Job description

Allen & Overy is a leading global law firm operating in over thirty countries. By turning our insight, technology and talent into ground-breaking solutions, we’ve earned a place at the forefront of our industry. Our lawyers are leaders in their field – and the same goes for our support teams. Ambitious, driven and open to fresh perspectives, we find innovative new ways to deliver our services and maintain our reputation for excellence, in all that we do.

The nature of law is changing and with that change brings unique opportunities. With our collaborative working culture, flexibility, and a commitment to your progress, we build rewarding careers. By joining our global team, you are supported by colleagues from around the world. If you’re ready for a new challenge, it’s time to seize the opportunity.

Department purpose

The Technical Delivery team are responsible for the management of projects, typically (but not exclusively) involving the development and implementation of business processes and standards to meet identified business needs, acquiring and utilising the necessary resources and skills, within agreed parameters of cost, timescales, and quality.

The department has embarked on an ambitious programme of work to provide better business and technology agility through delivery of a new document management system, new devices, new productivity tools and new communication tools.

Role purpose

The Project Manager has responsibility for the full lifecycle (defining, documenting and delivering) of projects with varying degrees of complexity, duration and budget.

Role and responsibilities

Business / IT Strategy

• Ensure robust business cases are developed in conjunction with the business, architects and Relationship Managers.
• Ensure that the right level of business support and signoff is obtained and the business focuses on developing project acceptance criteria, training, relevant process and procedure updates
• Work with stakeholders, IT colleagues and suppliers to ensure the most cost effective, timely & appropriate IT solutions are developed to fulfil the commercial and business requirements to agreed quality standards
• Establish and maintain good relationships with the business, Global IT and suppliers resolving conflicting priorities or issues that may arise

Business change analysis

• Ensure the business case produced quantifies potential business benefits, with input provided by Business Analysts
• Work with the business to ensure they consider the impact of and are responsible for defining the training requirements and managing the delivery of the training
• Work with Project Sponsors to ensure the benefits identified in business cases have been updated through the project lifecycle 
• Work with the business and the Programme Lead to make ensure they have processes to track and measure business benefits that were identified in the business case post the implementation of the project

Projects & Programmes

• Takes responsibility for the definition, documentation and satisfactory completion of medium/large scale projects (in terms of size and complexity)
• Implements, participates and manages effective governance as per A&O's project framework
• Responsible for day-to-day delivery of the end-to-end IT and Business Change projects
• Provides effective leadership to the project team
• Provide clarity of roles and responsibilities for all involved in the project lifecycle
• Prepares realistic project and quality plans and tracks activities against the plans, providing regular and accurate reports to stakeholders as appropriate
• Review project progress and effectively manage any changing requirements, dependencies, milestones, risks, issues, and priorities
• Ensure that project deliverables are completed within planned cost, timescale and resource budgets and are signed off
• Ensures that projects are formally closed and, where appropriate, subsequently reviewed, and that lessons learned are recorded

Testing

• Works with the Business and IT project team to define quality and test criteria for both functional and non-functional specifications
• Facilitate the production of  test plans and ensure appropriate resources are available for testing
• Accountable for User Acceptance Testing (UAT) ensuring that acceptance criteria are defined by the business and that the delivered solution is signed off by the business

Risk Management

• Conducts risk assessments, identifies mitigating actions and makes recommendations to the appropriate Project Governance bodies
• Utilises risk management tools e.g.  Risk and Issues log to monitor and manage risks and issues
• Escalate any issues to the Programme Manager or to the appropriate Project Governance bodies
• Advises on the application of appropriate quality and/or environmental management techniques

Key requirements

Business Competencies

• Proven project management experience with a strong track record of delivering medium to large projects on time, to budget and to agreed quality standards 
• Strong verbal, written and presentation skills
• Strong experience in leading, managing and motivating a medium to large sized team
• Well developed people management and organisation skills
• Robust reporting skills, project planning skills and stakeholder management at all levels, particularly at senior levels
• Ability to work under pressure & successfully prioritise & make trade-offs on work & time
• Well-developed commercial acumen and experience of vendor selection processes

Knowledge

• Expert knowledge of the IT investment evaluation process, including cost/benefit analysis, estimating IT cost/resources and financial management within an IT project context
• Strong knowledge of Microsoft technologies and the application development lifecycle.
• Knowledge and experience of project management methodologies 

Experience

• Experience with Microsoft Project (or similar tools) to produce plans for programmes of work and individual projects.
• Experience working within Rapid Application Development or Agile environments
• Experience of risk management techniques;  risk identification, analysis, estimation and mitigation
• Ideally the candidate should be able to demonstrate some of the following or equivalent:
• Degree qualified
• Prince2 Certified Practitioner
• Agile – SCRUM
• PMP - Project Management Professional

Additional information - External

Applications close on Wednesday 20/01/2021 at 5pm