P&C Insurance Program Manager, Professional Services - 80% Travel, Remote, US

Job Description

Program Manager

Guidewire (NYSE: GWRE) is a leading provider of software solutions to the global property-casualty insurance industry. We have pursued one mission from our founding as a company in 2001: to be the pre-eminent provider of next-generation Insurance Platform — policy, claims, billing, digital, and data — to the global property-casualty industry. All of our employees understand that we serve only one industry and strive to solve one problem: to enable insurance carriers to migrate completely from legacy systems to a modern core platform. We are expanding our delivery capabilities in order to assist our customers in transforming their businesses and to ensure that each one is successful in this journey. Our investments range from expanding our professional consulting services to providing new instant-on cloud based applications.

The Role

In order to achieve deliver on our goals and meet rising customer expectations to take on complete leadership and accountability of their strategic transformation programs, we are looking for experienced technology delivery program managers to join our teams.

Guidewire Program Managers are assigned to manage the overall customer program and its related projects on behalf of the customer and Guidewire. This is a full-time role that works closely with the project managers whose projects fall under the program umbrella, customer sponsors, key leadership, and the Steering Committee. They are critical for understanding the full breadth of the program and with tying their end to end components together. The Guidewire Program Manager is responsible for the overall success of the program. The purpose of program management is to coordinate the efforts of the sub-teams to ensure they work together effectively towards the common goal of producing a consumable solution for their stakeholders.

The program manager provides management oversight and leadership by helping to ensure that the program’s benefits are realized and is responsible for the successful delivery of the technical change and by association the business change. The role requires effective coordination of multiple project streams within the program and management of their interdependencies including oversight of any risks and issues arising. The program manager is responsible for the overall integrity and coherence of the program. As program lead, they develop and maintain the program environment to support each individual project within it.

The role is crucial for creating and maintaining focus, enthusiasm, and momentum. They should have a solid understanding of how to apply a standard methodology for running programs.

The ideal candidate will be well versed in agile implementation methodologies and enterprise scale implementations and be able to deliver projects that combined those qualities. Ability to travel 80%.

Responsibilities:

• Responsible for ensuring timely delivery of program to schedule and budget
• Establish, lead, and manage the Program Management Office (PMO)
• Plan and design the program and proactively monitor its progress, resolve issues, and initiate appropriate corrective action and serve as escalation point
• Continually monitor and control release scope, promoting a culture of exchange over increase
• Define the program's governance arrangements
• Ensure effective quality assurance and the overall integrity of the program. Focus inwardly on the internal consistency of the program, and outwardly on its coherence with the infrastructure plan, interfaces with other programs and corporate, technical, and specialist standards
• Manage the program's budget, monitor expenditure, and costs against delivered and realized benefits as the program progresses
• Facilitate the appointment of individuals to project teams
• Ensure the delivery of new products or services from projects is to the appropriate level of quality, on time and within budget, in accordance with the program plan and program governance arrangements
• Ensure there is allocation of common resources and skills within the program's individual projects
• Manage third party contributions to the program
• Manage communications with all stakeholders
• Manage both the dependencies and the interfaces between projects
• Manage risks and facilitate mitigation activities to ensure the program's successful outcome
• Initiate extra activities and other management interventions wherever gaps in the program are identified or issues arise
• Report the progress of the program at regular intervals to the Steering Committee and other stake holders as required and defined in the governance process documentation
• Report the progress of the program at regular intervals to the internal Guidewire stakeholders
• Appoint other individuals to support the program role gaps such as (e.g. risk manager, communications manager, benefits manager)

Qualifications and Education Requirements

• BS or BA degree required
• 7-10 years of implementation experience
• 5-7 years of program management experience
• Experience leading enterprise technology implementations leveraging agile and understands agile tools and concepts

Required Skills

• Ability to travel up to 80%
• Effective leadership, interpersonal, and communication skills
• Demonstrated skill in managing large multi-functional projects including software package implementations and information architecture
• Ability to build team collegiality on large scale programs and across multiple geographical locations
• Proven negotiation skills and a strong ability to navigate executive levels of an organization
• Demonstrable knowledge of techniques for planning, monitoring, and controlling programs
• Sound business case development and approvals skills
• Understanding of the procurement process including negotiation with third parties
• Hands on experience with working on SOWs
• Solid knowledge of program and project management methods (such as PMP, MSP, and PRINCE2), together with an understanding of Agile methods
• Strong knowledge of budgeting and resource allocation procedures
• Ability to find ways of solving or preempting problems

People Development Skills

• Shows a track record of building effective cross functional teams across multiple geographic locations
• Ability to deal with issues directly, firmly, and in a timely manner; doesn’t allow problems to fester; regularly reviews performance and holds timely discussions
• Staffing – has a nose for talent; able to deal with underperforming team members; assembles talented teams
• Ability to evaluate team members and is a good judge of talent and can articulate the strengths and weaknesses of people inside and outside organization

Preferred Experience

• P&C Insurance experience (Property & Casualty)
• Experience with Guidewire enterprise technology implementation
• Experience with Cloud Technology
• Project Management Professional (PMP) certification
• Has agile certifications: Certified Scrum Master (CSM), Scaled Agilest (SA)