Salary: £38,000 to £45,000 pa (depending on relevant experience and qualifications) plus Corporate / PRP bonus (performance and retention
Contract type: 12-month contract with possibility of extension
Core hours: 9.00 to 5.30
Position: Project Manager (Managing 1-2 staff)
About Home Connections
Home Connections is a boutique software services provider that delivers bespoke solutions to the Social Housing sector (which covers Local Authority Housing and Housing Associations). Home Connections is a non-profit distributing company owned by several local authorities.
The Role
This role is to support and assist the Operations Director or senior manager in the full implementation of a project for Local Government or for central government departments, this will include analysis, development, testing, implementation and support.
You will also work alongside other internal teams as well as with our clients to ensure the project is delivered within budget and crucially on time.
Maintaining consistent measurement and documentation across the project is essential.
You will have the following responsibilities:
- Interfacing with clients and stakeholders (at all levels).
- Planning at detailed levels, including scheduling individual development tasks, resource levelling, internal and external dependencies, prerequisites, accommodating change control.
- Timeline mapping including management and escalation where appropriate.
- Working with the department and the Operations Director to define scope, approach and support for the benefits case.
- Coordinating UAT with the customer and setting expectations along with and coordinating any training support that the customer may require.
- Tracking project progress, task completion, actual costs vs project budget, risk mitigation and issue resolution actions.
- Reporting weekly to Operations Director and the department – progress, issues, risk and mitigating actions, budget, and resources.
- Assisting with established processes, administrating, and actively managing all project actions, issues risk, defect resolution and client relationships at project level.
- Day to day management of project activities, ensuring all team members can do planned work and clearing any obstacles hindering progress.
- Involvement and liaison around budgeting and financial control.
As Project Manager you own and lead on:
- the timeline for the workstream
- daily progress and monitoring of the work in development
- communication with client relationship managers (where appropriate) around release timelines and the current work position
- delivery reporting for the workstream (PfB/client reports/reviews)
- timeline and work allocation planning with the Software Development Team Lead when the analysis is complete
- retrospective activities and process improvement sessions to enable team delivery
- interaction with Development and IT support for team dependencies/blockers
You collaborate with:
- The delivery team allocated to the workstream delivery.
- BA’s on the timeline for Analysis completion, to remove blockers and to help move the work along
- Client facing Project Managers to escalate issues which are blocking analysis – (for example, responses needed on outstanding issues or meetings required with business users
- Software Development Team Lead, and IT support to manage dependencies and priorities.
- Where appropriate liaison with client teams and leaders
- Other stakeholders as appropriate to the delivery at hand
- Representatives for release planning to ensure timely delivery of planned releases.
Core competencies
Applicants should provide evidence of their ability to meet the following:
- Experience and knowledge of the social housing business environment – for instance in any of the following: allocations, homelessness, housing options / advice or housing management areas, Housing Management. Desirable
- Good understanding of ICT, the Internet and web-based technologies that deliver services direct to the client. Essential
- Must demonstrate leadership, communication, supervisory, and analytical skills sufficient to define, plan, and manage the requirements of the project. This requires the ability to communicate with client stakeholders to define the requirements of the project, ascertain the targets to be achieved, manage the project budget, and assess project limitations. Essential
Skills and Abilities:
- Strong, well rounded demonstrable project management experience Essential
- Active software development project management experience Essential
- In depth understanding of software development lifecycles Essential
- Experience of Agile Essential
- Good working knowledge of Microsoft based technologies, Office, MS Project, Visio, SharePoint Essential
- Experience with Jira for project management Desirable
- Experience of working to GDS principles Desirable
- Good communication and people skills and high levels of professionalism in varied situations, such as workshop facilitation skills Essential
- Will need to be a team player but working to the scope and escalating any issues as appropriate Essential
- Commitment to good PM practices Essential
- The ability to self-motivate and take ownership of projects and workloads Essential
- Knowledge or experience of working with different data files and formats (XML, CSV etc) and experience of working with XML data transfer routines and diagnosis of data transfer faults. Desirable
- Commitment to Home Connection’s equal opportunities policies relating to service delivery and employment. And understanding of Health and Safety issues. Essential
To apply for this role, please send your CV to ninesh.muthiah@home-connections.co.uk by Friday 30th August.
