Director, EPMO - Toronto, Canada - Definity Careers

Description

The Director, Enterprise Program Management Office (EPMO) is an operational leader with experience designing, building, and scaling a centralized corporate program and project management office. They will be responsible for driving the successful execution and delivery of portfolios of programs and projects across Definity

Reporting to the VP Enterprise Portfolio Delivery & Corporate Technology, this director will enable Definity's hybrid and agile program and project management practices and processes – focusing on lightweight process design and implementation, communication and training, and organizational acceleration.

The individual will lead a team of program and project managers serving functions across Definity with a focus on the Claims business but also supporting personal, commercial, product areas, corporate technology, and other enterprise enablement functions.

Major Responsibilities (How Will I Make an Impact?):

• Transform a team of program and project managers leveraging shared best practices to plan, manage, and successfully deliver initiatives on time and on budget
• Drive the successful execution and delivery of programs and projects across a variety of functions
• Partner closely with business owners across Definity to establish lean and agile practices and processes to get work done that is scalable and ultimately deliver business outcomes
• Proactively manage risks, issues, and change to support teams and ensure successful program and project delivery
• Leverage industry best practices to design efficient, effective, lean, and agile program and project management practices, processes, and templates leveraged by PMO; document and evangelize adoption across Definity
• Implement and operationalize portfolio management techniques to provide a cohesive management of programs and projects
• Implement tools and dashboards that enable early insights and data-driven decision-making on programs and projects
• Use systems thinking to facilitate process design and optimization across Definity as needed
• Communicate broadly across teams, senior leadership, and C-level staff – championing transparency
• Build and lead a best-in-class program management office supporting responsibilities

People Leadership and Performance

• Passionate about people leadership and leading effective teams
• Manage a team of program and project managers to champion and create a high performing culture
• Connect your team's day to day accountabilities to Definity's mission by setting clear objectives and performance expectations with your team members
• Coach, provide regular feedback, provide career path and development or growth opportunities, and create a collaborative, transparent and open environment
• Conduct mid-year and annual performance reviews of team members while supporting career growth & development plans
• Collaborate through cross-functional teams to accomplish established corporate and team goals and effectively manage relationships with other Definity teams
• Responsible for supporting vision, planning, and defining team objectives, and leading execution of objectives
• Work with peers and leaders to drive productivity, efficiency, and hold team accountable for high quality outcomes
• Play key role with interviewing, hiring, and onboarding new team members. Provide expertise and coaching/mentorship to the team members
• Produce and actively participate in knowledge sharing as well as professional development initiatives
• Promotes a culture of "we win together" and supports an environment that encourages productivity, collaboration, teamwork, and a high level of professionalism; and resolves conflict among the team

Definity Leadership Competencies (What you'll demonstrate):

• Leads by Example with personal and professional integrity, high accountability and say/do ratio
• Boundaryless collaboration and influence skills both within team, peer group and broader organization. Effective communicator with a proven track record of successful delivery/
• Delivers Awesome Outcomes: Strategic mindset and business acumen, with strong prioritization skills and a focus on organizational outcomes vs. team tasks. Effective problem solver, able to achieve results individually and through others, in fast paced, deadline-driven environments/
• Talent Magnet: Talent-focused leader, with demonstrated ability to coach, build and lead a high performing, diverse team.
• Better, Smarter, Faster: An agile learner, with a growth mindset, attention to detail and organizational skills. An operationally minded leader, with a focus on continuous improvement and innovation.
• Wins Hearts and Minds: An effective communicator, with the ability to connect the why and the what. A change agent, with proven delegation, motivation, and team building skills.

What you'll be doing

Strategy & Planning

• Responsible for the development of intake and prioritization processes for initiatives, working with the EPMO leadership team to ensure that approved projects and programs provide value to the business
• Establishes the appropriate standards, foundational processes, gating / controls to guide EPMO activities in a way that is aligned to the organizational strategy
• Participate and support the annual capital planning process and initiate ways to improve process
• Develops prioritization models, weighting and risk criteria to evaluate initiatives / programs at an enterprise level in collaboration with corporate strategy office, business partners and IT leaders
• Monitors and manages the team's performance against defined standards, procedures and processes, adjusting priorities as required, and regularly communicates performance to the EPMO leadership
• Delivers standardized templates and dashboards to collect initiative / program data across the enterprise
• Continuously innovating on how the EPMO can improve and brings new insights from the industry to the team

