Associate Director, Experience Research & Strategy

Job Description

Program Delivery Director

Qualification:

Responsibility:

Charter:

• Understand program objectives and prepare the program charter.
• identify benefits and success criteria of the program.
• Track and report contribution of the program to the defined benefits of the program.
• Define the program structure aligned with the program charter.
• identify the relevance of various projects / subprograms and their contribution to the program.
• identify multiple MSI Program Managers / Project Manager and let them build the individual subprogram / project charter in line with the overall program charter.
• Identify relevance of the various projects and their contribution to the Program.
• identify multiple Project Managers and guide them to build individual project charter in line with the overall program charter.
• Identify program dependencies and critical decision / discussion points.
• consolidate all the individual project/subprogram plans and integrate the same into a program plan.

Set Up:

• Program Initiation and Planning: Create integrated program plan covering multiple work streams / projects including aspects such as cost, schedule, program scope, requirements, risk, quality, communication & stakeholder management, effort estimation, resource planning, measurement criteria or metrics for every work stream and consolidate the same to arrive at the final estimate for the project.
• share the same with Stakeholders.
• define OCM strategy and process.
• Program Governance: Identify the stakeholders, Review the subprogram governance with the concerned MSI Program Managers.
• Set up the communication plan and escalation process.
• validate lifecycle methodology of various projects as developed by the PMs.
• Dependency Management: Identify dependencies across work streams.
• Program Risk Management: Anticipate risks at the onset and during the course of the program.
• Benefits Management: Understand and communicate the benefits from the program.
• track them through the course of the program.

Contracting:

• Leverage the MSA structure to review the SOWs / work orders to understand the commitment / expectations.
• Prepare the SOW / work orders.
• negotiate on resources, time, milestones etc during scoping of the program.
• Review the program scope as created by multiple Project/Account Managers against the client acceptance criteria at the program level.

Delivery:

• Reviews: Conduct program reviews with relevant stakeholders to identify / manage issues & risks and ensure smooth delivery provide delivery governance and resolve escalated project issues affecting the program.
• review and monitor all phases of the project (requirements gathering, design, architecture, development, testing, implementation, warranty) on a regular basis and suggest corrective actions.
• initiate corrective actions in project(s) where variance is found.
• Tracking: Track actual vs planned program progress.
• collaborate with the Project Managers of individual projects to create / review and track the project management plan as well as subsidiary plans including the cost, schedule, staffing/pyramid management?, scope, requirements, risk, quality, communication & stakeholder management.
• provide support and guidance on the individual projects to Project Managers and facilitate seamless integration of various pieces in the overall Program.
• Conflict Management: Anticipate conflict situations and oversee timely resolution of escalated issues.
• Risk Management: Identify risks at the beginning in partnership with Project Manager.
• review issues and risks for each of the project(s) with the Project Manager, as per the risk management plan.
• engage with the delivery team to critically review and detect early warning signals that pose threats to the overall program objectives.
• communicate risks to the Engagement Manager.
• implement HMP in the program.
• prioritize risks.
• secure necessary approvals from the program board.
• RePlanning: Undertake continuous replanning and reprioritization, as required, to complete the Program on time.
• Metrics Management: Generate and conduct a review of the Program level performance metrics to track the project performance against goals and initiate corrective actions.
• Budget Management: Set out a percentage of the budget as contingency plan and carve out the same in the budgetIdentify, incubate and manage any work that is outside the scope of the individual projects (including vendors and external stakeholders), so as to ensure the success of the overall program (eg production readiness, infrastructure changes, user training, Organizational Change Management etc) for high visibility programs.
• present the status to BU Head.
• Benefits Management: Track benefits realization in program delivery.
• Scope Management: In case of changes to the program, conduct an impact analysis on the cost and other organizational parameters and share findings with the client.
• Stakeholder Management.
• Dependency Management.
• Thirdparty Management.

Service Management:

• Service Design and Operate.
• Capacity management.
• Availability management.
• Service level management.
• Responsible for Continual Service Improvement.
• Ensure that Service Operation requirements are met (including but not limited to following).
• Problem Management.
• Service Desk and Incident management.
• Security Administration.
• App support.
• IT Operations.
• Database Administration.
• Storage management.
• Network support.

Operations:

• Review operational parameters which impact the bottomline eg pyramid size, utilization etc, for the program to track performance against expected margins.
• Analyze deviations and identify steps to be taken to influence key lever.

Change Management:

• Provide support to the individual Project Manager(s) in case of client initiated change / internally identified change, as required.
• communicate potential 'significant change', that are identified, to the entire external stakeholder community (business and IT sponsors from the client).
• Set up and participate in the change control board (CCB) which reviews and approves changes to the program.
• Develop the program level SoW changes.

Opportunity Identification and Pursuit:

• Provide inputs for any new business development opportunities in terms of solution review, planning and estimation etc.
• Provide support to the Project Manager, as required.
• prioritize the valueadd items which can be pursued.
• seek client buyin.
• Contribute towards identification of opportunities related to the program or adjacent to the current scope of work/.

Relationship Management:

• Oversee signoff of milestones with relevant stakeholders.
• establish and build relationships with client's and other stakeholders for the program.
• Provide information to the client about the program.
• anticipate and resolve potential escalations through informal channels with client stakeholders.
• Escalate misalignment of ideas (in terms of feasibility, scope inclusions etc) to clients.
• articulate benefits / value add to the client.
• present the program status during weekly meetings.
• Share delivery status during steering committee meetings.
• respond to the escalations in a timely manner.
• Communicate with the various service lines of the program internally.

People Management:

• Resolve team conflict between multiple work streams / groups.
• provide inputs on goal setting and performance appraisals of team.
• identify training needs for associates based on the client's changing focus.
• Participate and motivate team to participate in recruitment drives, training and other organizational initiatives.
• conduct skiplevel meetings.
• Analyze BES scores to identify corrective steps to be taken in order to address team issues.

Knowledge Management:

• Facilitate knowledge sharing across the program.
• provide support to Project Managers to achieve their kn.

Must Have Skills

• Portfolio & Project mgmt (PPM)