Lead Initiative Manager (P4185)

SUMMARY:
The Lead Initiative Manager is responsible for the full delivery lifecycle of business critical, organizationally and technically complex projects via clear accountability, structure, project plans, dependency alignment, risk mitigation, reporting and stakeholder management to enable achievement of initiative strategic and operational goals.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Project manage complex projects, building and facilitating across the enterprise to assemble all pieces of delivery (delivery teams, other internal and external partners, marketing plans, communications, ongoing support plan, go to market launch plan, metrics and status reporting, benefit realization planning, project plans, escalation, risk & dependency management) to realize the aspired business benefits.
• Work with business leads, product owners, technology leads, and other stakeholders to help ensure strategy and execution alignment and accountability.
• Establish project governance structure to enable effective decision-making and align teams on ways-of-working
• Manage project communications, team commitments, and changes to the plan of record
• Remove impediments and manage cross dependencies and risks
• Ensure relentless delivery driving speed, accountability, value measurement and realization
• Ensure the project strategy is appropriately documented, communicated, and understood
• Provide leadership the right information and transparency allowing for decisions of project levers
• Act as, or engage with, a change management leader as required
• Maximize productivity through ownership dependency management.
• Organize E2E User Acceptance Testing with needed business stakeholders, delivery teams & 3rd party vendors as required
• Capture lessons learned to enable the project management processes to be improved in the future
• Act as focal point for defining, implementing and maintaining processes, standards, controls and measures
• Keep abreast of 84.51° and external best practices and apply as appropriate

QUALIFICATIONS, SKILLS, AND EXPERIENCE:

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent in any subject
• 5-7 years of demonstrated experience in Project Management working on complex, cross-functional, IT initiatives with ability to plan and manage work with and for multiple teams and PMP certification is a plus.
• Understanding of agile concepts and delivery.  Scrum Alliance, SAFe, and related certifications are a plus. 
• Experience working in a structured environment with portfolios, programs, and projects.
• Demonstrated experience in MS Office related tools (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, MS Project)
• Experience with SasS based PPM toolsets and JIRA are a plus
• Broad business and technical acumen that enables the establishment of effective working relationships with multiple levels and across all facets of the business, product, architecture and technology, agile delivery, and external partners.
• Demonstrated excellence in critical thinking
• Strong communication / interpersonal / influencing skills
• Effective presentation skills, both verbal and written
• Ability to collaborate and manage across teams from 84.51° & Kroger, and external providers
• Experience monitoring and managing project financials, reporting, and metrics
• Organizational change management planning and support experience.  Certifications in CM is a plus.
• Resource management experience.
• Understanding of the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC).
• Demonstrated experience in proactively identifying & mitigating risks, and articulating the impact to key stakeholders.

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