activities outside the scope of the Agile teams
- At a team level, playing a consultative role to help put in place the appropriate people, process, and tools and coaching members of the team as needed to optimize the efficiency of the development team
- Applying critical thinking and problem solving, in consultation with product managers and other team members, to prioritize the tasks to be worked on to achieve optimal customer impact as efficiently and effectively as possible.
- Manage a blend of project approaches, from Kanban for more individual tasks and timeboxed project plans for larger initiatives that occur over a series of releases.
- Manage the software rollout process, determining when a release can be planned.
- In performing these roles, the PM will be expected to use a high level of knowledge and experience in blending traditional project management principles and practices with an Agile development approach in the right proportions to fit large, complex, mission-critical, enterprise-level projects, along with small, rapid deployment project, all with the appropriate level of planning and providing the right balance of agility and predictability.

Requirements: 

Essential Job Requirements
- Project Planning and Management – Define project scope and schedule while focusing on regular and timely delivery of value; organize and lead project status and working meetings; prepare and distribute progress reports; manage risks and issues; correct deviations from plans; and perform delivery planning for assigned projects
- Team Management – Assist in team development while holding teams accountable for their commitments, removing roadblocks to their work; leveraging organizational resources to improve capacity for project work; and mentoring and developing team members
- Product Manager Support – Support the Product Mangers in managing customer expectations for project deliverables, managing stakeholder communications, and helping to implement an effective system of project governance
- Process Management and Improvement – Define and manage a well-defined project management process and champion ongoing process improvement initiatives to implement best practices for Agile Project Management
- Team building – promote empowerment of the team, ensure that each team member is fully engaged in the project and making a meaningful contribution, and encourage a sustainable pace with high-levels of quality for the team

Qualifications
- Solid understanding of software development life cycle models as well as expert knowledge of both Agile and traditional project management principles and practices and the ability to blend them together in the right proportions to fit a project and business environment.
- Willingness to be highly adaptable to a hybrid approach that aligns to the tenants of Agile, but does not prescribe strictly to a single approach (Sprint, Kanban), but rather blends approaches to align to specific project types.
- A proven track record of successfully implementing software or web development projects using Agile methodologies including 5+ years of experience as a Project Manager managing large, complex projects in a high-tech development environment with multi-function teams.
- Prior experience with Agile methodologies with enterprise-level application development projects.
- Experience overseeing multi-function project teams with at least 5-10 team members including Developers, Product Managers, QA Personnel, support staff and others.
- Balanced business/technical background: sufficient level of technical background to provide highly-credible leadership to development teams and to be able to accurately and objectively evaluate complex project risks and issues
- Ability to provide leadership to product managers and collaborate with customers and develop strategies and solutions of high business value

Skills Required
- 5+ years of experience in software/technical project management.
- Strong interpersonal skills including mentoring, coaching, collaborating, and team building
- Strong analytical, planning, and organizational skills with an ability to manage competing demands
- Strong knowledge and understanding of business needs with the ability to establish/maintain high level of customer trust and confidence
- Proven ability to lead software development projects and ensure objectives, goals, and commitments are met
- Solid understanding of and demonstrated experience in using appropriate tools: Jira experience strongly preferred
- Excellent oral and written communications skills and experience interacting with both business and IT individuals at all levels including the executive level
- Creative approach to problem-solving with the ability to focus on details while maintaining the “big picture” view
- SaaS experience strongly preferred