Program Manager, Supply Chain Visibility (Project Hire)

Department Description

The Walt Disney Company, together with its subsidiaries and affiliates, is a leading diversified international family entertainment and media enterprise with the following business segments: media networks, parks and resorts, studio entertainment, consumer products and interactive media. From humble beginnings as a cartoon studio in the 1920s to its preeminent name in the entertainment industry today, Disney proudly continues its legacy of creating world-class stories and experiences for every member of the family. Disney’s stories, characters and experiences reach consumers and guests from every corner of the globe. With operations in more than 40 countries, our employees and cast members work together to create entertainment experiences that are both universally and locally cherished.

The Disney Enterprise Technology (ETech) mission is to deliver technology solutions that align to business unit strategies while enabling enterprise efficiency and promoting cross-company collaborative innovation.  The ETech organization drives competitive advantage by enhancing our consumer experiences, enabling business growth, and advancing operational excellence.  ETech is guided by the principles of being service-focused and easy to do business with, being biased for action and innovation, and being efficient through leverage and continuous improvement.

Team Description:

The Program Manager will be responsible for managing enterprise-level programs and/or multiple projects for the Supply Chain Visibility Program for Enterprise Technology. This Disney Corporate led Initiative is focused on global regulatory and compliance. This individual will work closely with various project owners to define and assign responsibilities, track progress and partner with the Program Managers from various business units. The Program Manager will also be responsible for developing a consolidated view of the program, and for program deliverables including calendars, cross-project dependencies, risk analysis, stakeholder coordination and regular communication of status. Primary responsibilities include guiding program development and managing high-risk, high-impact, strategic projects across a multi-disciplinary, multi-function group of technologists and business professionals across the company for the SCV program. This requires experience communicating across audiences, effectively defining and utilizing escalation paths, and updating executive stakeholders as well as deep technical knowledge of the SCV platform. This deep knowledge is required in order to ensure that delivery teams are following enterprise-wide platform processes and building to suit the platform.

Primary responsibilities include guiding program development and management and managing high-risk, high-impact, strategic projects across a multi-disciplinary, multi-function group of technologists and business professionals across the company for the SCV program. This requires experience communicating across audiences, effectively defining and utilizing escalation paths, and updating executive stakeholders as well as deep technical knowledge of the Appian platform.  This deep knowledge is required in order to ensure that delivery teams are following enterprise-wide platform processes and building to suit the platform. 

The Program Manager works in a dynamic, collaborative environment and reports to Corporate Technology, Director of Solutions Engineering and will support large projects and programs within this space.

 What You’ll Do:

Program and Project Management Delivery

Manages projects, multiple projects, or a program with Engineering teams on development and implementation of products or solutions.  Projects have a distinct beginning and end.  Influences product solutions/development process. Works with clients to understand business objectives and translate them into technical execution plans. Collaborates on configuration/development of system processes. Suggest/evaluate system architecture options. Frame problems, design solutions, alternatives and product strategy for development teams.  Has technical depth/domain expertise to drive project milestones.  This role does not have responsibility over product development but requires a technical background (understanding of software lifecycle, engineering, and product development) in order to complete its overall project management responsibility.  Manages engineering, technical, and procurement activities related to planning, executing, supervising, control of technical and operational.  Monitors the project from initiation through delivery including planning and directing schedules and resources.  A technical program is a group of projects that may span over a year(s).
 

Technical Management

• Oversees project delivery processes and partners with Solutions Engineers and Platform Architects and Product Owners to ensure the technical delivery teams are collaborating on the capabilities of Appian and the associated products and tools

• Experience in systems analysis, gathering business requirements, user/development coordination or as a liaison, design, planning, test case creation/UAT, knowledge management and pre/post implementation analysis would be highly desirable.

 Vendor and International Team Management

• Oversees and align with 3rd party vendor and international team’s PM to ensure deliverables are complete in a timely manner

• Demonstrate flexibility to align with international time zones as necessary

• Evaluates and harmonize vendor’s timelines/schedules and cross-project dependencies to ensure alignment with overall program objectives

• Drives escalations to remediate risks/blockers impeding vendor’s forward progression, as necessary

 Financial Management

• Responsible for finance/budget responsibilities for programs of high complexity and large budgets (<$60M).

