IT Director, PMO and Governance - Chicago, United States - Ferrara

Description

Job Location: Chicago

Want to make an impact?

The IT Director PMO and Governance is a key role within Information Technology at Ferrara Candy Company. Ferrara's success and strategic growth initiatives drive our aggressive IT agenda. The IT Director PMO and Governance will lead define, develop, optimize, and govern the processes and tools for the IT Program Management Office. This role works closely with the IT Leadership Team, IT delivery teams, Key business leaders, and with Finance to enable of best practices within the IT PMO, including in budget management. The IT Director PMO and Governance will ensure compliance to annual IT project portfolio planning, annual operating planning / budgeting, and ensure all projects are managed consistently, reliably, and transparently across all IT workstreams. This role will report to the Sr. IT Director Business Partner - Commercial /Growth Function, with governance responsibilities across all areas of IT.

Ways you will make a difference

IT PMO Management

• Drive portfolio and project management best practices to streamline and advance existing PMO processes.
• Facilitate portfolio level prioritization to ensure projects are fully defined with well-articulated business cases and value propositions.
• Develop, implement, optimize, and govern PMO processes, dashboards, templates, policies, and metrics to drive optimal delivery of the IT Project Portfolio.
• Drive transparency across IT project teams; leverage technology where possible to reduce administrative tasks.
• Monitor compliance of project teams to PMO policies and standards.
• Provide IT leaders with the information needed to assess and prioritize projects with the highest potential value, impact, and/or strategic alignment.
• Influence project delivery teams to clarify business priorities, or opportunities and assist with communicating delivery challenges and project risks.
• Prepare IT Portfolio Reviews and establish KPIs to assess the health of the IT portfolio.
• Integrate capacity management as part of project approval processes.
• Escalate to IT leadership issues that threaten the successful delivery of the portfolio.
• Ensure IT PMO processes align to project delivery methodologies (i.e., waterfall, agile, scrum, etc.)
• Delivery Excellence
• Provide onboarding and continuous learning opportunities to the IT delivery teams; Hold project teams accountable to following standards.
• Effectively communicate portfolio status of portfolio across various stages of their life cycle.
• Ensure project teams are in place (both internal and external) to deliver technology-based solutions.
• Manage issues and escalate as necessary when projects within the portfolio are at risk in terms of scope, timelines, and budgets.
• Maintain a thorough understanding of the existing IT application portfolio to challenges the business and IT teams to utilize our existing technology investments before investing in new solutions.
• Manage Corporate Advisory Board processes to ensure all applications in the Ferrara have established change control standards and follow change control processes; Be a leader in the IT organization by following standard ITIL4 project change control processes.
• Establish project close out processes to ensure new applications are correctly documented in Ferrara IT's Application Portfolio, Disaster Recovery, and Financial Capital processes.

Financial Management and Value Delivery

• Manage the monthly financial tracking for the IT Capital portfolio, and partner with FP&A to align on monthly actuals vs forecast.
• Hold project teams compliant to accurate budget and spend management each month. Ensure visibility to the IT Leadership Team.
• Leverage experiences and best practices, to educate and advise project teams on Business Case development.
• Proactively manage and escalate as necessary situations where projects and/or our external partners are not delivering on their commitments.
• Support the IT leadership team with Annual SG&A and Capital planning.

Skills that will make you successful

• Dynamic and enthusiastic personality combining flexibility and creativity
• Strong communicator with the ability to take complex concepts / statuses and translate into digestible formats tailored to the audience
• Proven experience developing project plans and leading projects to completion.
• Proven ability to build and maintain successful relationships across IT leaders, Finance personnel and the wider IT community.
• Creates a climate in which people want to do their best; can motivate up and down in the organization to drive change and process improvements
• Ability to prioritize and execute tasks in a fast-moving environment and make sound decisions.
• Ability to present ideas in a user-friendly language.
• Strong work ethic with a sense of urgency, accountability, and initiative
• Highly self-motivated and self-directed, but able to take feedback and adjust on the fly.
• Occasional travel required.

Experiences that will support your success

• 10 or more years of experience in IT PMO creation, maturity, and management; demonstrated experience to streamline and optimize IT stage gate processes
• 10 or more years of experience in IT program and project delivery; PMP certification is a plus
• 5-7 years' experience managing IT Portfolio Budget with hands on SAP budget management experience
• Bachelor's degree (B.A. or B.S.) from a four-year college or university with 10 years of IT and business/industry work experience.
• Demonstrated experience with developing a PMO and establishing best practices in a cross-discipline IT organization
• Demonstrated ability to Influence and motivate teams to adopt new ways of working
• Ability to work independently and collaboratively to determine and develop approaches to optimize the IT PMO and stage gate processes.
• Prior success managing external IT service providers to deliver solutions; Prior success providing hiring contract Project Management resources to support delivery.
• Will consider application portfolio owners with proven portfolio experience within a single IT discipline or functional area

Ferrara's success in industry-leading innovation has been driven by deep consumer insights, strong retailer co-creation and partnerships, and a dedication to diversity of thought, experience, and people. A privately held company, Ferrara has its global headquarters in Chicago and an operational network of more than 27 locations in North America, Brazil, and China that includes manufacturing, distribution, sales, and R&D facilities. Ferrara is a privately held Ferrero related company. Learn more at or .

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY

We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer. In order to provide equal employment and advancement opportunities to all qualified applicants and employees, employment decisions and opportunities at Ferrara will be based on merit, qualifications, and abilities, without regard to race, color, creed, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, marital or civil union status, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, age, military or veteran status, disability, handicap, genetic information, pregnancy (childbirth or related medical condition), or on any other basis prohibited by law. This policy governs all aspects of employment, including selection, job assignment, compensation, discipline, termination, and access to benefits and training.