PMO Project Manager

Job Title: PMO Project Manager

About the Springer Nature Group

Springer Nature opens the doors to discovery for researchers, educators, clinicians and other professionals. Every day, around the globe, our imprints, books, journals, platforms and technology solutions reach millions of people. For over 175 years our brands and imprints have been a trusted source of knowledge to these communities and today, more than ever, we see it as our responsibility to ensure that fundamental knowledge can be found, verified, understood and used by our communities – enabling them to improve outcomes, make progress, and benefit the generations that follow.

About the Role:

We are looking for a skilled and passionate PMO Project Manager to work within our Portfolio & Governance department within Springer Nature Technology, reporting to the Director of Portfolio & Project Office. We aim to enable value acceleration across the Springer Nature portfolios for our business and our customers while ensuring a healthy and future-proof technical ecosystem - all at maximum quality and minimum risk.

You will be joining a distributed cross-functional team with different nationalities, backgrounds and experience levels. All team members collaborate to deliver optimal results for our customers, our business and our colleagues, and we are working to create a culture that encourages new ideas and innovation but within the boundaries of the company guidelines that best suit the vision and strategy that Springer Nature has defined.

We are an equal opportunities employer. We work in a relaxed, friendly environment and offer the flexibility to work from home 3 days a week.

About You

You are a proactive, curious person who provides a calm outlook to those around you. You are

willing to probe, question and investigate difficulties as they arise.

You will have:  

• Experience of managing projects through the full lifecycle, from proposal to delivery and beyond.
• Effective leadership, interpersonal and communication skills.
• A broad understanding of different project management methodologies or frameworks and industry standard project management tools.
• Experience facilitating teams in gathering and presenting information to clearly communicate technical context to non technical stakeholders.
• The ability to be super-organised with the ability to juggle multiple priorities and switch context very quickly.
• Experience of working in a PMO environment or an understanding of the key functions of a PMO
• Strong collaboration with multi-discipline project teams of various sizes including Developers, UX Designers, Project Managers, Business Analysts, and QA.
• Experience finding creative approaches to problem-solving with the ability to focus on details while maintaining the “big picture” view.
• The capability to work with teams and abstract information to translate upstream. And ensure that the team's voices and challenges are heard and escalated.
• The ability to work with a sponsor to set up a piece of work, focus them on building an outcome and defining clearly requirements and constraints.
• Excellent oral and written communications skills in English language and experience interacting with both business and IT individuals at all levels of the organisation.
• Ability to navigate the complexities of an international corporate organisation.

Additionally, you might have some or all of:

• An understanding of complexity and systems thinking.
• A proven ability to make progress and find a place to start in the face of ambiguity.
• An understanding of change management.
• Knowledge of technical processes / technical organisation structures and operating models.
• Experience using OKRs or similar frameworks to help teams define strategic objectives.

About the role

As a PMO Project Manager within the Springer Nature Technology Project and Governance Office, you will lead crucial projects supporting the key objectives of the internal team and other technology and business teams we support.

You will work with key stakeholders across the department to understand requirements and support change that drives robust and streamlined governance for all Technology projects. In this role you will:

• Start-up, shape, lead and deliver both internal and external-facing projects for the Portfolio and Governance office, within the agreed time, budget and quality constraints.
• Combine this project delivery with ongoing PMO support for existing and new initiatives, tracking risks, issues and overall project and portfolio health
• Define, document and track project objectives, scope, success criteria, and deliverables.
• Identify, assess, and manage project risks and issues, implementing mitigation strategies as needed.
• Support departmental OKRs, ensuring that appropriate planning is in place and teams are aligned and working towards them.
• Create up to date artefacts that communicate roadmaps, progress, risk, and opportunities at an appropriate level.
• Work with sponsors to set up a piece of work, focus them on building an outcome and defining clear requirements and constraints.
• Communicate with stakeholders in an appropriate format to ensure that they are provided with the required level of information for decision making and are kept well informed of project progress and any potential issues.
• Secure buy-in from business and technology stakeholders and maintain this throughout the project lifecycle, to allow projects to initiate and reach successful completion and adoption.
• Support the management of work resulting from the Demand Intake process.