Operational Expertise

• Collaborates with all lines of business and internal departments to execute various activities and prepare effective strategies to monitor their implementation
• Sets standards for how projects are run; ensures project management standards are followed
• Introduces common set of practices, principles and templates for managing projects
• Conducts regular reviews of projects, maturity assessments and retrospectives
• Provides project data to support management reviews
• Monitors all projects and maintains record of task details
• Ensures compliance to project schedules
• Evaluates status of project plans to identify and resolve issues and manage all integrated applications for organization
• Monitors and assesses resource allocation across the EPMO to support initiatives; raises resource allocation risks and mitigates where possible
• Establishes SLAs within EPMO on what and how projects are being delivered through the Delivery Gating Framework
• Coaches the team on how to provide articulate and concise project status updates for steercos and other program meetings
• Articulate technical terms and specifications into business terminology and relay technical solutions to business partners
• Weekly leadership reporting on program status and overall team management

Portfolio and Release Planning, Execution & Reporting

Responsible for defining Portfolio and Release Planning strategies at an enterprise level along with other EPMO leaders. The incumbent drives the execution of these strategies and ensures that programs and projects are taken in and released in a way that maximizes returns to Definity.

• Oversees maintenance, revision and reprioritization of the enterprise project portfolio based on input from Steercos & governance bodies
• Identifies / resolves issues at the enterprise portfolio level
• Liaises with EPMO leadership team to provide status updates to the executive team on the project portfolio
• Accountable for the preliminary portfolio impact analysis of opportunities
• Communicates results from the initial business prioritization of projects
• Aggregates and reports on benefit realization at the enterprise project portfolio level
• Monitors and manages the team's progress in the planning of releases, adjusting priorities as required, and regularly communicating progress to the EPMO leadership

Relationship Management

• Ensures alignment of priorities, approaches and activities across teams within the EPMO
• Uses influence and negotiation skills to help achieve EPMO priorities and goals to support Definity's overall strategic plan
• Develops and maintains high-trust effective working relationships with business sponsors, partners and IT stakeholders
• Helps promote/develop IT awareness and technical understanding of business partners and stakeholders
• Review monthly program/project financials to ensure forecasts align to actuals; challenge discrepancies and variances in order to stay within committed SLAs
• Ability to hold project team members and stakeholders accountable to scope, schedule, budget and quality

Competencies (What you'll bring to the role):

• University Degree or college diploma in computer science, business, IT or a related discipline
• 12+ years of experience in Project Management and / or Portfolio Management and/or delivery in a fast paced, high-growth technology market, technology experience preferred
• 7+ years of a successful track record of management / leadership and people management experience in delivering complex, corporate-wide programs and projects on time, within budget, with high quality and aligned to business outcomes
• Must be able to demonstrate the ability to relay complex technical concepts and solutions to business partners and stakeholders
• Must have experience in program and project management financials
• Experience in P&C insurance industry is considered an asset
• Experience with Guidewire cloud platform (Policy Center, Billing Center & Claims Center) is considered an asset
• Relevant industry-related certifications are considered an asset including PMP, Agile, Six Sigma, Certified Scrum Master, Kanban, Prince2 (SAFe, Prosci)
• Strong management skills with the ability to build and maintain effective relationships with business partners, vendors and IT teams to achieve results
• Experience with RFPs, RFQs and RFIs; ability to review, assess and negotiate SOWs with vendors
• Demonstrated ability to think strategically and out of the box thinker
• Strong planning, organizational, prioritization and presentation skills
• Strong written and verbal communication skills; ability to influence and effectively negotiate with stakeholders and vendors
• Demonstrated ability to independently translate strategy, solution complex issues, and drive for results through personal and team accountability, while building strong organizational bridges
• Proven experience defining, implementing, and iterating portfolio, program, and project management practices and processes within a fast-growing technology company
• Comfortable at working across Waterfall, Agile, Hybrid and other methodologies
• Player-coach mentality
• Thorough knowledge of Microsoft Power Point and Excel
• Passionate about building a data-driven organizations and leveraging insights to drive decisions
• Proficient in common project and work management tools (i.e. Microsoft Project, Jira, Confluence, Kanban)
• Experience with change management, process mapping, lean six sigma is an asset
• Outstanding communication and presentation skills with great reputation for communicating highly complex ideas and concepts with simplicity, power, and emotional impact
• Strong business acumen and thrive in an organization that is simultaneously mission, growth, and business driven
• Demonstrated success in building and leading high-performing teams

Salary range is $97,000 - $178,800