AddressWhat you’ll be doing in brief:
Working alongside a team of developers and other Project Managers to deliver both projects and retainers for a diverse range of clients across the leading e-commerce platforms.
You are responsible for ensuring your team is resourced to deliver this work in an efficient way and communicating this plan, its progress and results back to the business and with your customers.
Here’s how your week may look:
You will start your day in a stand up with the team, listening to them update you on their previous day's progress noting any blockers to their ability to deliver. You’ll be listening for those nuances in conversation that belie a bigger problem that you want to stop before it starts. You’ll be homing in on those updates that sound less confident, or on that junior dev that might just have reached the point where they need support but have not yet waved the flag.
You’ll note all of this down, adding to your already beautifully arranged list of priorities, and take joy in finding the worst item on the list and charging right at it before you do anything else.
By 11 am you’re confident that the team are all either working on what they should be or working with others to unblock a tricky problem. You take a moment to double-check your list before launching into your own tasks for the day.
Top of the list is arranging a series of discovery meetings about the new customer project we’ve won and that’s been allocated to your team to deliver. You get straight on the phone to chat with your customer contact about when good times are likely to be before following up with an email to confirm.
After lunch you’ve set aside some time to align all your upcoming retainer work to your team for the coming month because you know this new project could quickly mean that everyone’s time is consumed by it.
You’ve got your team allocated as best you can whilst allowing for holidays that you’ve approved, even managing to resource that last-minute request from that client that needed a favour but you’ve got a good relationship with so understand the pressure they are under.
Before the end of the day you check the team time logs for the month to see how you’re doing against the commitment you’d made in your operations and finance meeting at the start of the month. Everything looks good but you notice a few areas where things are running over so arrange a chat with your senior dev to see if it’s anything that can be done.
The next day starts with catching up with the Support Team. There were issues overnight with one of your live sites and it required a member of the 24/7 support team to fix it at 2 am. You arrange a time to speak to the customer as the overnight fix is only a patch and it will need further investigation time to understand.
Following stand-ups you’ve got a demonstration booked in with a customer on the work we’ve completed in the sprint. You jump on the Google Hangout and set up the agenda before letting your developers talk through what they’ve done and the state of progress. You listen for feedback and make any necessary notes before closing out the call making sure the customer understands what they must do before the next call and demo.
In the afternoon you have a catch up with the Head of Project Management, so you make sure you have all your project trackers up to date and compile a list of issues, both resourcing and finance-related, of which you’d like to raise awareness.
During the weekly resource planning meeting, you raise an issue with a project that is running over and will mean that we’ll be late starting the next discovery sessions. By working with the wider team you’re able to secure some temporary resource that means you can meet your deadline and start discovery.
It’s Friday and also the end of the month so you have the regular reconciliation meeting with Ops and Finance to finalise your invoice numbers for each customer. During the month you’ve kept on top of time tracking so there are no surprises and your team is pretty much delivering on the expected levels based on the team you manage and the demand.
Oh, and you did all of this from your home with a team that is also working remotely in a business that trusts you to self motivate and proactively engage with the wider business and your customers.
If you read this and it sounds like your ideal job — we want you on the team!
What You’ll Be Doing
The following should give you an idea of how you’ll be expected to typically be spending your time. It’s not set in stone and it may change from week-to-week, but it gives an idea of what is expected from the role.
Communication (30%)
You’ll likely have a portfolio of clients ranging from 3-6 and working directly in a team of 4-6 others. You’re then connected to the rest of the business through various meetings and ceremonies. Communication is key. Having the ability to communicate with the various levels within a business you are working with and making sure you’re also managing comms back into Space 48 requires someone with confidence and experience.
This will take many forms from video calls, Slack messages, in-person meetings with customers to simple Jira ticket updates, Google Sheet notes and Confluence documentation.
Planning and resourcing (40%)
Managing your team to be working in the most efficient way possible should be at the forefront of your mind. However, you know that this isn’t something you achieve alone but by working with your team to ensure that estimates and approaches are validated by more senior team members and that you are aware of any overruns as soon as possible.
Whilst you will work with your own squad, the expectation is that you will contribute to the shared resource planner to ensure the highest degree of visibility is achieved. The project management team meets weekly to review our projected resource and you should be comfortable setting these expectations with customers.
It’s critical that you’re able to understand your team’s velocity and sprint statistics. You’ll need to lead your team through this information to plan future sprints together.
Reporting and finance (20%)
As a business, our team tracks time and it is your responsibility to ensure that this is as accurate as possible. You’ll meet regularly with the rest of the team to forecast where your resources will be spent and how existing tasks are tracking against our projections.
You’ll be able to see how the projections build up into monthly, quarterly and annual forecasts and as a result, understand the impacts on your resources well ahead of time.
Personal Development (10%)
As a team, we are constantly wanting to improve. Your input into our working practices is very much welcomed and encouraged. We have an experimentation culture and believe that the best ideas will come from those who are closest to the work.
In a nutshell:
Ability to establish rapport and credibility with high priority stakeholders.
A track record of successfully delivering business-critical projects or programmes.
Able to engage in and manage negotiations, project issues, risks and opportunities.
2yrs experience as a Project Manager in a commercial environment.
Must be able to demonstrate matrix management of a project team of 3-5 resources.
Must be able to demonstrate a portfolio of projects delivered ranging in value from £50k - £150k or effort of 100 – 250 days.
Must be able to manage 3-5 concurrent projects/clients.
