Project Office Manager – Amsterdam Area

I am looking for a Project Office Manager for my client, a leading global provider of cloud and carrier-neutral data center, colocation, and interconnection solutions.

Due to the globalized nature of my client’s customer base, consistent and standardized customer experiences becomes increasingly important together with the goal to improve the efficiency, effectiveness, and scalability of my client’s global workforce.

For above reasons, the Global IT Program Management Office (including teams of Data Analysis & Project Management) has been established and facilitate planning and successful execution of Global Strategic projects, as well as managing the dependencies between those projects.

The Global IT Program Management Office (GPO) works closely together with the IT Domain (-leads) and business stakeholders and other business representatives to ensure that E2E processes & projects are aligned with overall business goals and priorities. Within the GPO I am looking for a Project Office Manager (POM). The POM provides project managers with the guidance, support, coaching on process, best practices and methods needed to ensure successful project execution throughout its lifecycles.

The POM provides clear communication within and outside the GPO The POM oversees the implementation of Global GPO processes, ensuring that information regarding deliverables, risks, issues, project health, and financials pass to and from management and sponsors. The POM GPO operational challenges of the Global GPO are managed and are committed to continuous improvement of Global PMO services and project management methods & standards, incorporating lessons learned from projects and operational duties and incorporating them into improved processes and best practices.

Next to this, the role consists of administrative (e.g., Project Reporting, Document Management etc.) and technological duties (Administrator / SME of the Global Project Portfolio Management (PPM) system: Smartsheet and Intranet).

The POM is reporting directly to the Sr. Director Global IT Program Management

Responsibilities and Duties:
 

• Defining, implementing, and managing processes for project governance or program governance
  • Ensure the agreed project management methods, standards and processes are maintained throughout the project lifecycles;
  • Advise and assist project team members in the application of project procedures, disciplines and recording and reporting standards;
  • Ensuring readiness of program and project health checks, including project schedule and status, risks, and issues, and collating management information from project teams and provide it to all levels of management.

 

• Change Control and Configuration Management of PPM configuration items within e.g., Smartsheet
  • Ensuring project/program management artifacts appropriately signed and entered into the applicable repositories (PPM/SharePoint)

 

• Resource management of project and program talent reserve, including recruitment, training, performance oversight and management, contract monitoring and management, and management of training, job descriptions, and knowledge base content

• Marketing, quality assurance, and continuous development of GPO services to internal customers;
  • Develop and support effective communication mechanisms between the project teams;
  • Provide documentation for Project audits (SOX), reviews and health checks;
  • Co-ordinate and minute project and program meetings, ensuring actions are communicated and delivered as agreed;

 

• Implement and maintain the management information regime across all projects
  • Assist the Project Managers in the production and maintenance of project reports & plans;
  • Develop and maintain the project library, filing, recording, and reporting systems(e.g., Smartsheet);
  • Co-ordinate the production of all reports and produce project summary reports;
  • Define and document procedures in accordance with agreed methodology.

 

• Assisting with advising managers and teams on the best use of project management disciplines and approaches

 

• Project intake and stage gate review and approval, including assuring scope and proper budget, assessing project/program size and complexity, and ensuring appropriate stakeholder engagement and awareness
  • Set up process for recording project costs (together with Finance)

 

• Monitoring project/program performance for projects/programs within Global GPO responsibility

 

• Undertake any other administrative ad-hoc tasks as specified by the Sr. Director Global IT Program Management.

Keys to Success:
 

• Foster a team-driven mindset among project management staff, stakeholders, and sponsors. Possess and shares robust knowledge of project and program management best practices. Ready and able to reinforce them with other project management team members;
• Both detail- and process-oriented. Effective reporting of relevant facts, monitoring performance of projects and project managers, and ensuring compliance to standards;
• Strong communication skills – objective, empirical, diplomatic, and capable of messaging effectively and communicating information to various organizational levels;
• Organized – ready to refer to key content, facts, and figures as needed;
• Pragmatic – highly skilled at the use relevant methodologies, while capable of recognizing obstacles and opportunities, and knowing when is appropriate to use light versus robust methodologies and processes;
• Show leadership!

Essential Knowledge:
 

• Knowledge and experience of formal Project Management methodologies (e.g. SCRUM, AGILE, PRINCE2);
• A high degree of computer literacy, including using MS Office tools in a project environment (incl. MS Project, Word, PowerPoint & Excel);
• Experience of using Smartsheet (= PPM tool) and SharePoint as a document repository.

Competencies:
 

• Experience working in a project or program environment or equivalent;
• Familiar with the concept of project lifecycle and typical problems associated with implementations/roll outs;
• Project planning ability;

 

• Experience of working on IT projects/programs;
• Ability to analyze and present information;
• Proven experience of designing and producing collated status/highlight reports and management information;
• Ability to develop & redesign SharePoint site;
• Excellent Administration Skills.

Qualifications:
 

• HEAO/HBO educated;
• Prince2 trained or equivalent;
• 5-8 years’ experience within a similar role within a Project based environment;
• Experience, as a SME, with PPM system(s). (e.g., Smartsheet or ServiceNow);
• Experience working closely with Project Managers and IT Teams;
• Familiar with financial considerations, business cases etc;
• Language skills: Fluent written and spoken English is essential. Any other European language is an advantage.

Additional Requirements:
 

• With a team in the US & EMEA, you should be flexible with your office hours (potentially the hours during the afternoon, into the early evening (19:00 CET), could be busy)
• Should be willing to travel occasionally, mainly within Europe

Please contact me (robin@i-merge.nl / +31 6 18 843 713) when you are interested to learn more about the vacancy or want to apply.