Join the hundreds of talented and innovative team members who are making an impact every day at California Times, incorporating Los Angeles Times and San Diego Union-Tribune, two of the most iconic media brands in the nation. Whether you love to tell compelling stories or want to drive our award-winning powerhouse in new directions, the Los Angeles Times team is the place to be.
Job Description Summary
The IT Program Manager (PM) will be a senior member of the PMO team, will take ownership of developing best in class project roadmap and programs across multiple business functions.
The IT Program Manager role will be a liaison between business, IT and several vendors that are part of an engagement. This person will utilize a good understanding of project management to recognize issues and risks, advise on selecting solutions to tough problems, and drive scheduled completion. Also manage a portfolio of Information Technology services that optimize IT and business processes. Contribute to process improvement and automation initiatives as it relates to improving project delivery.
Job Description
Responsibilities:
Develop collaborative communication plans indicating how and when all key stakeholders will be engaged, prepared, consulted, and informed over the course of all programs.
Develop and manage project documents including project charters, RAID-C, RACI, schedules, and status reports independently or collaboratively as needed.
Facilitate team collaboration to create, plan, share and communicate program knowledge deliverables including business cases, requirements documents, process flows, workflows, and procedures.
Capture, record, report and escalate program risks, issues, and changes to the appropriate stakeholders in a timely fashion.
Create a comprehensive program budget, tie it closely to the milestones, track all expenses against it and raise it to appropriate stakeholders if/when there is a risk to the budget along with a mitigation plan.
Drive timely delivery of agreed-upon, in-scope program deliverables within schedule and budget while actively managing stakeholder expectations throughout the program duration.
Drive delivery of project work through other project managers and 3rd party vendors.
Step in to manage projects or aspects of projects within the programs you own, as needed.
Partner with the program sponsor and stakeholders to help define the program objectives, key results, and roadmap.
Demonstrate proficiency in program strategy and execution within the business domain by learning about the domain.
Understand and evangelize your program’s strategy and its benefits to the company.
Anticipate and mitigate risk by conducting assessments across the program to determine if the implementation plans meet stakeholder requirements and will achieve defined objectives.
Build strong relationships and trust with stakeholders, keeping them and their teams engaged in the project, e.g., through status reporting and issue management.
Identify core problems or opportunities within business processes. Understand the root cause and impacts for the project and other teams. Communicate and collaborate with the right people to implement timely solutions.
Help your program team or other more junior program and project managers to refine their individual project management skills and behaviors. Provide opportunities to others to help close their skill gaps.
Coach and advocate for your program team at the leadership level on a quarterly basis outlining value delivered and career development next steps and be able to align them to organizational goals and objectives.
Ensure standards for communications and reporting are being followed. Monitor and provide feedback on the communications of your team. Maintain cultural awareness in your communications.
Partner with the business departments such as Marketing, Sales, Finance, Advertising, Editorial, HR, Circulation, Legal, etc. to understand their goals to determine program scope and deliverables.
Organize the overall project team and establish clear roles and responsibilities at the beginning of each project.
Prioritize roadmap deliverables based on business alignment and the strategic direction of the technology organization.
Proactively detect misalignment and risk; gain consensus on appropriate actions to mitigate negative impact.
Serve as a liaison between other functional teams that are running concurrent projects with related dependencies.
Create standardized documentation for projects including project charters, project plans, work breakdown estimates and status reports.
Improve project quality and throughput by leveraging best practices, metrics, lessons learned and stakeholder feedback.
Qualifications:
10+ years of progressive experience scoping and managing functional and infrastructure projects within a Consulting or Media or Entertainment firm in a Program/Senior Project Manager role.
Skilled at leading project teams, 2-4 PMO resources/direct reports in an Agile and Waterfall workflow environment.
Proficiency in MS Office tools, such as creating/managing a project plan using MS Project with tasks and activities going up to 7 levels and 5000+ lines using advanced constraints and dependencies.
Experience with managing design, implementation, and migration to a cloud infrastructure using industry best practices.
Experience managing vendor relationships, contracts, and program budgets including monthly forecasts, and the ability to track and explain variances
Experience creating Logical Data Model, process flows/maps using Draw.IO, MS Visio, or other design tools
Experience working with and managing offshore/near-shore resources.
Ability to do Fit-Gap analysis by identifying existing systems and technologies and documenting enhancement requirements.
Mastery in milestone planning, process mapping, quality control, change management, use cases, scenario management and brainstorming solutions to complex issues
Experience working with business stakeholders, executive management, and all levels of management to understand business needs, gather requirements and develop functional and business requirements and workflows by creating Project Charter, Business Requirements Document (BRD), User Stories and Functional Requirement Specifications (FRS).
Strong background and experience in organizing User Acceptance Testing (UAT) and ability to develop test plan templates and help coordinate resolution of issues found during manual and/or automated testing.
Experience in developing training plans and coordinating training for business users.
Ability to see the bigger picture and to compare the current situation to best practices or industry innovations and to suggest improvements or developments.
Excellent relationship-building and people skills, with an ability to develop strong and trustworthy relationships across multiple teams and end-users.
Leadership skills to establish and communicate an inspiring vision of the desired future state of the program or portfolio; influence team members to aspire to reach their goals.
Negotiation skills to build consensus among various project teams and creates win-win outcomes.
Ability to take accountability for the entire program along with being responsible for the team on the ground.
Strong organizational and problem-solving skills, even in ambiguous environments, as well as an attention to detail.
A calm demeanor and a measured approach to a high volume of work.
Effective presentation, written and verbal communication, and negotiation skills when dealing directly with clients.
Preferred Qualifications:
PMP Certification is a plus.
Workday or other HRIS knowledge.
Salesforce or other CRM and Marketing application knowledge.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations or other ERP knowledge.
Experience writing Macros and complex lookup formulas in MS Excel, creating 3D charts, PowerPoint decks for Executive Reporting, and Jira for managing development, bugs, fixes, and test results.
Possesses a personal affinity for the products of The Los Angeles Times and The San Diego Union-Tribune.
Education:
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or Business (Marketing, Product Management, etc.) or equivalent work experience.
Thank you for your interest in joining our team at the Los Angeles Times! We look forward to reviewing your application.
