Program Manager

The Program Manager will be responsible for managing enterprise-level programs and/or multiple projects within the Disney Enterprise Technology portfolio. This individual will work closely with various project owners to define the project team and assign responsibilities. The Program Manager will also be responsible for developing a consolidated view of the program, and for program deliverables including calendars, cross-project dependencies, risk analysis, stakeholder coordination and regular communication of status.

Primary responsibilities include guiding process development at a Program team level, and managing high-risk, high-impact, strategic projects across a multi-disciplinary, multi-function group of technologists and business professionals. This requires experience communicating across audiences, effectively defining and utilizing escalation paths, and updating executive stakeholders.

The Program Manager works in a dynamic, collaborative environment and reports to an Enterprise Technology Senior Manager, Program Management and may support technology programs or projects across from ETech Digital Experience Platforms, Core Systems, and Platforms, Network Infrastructure, Cloud or Operations portfolios.

• Program and Project Management Delivery
  • Accountable for driving execution and delivery of moderately complex projects or programs from start to finish
  • Demonstrates clear understanding of the program’s vision, objectives, scale and scope of work, expected outcomes, business value and impact, timelines, roadmaps, resource level requirements
  • Establishes strong partnerships and engagement with Program or project stakeholders
  • Create full-scale master program and project schedules and communication plans consisting of multiple projects or components
  • Creates governance practices and protocols to control and monitor the program/projects
  • Ensure proactive scheduling of key deliverables, milestones, and deliverable tasks
  • Establish program and project financial forecasts including resource plans and other expense plans
  • Actively participates in process and practice improvements in the project management environment and serves as a catalyst for project management excellence
  • Establishes strong partnerships and engagement with project stakeholders
  • Provides management oversight, aligns and leads cross-functional and international project teams to ensure critical day-to-day program/project deliverables progress forward to deliver specified requirements, objectives, and value
  • Identifies gaps in the project team’s accountability and ownership of deliverables
  • Fosters a team environment of self-organization, retrospect to learn and adapt with the goal of delivering the highest value to our guests and cast

• Vendor and International Team Management
  • Oversees and align with 3rd party vendor and international team’s PM to ensure deliverables are complete in a timely manner
  • Demonstrate flexibility to align with international time zones as necessary
  • Evaluates and harmonize vendor’s timelines/schedules and cross-project dependencies to ensure alignment with overall program objectives
  • Drives escalations to remediate risks/blockers impeding vendor’s forward progression, as necessary

• Financial Management
  • Responsible for finance/budget responsibilities for programs of high complexity and large budgets (<$60M).
  • Analyzes, measures and recognizes the financial impact of various project actions, participate in analyzing and using financial data to identify key project issues, and maintains budget tracking and monitors budget expenditures

• Status Reporting
  • Prepares program/project status reports to demonstrate project overall health, key performance indicator (KPI), risk, issues, accomplishments, next steps, and escalation requests
  • Proactively identifies and resolves issues and risks on programs/projects to meet program commitments
  • Supports executive level project status presentations and dashboards
  • Creates data visualization elements to provide a graphic demonstration of project analytics and metrics

• Communication
  • Leads with practicality and wisdom in the midst of competing priorities and diverse personalities. Operates as an independent and dynamic program leader. Highly adept at influencing without direct authority
  • Facilitates Program update and project team meetings effectively, ensuring the desired outcomes are achieved
  • Distributes timely and effective Program or project meeting updates and call to action updates across project teams
  • Demonstrates effective communication skills to facilitate project-related conversations with technology senior leaders/managers/directors and service owners alike, and driving tasks and project dependencies to completion across multiple supporting teams
  • Escalates need for guidance and support to direct manager effectively

• Project Management Lifecycle Disciplines
  • Working knowledge of the integrated systems lifecycle development utilizing different – and sometimes – multiple development models (e.g., agile, waterfall, hybrid, etc.)
  • Demonstrated understanding of product and software development lifecycle processes, procedures, and tools and/or thorough understanding of network infrastructure deployment.
  • Demonstrated understanding of technical project delivery with a focus on Agile delivery and Agile delivery tools such as Jira, Rally, VersionOne etc.
  • Supports projects in the enterprise software space (SaaS, PaaS, and On-Prem) with integrations across diverse environments.
  • Comfortable at using modern work management and collaboration tools (Smartsheet, JIRA, MS Project on the Web, Confluence, SharePoint/Teams, Slack)
  • Manages project document repositories are maintained and updated

• Technical Depth
  • Strong Technical services working knowledge in one or more domains with the ability to flex across other domains, including workplaces services platforms and services, on-prem and SaaS/PaaS content and collaboration tools, websites & portals, application delivery, email/messaging platforms, video and voice solutions deployed at scale, workplace devices, support, and authentication; Network and Infrastructure working knowledge: Datacenter migration, wireless refresh, network segmentation, Cloud migration.

• Guidance in Program Management Discipline
  • Acts as a resource to program management peers with less experience
  • Participates in guiding the team to think Lean and be Agile

• 5+ years of applicable program management experience in a technology environment, preferably for a large company.
• 1+ years experience serving in a leadership role on a small to mid-sized Agile development team that was diligently applying Scrum principles, practices, and theory.
• 3+ years experience in leading technology, multidisciplinary efforts across a large-scale matrix organization

• Proven program-level experience in leading technology projects or multi-threaded efforts
• Proven facilitator that can lead project meetings and workshops driving commitments, accountability, and deliverables
• Demonstrated critical thinking, strategic planning, and process management skills
• Demonstrated experience developing and managing software development project plans
• Proven Exposure to software development lifecycle methodologies (focused on Agile, Lean)
• Demonstrated analytical and problem-solving skills to achieve business results
• Strong interpersonal, organizational, and communication skills and the ability to work effectively across a wide range of constituencies in a diverse corporate and client environment
• Proven ability to deliver projects on time and on budget while communicating with key senior leaders
• Ability to inspire, motivate and lead a team to produce quality work
• Demonstrated inclusive leadership that embraces diversity
• Ability to communicate effectively to executive leadership in both business and technology roles
• Excellent organizational, communication, and time management skills
• Demonstrated ability to develop teams, mentor staff
• Exposure to modern software development and infrastructure tools, processes, and practices, including Jira/Confluence, Agile Development, Cloud, DevOps, Data Management, and SaaS/PaaS.
• End-user experience and a moderate level of competency in the use of modern program and project management tools, such as ServiceNow, PPM, Clarity, Smartsheet, MS Project Online, etc.
• Demonstrates organizing teams through Agile ceremonies, e.g. product backlog refinement, preplanning, planning, daily standups, sprint reviews, and retrospectives.
• Proficiency with a wide range of productivity tools, including collaboration software (e.g., Slack, MS Teams), and standard MS Office tools (e.g., Outlook Online, OneDrive).

BA/BS in business, computer science preferred or other technical field or appropriate work experience

PMI or Scrum Alliance (or similar) certifications in Program Manager, Project Manager, or Scrum Master competencies are preferred

• Prior Disney experience is preferred.
• 1+ year’s experience serving in a Scrum Master role for a software or product development team that was diligently applying Scrum principles and practices.