Project Manager (Consulting)

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Location:  Chicago, IL
Status: Full Time (non-exempt)
Travel: Up to 25%

SUMMARY

Responsible for making the project successful. The Project Manager is expected to blend traditional project management principles with Agile development practices to motivate team members, manage client expectations, maintain project contracts, and ensure all project timelines, deliverables, and budgets are met. Responsible for managing several concurrent, complex, enterprise-level projects that may cross multiple business divisions. Additionally, the Project Manager is responsible for being the primary point of contact for clients and to work closely in tandem with Product Owners, Developers, and Designers to successfully deliver products that provide exceptional business value to clients and their users.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities  

The essential duties and responsibilities include the following. Other duties may be assigned.

  • Organize and lead all project status meetings and exercises to support project performance in terms of scope, timeline, budget and deliverables. Drive course corrections to maintain alignment with client needs.
  • Support project needs through facilitation of all client and stakeholder communication, including managing and resetting expectations as needed, and through the use of effective systems for project governance.
  • Act as mediator to resolve all conflicting client and internal team needs in order to ensure optimal resolutions and compromises for involved parties in all instances.
  • Evaluate all projects and agreements for risks and potential threats to client satisfaction, project success and company profitability.
  • Maintain ownership of client relationships and contracts. Develop a comprehensive understanding of all client needs and agreements.
  • Prepare and distribute internal as well as client facing project progress reports, documentation, proposals and presentation materials.
  • Support accounting needs for project invoicing through oversight and reporting on hours billed on projects.
  • Identify opportunities for additional/new project work with clients and facilitate project expansion or strategy shifts in alignment with the company and client interests.
  • Manage all projects in alignment with Agile and SCRUM strategies and provide organizational support frameworks as well as clear communication routes to meet all client and internal team needs on a project by project basis.
  • Manage and support cross-functional project teams with 3+ team members including Developers, Designers, Copywriters, QA Personnel, Product Owners and Business Analysts.
  • Promote empowerment of each project team and ensure that all members are fully engaged in the project and making meaningful contributions.
  • Identify and encourage a sustainable pace for the team to maintain while delivering high quality work.
  • Support and assist with team development and individual performance assessments.
  • Other related tasks and responsibilities as requested.

 

EDUCATION & EXPERIENCE        

High School Diploma, or equivalent and a minimum of one-plus year of experience communicating/managing budget expectations are required. Three-plus years of recent Project Manager consulting experience is also required.

A Bachelor’s Degree is preferred. The ideal candidate will have previous programmer experience and/or an understanding of computer programming. A PMP Certification is a plus. PMI-ACP, CSM, or equivalent is preferred. CSPO or ScrumMaster Certification is strongly preferred. An interest in mentoring, coaching, collaborating, and team building is ideal. Additionally, a passion for agile project management practices, open source values, collaboration, and satisfied clients is desired.

Additionally, the candidate will be an autonomous problem solver. It is ideal for a candidate to have ability to set team and client expectations around what is reasonable and acceptable and to be able to communicate those accordingly. It is ideal that the candidate is a self-starter who is proficient in SCRUM/Agile methodologies with past experience implementing them on enterprise-level application development projects. The ideal candidate will have a proficient understanding of software development life cycle models. Competency working with project management tools designed to support software and applications development like JIRA, Codebase, Rally, VersionOne or equivalent is desired. Additionally, competency working with basic business support applications and products like: Google Home & Office products is preferred.

A preferred candidate will have a strong dedication to teamwork centered strategies that value group success over individual accolades and personal performance metrics as well as a genuine desire for continual learning and professional growth. A candidate who has strong analytical, planning, and organizational skills along with an ability to balance competing demands and focus on multiple, varied topics at a time that can use a creative approach to problem solving is ideal. A strongly preferred candidate will have innovative ideas and solutions for new and old quandaries, and have strong interpersonal skills as well as excellent oral and written skills. Additionally, this candidate will have the ability to easily interact with both business and IT individuals at all levels is desired. Actively participating in relevant communities and support networks is also preferred.