• Analyzes, measures and recognizes the financial impact of various project actions, participate in analyzing and using financial data to identify key project issues, and maintains budget tracking and monitors budget expenditures

 Status Reporting

• Prepares program/project status reports to demonstrate project overall health, key performance indicator (KPI), risk, issues, accomplishments, next steps, and escalation requests

•  Proactively identifies and resolves issues and risks on programs/projects to meet program commitments

• Supports executive level project status presentations and dashboards

• Creates data visualization elements to provide a graphic demonstration of project analytics and metrics

 Communication

• Leads with practicality and wisdom in the midst of competing priorities and diverse personalities. Operates as an independent and dynamic program leader. Highly adept at influencing without direct authority

• Facilitates Program update and project team meetings effectively, ensuring the desired outcomes are achieved

• Distributes timely and effective Program or project meeting updates and call to action updates across project teams

• Demonstrates effective communication skills to facilitate project-related conversations with technology senior leaders/managers/directors and service owners alike, and driving tasks and project dependencies to completion across multiple supporting teams

• Escalates need for guidance and support to direct manager effectively 

 Project Management Lifecycle Disciplines

• Working knowledge of the integrated systems lifecycle development utilizing different – and sometimes – multiple development models (e.g., agile, waterfall, hybrid, etc.)

• Demonstrated understanding of product and software development lifecycle processes, procedures, and tools and/or thorough understanding of network infrastructure deployment.

• Demonstrated understanding of technical project delivery with a focus on Agile delivery and Agile delivery tools such as Jira, Rally, VersionOne etc.

•  Supports projects in the enterprise software space (SaaS, PaaS, and On-Prem) with integrations across diverse environments.

• Comfortable at using modern work management and collaboration tools (Smartsheet, JIRA, MS Project on the Web, Confluence, SharePoint/Teams, Slack)

• Manages project document repositories are maintained and updated

 Technical Depth

• Strong Technical services working knowledge in one or more domains with the ability to flex across other domains, including workplaces services platforms and services, on-prem and SaaS/PaaS content and collaboration tools, websites & portals, application delivery, email/messaging platforms, video and voice solutions deployed at scale, workplace devices, support, and authentication; Network and Infrastructure working knowledge: Datacenter migration, wireless refresh, network segmentation, Cloud migration.

Guidance in Program Management Discipline

• Acts as a resource to program management peers with less experience

• Participates in guiding the team to think Lean and be Agile

Required Qualifications & Skills:

• 7+ years of applicable program management experience in a technology environment, preferably for a large company.

• 1+ years experience serving in a leadership role on a small to mid-sized Agile development team that was diligently applying Scrum principles, practices, and theory.

• 3+ years experience in leading technology, multidisciplinary efforts across a large-scale matrix organization

• Proven program-level experience in leading technology projects or multi-threaded efforts

• Proven facilitator that can lead project meetings and workshops driving commitments, accountability, and deliverables

• Demonstrated critical thinking, strategic planning, and process management skills

• Demonstrated experience developing and managing software development project plans

• Proven Exposure to software development lifecycle methodologies (focused on Agile, Lean)

• Demonstrated analytical and problem-solving skills to achieve business results

• Strong interpersonal, organizational, and communication skills and the ability to work effectively across a wide range of constituencies in a diverse corporate and client environment

• Proven ability to deliver projects on time and on budget while communicating with key senior leaders

• Ability to inspire, motivate and lead a team to produce quality work

• Demonstrated inclusive leadership that embraces diversity

• Ability to communicate effectively to executive leadership in both business and technology roles

• Excellent organizational, communication, and time management skills

• Demonstrated ability to develop teams, mentor staff

• Exposure to modern software development and infrastructure tools, processes, and practices, including Jira/Confluence, Agile Development, Cloud, DevOps, Data Management, and SaaS/PaaS.

• End-user experience and a moderate level of competency in the use of modern program and project management tools, such as ServiceNow, PPM, Clarity, Smartsheet, MS Project Online, etc.

• Demonstrates organizing teams through Agile ceremonies, e.g. product backlog refinement, preplanning, planning, daily standups, sprint reviews, and retrospectives.

• Proficiency with a wide range of productivity tools, including collaboration software (e.g., Slack, MS Teams), and standard MS Office tools (e.g., Outlook Online, OneDrive).

Preferred Qualifications

• Prior Disney experience is preferred.

• 1+ year’s experience serving in a Scrum Master role for a software or product development team that was diligently applying Scrum principles and practices.

Required Education

• BA/BS in business, computer science preferred or other technical field or appropriate work experience

Licenses / Training (e.g. professional certifications)

• PMI or Scrum Alliance (or similar) certifications in Program Manager, Project Manager, or Scrum Master competencies are preferred

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