Portfolio Manager

at  Nominet

PORTFOLIO MANAGER

Date: 18 Apr 2024
Location:Oxford/ Hybrid, GB
Company: Nominet
We’re Nominet – a world-leading domain name registry. For over 25 years, we’ve been operating at the heart of internet infrastructure. While we’re best known for running .UK domains, we also help protect public services from cyber threat.
Our aim is to create a world which is more connected, inclusive and secure. We know that technology has the power to transform lives by creating opportunities and providing support where it’s needed most.
As a public benefit company, our work funds the ability to make a positive impact on society. We’ve donated millions to projects that use technology to improve peoples’ lives and have committed to delivering £60m worth of support over the next three years.
We understand the impact the Internet has on the environment and are committed to helping the UK reach Net Zero by 2050. We’re already a Carbon Neutral company through offsetting our emissions and will continue to work on reducing our footprint.

INTERPERSONAL SKILLS

Recognises areas within the department where support is required and offers assistance.
Flexible and adaptable in approach.
Professionally manages workload and conflicting priorities.
Able to develop and maintain effective working relationships built on an understanding of others’ needs and expectations.
Appreciates care needed when working in a highly public arena.
A definite attention to detail and planning with strong completer/finisher approach.
Driven to learn, develop and deliver.
Creative and tenacious approach to problem solving.
Excited by new technology, willing to pick up and work with any system no matter how unfamiliar.
Excellent at absorbing and learning new things.
Delivers high quality work at short notice and to tight deadlines.

PROFESSIONAL SKILLS, BACKGROUND AND PROFILE

Likely to be PRINCE2 or PMI and Agile trained and / or to have an expert knowledge of the project management lifecycle process in both waterfall, agile and the blend of both to deliver across the portfolio.
Excellent communication skills with the ability to communicate complex and technical information effectively in written and oral form in a way that can be moderated to a blend of different audiences.
Conversant with change management principles either APMG or PROSCI
Capable of managing a diverse workload and prioritising work to meet business deadlines and navigate executive and stakeholders through the aspects effecting making critical trade-off decisions.
Able to challenge both stakeholders and suppliers on both business, strategic and technical issues whilst maintaining professionalism and maintaining excellent relationships.
Experience working closely with business leaders to document and develop portfolio and business strategies.
Strong team working experience and leadership in managing to resolution across multiple matrixed functions and teams.
An ability to produce easily readable and well-structured text.
Ability to bring clarity to ambiguous situations and build a consensus to resolution with the business stakeholder group.
Able to use data to drive through efficiencies and understand and interpret the risks.
Ability to proactively and strategically think ahead of problems and risks to form the working teams and reaction to obstacles and risks that frequently impact business success.
Excellent understanding of financial budgeting, forecasting and analysis.
A high level of tenacity and negotiation skills in obtaining support, resources and commitment to the agreed direction and delivery.
Ability to multi-task and juggle lots of strands of work with differing priorities.
Stakeholder management including external partners
Experience of managing technical projects would be extremely desirable.

OF ROLE

Nominet is seeking an experienced Portfolio and Program Manager. This role will juggle 3 critical core responsibilities:
It will play a pivotal role in the strategic development, prioritisation and critically the delivery and deployment of a portfolio of business change and technical delivery work.
It will fulfil a vital hands-on role managing multiple complex concurrent projects / work streams within Nominet XXX division and across the wider business, liaising with customers and other departments to ensure a successful project delivery within budget and on time.
Finally, it will require people managing directly the project delivery team within the portfolio both direct line to the project and portfolio managers that sit within the portfolio, but also to dotted line manage the product managers an technical team managers and squad scrum masters that need to be coordinated to deliver work at the multiple portfolio levels.

JOB RESPONSIBILITIES

To compile and maintain a list of all the work active in the portfolio and ensure it is correctly represented on a roadmap.
To perform filtering and strategic analysis of all pieces of work to ensure the portfolio is balanced between Major projects, small projects and maintenance & service work combined are delivering the strategic mission of the business.
To help scenario plan the portfolio to achieve the greatest amount of value and benefits for the given capacity.
To ensure that the portfolio technical obsolescence is understood and remediated as part of the portfolio’s strategic delivery.
To ensure that the delivery, change and impact of the portfolio of work is understood, represented and remediated.
To maintain schedule, workforce planning and financial control of the portfolio to agreed business budget and strategic roadmap
To understand the dependencies between different pieces of work and adjust the roadmap accordingly.
Ensure all work on the roadmap aligns with the organisational wide release and audit cycles.
To ensure that the portfolio conflicts and bottlenecks are understood and dealt with and escalated when organisational inter portfolio issues and trade-offs need to be resolved.
To manage the portfolio of work meets governance and is presented at the required governance and gate reviews.
To ensure that the portfolio is represented and reported using the agreed Management information (MI) format within the monthly governance and reporting cycles.
To ensure that guidance is given to all the portfolio delivery teams of the structure of their work delivery based on the operating model guidance.
To ensure the delivery teams work to the correct operating procedure and processes using the correct systems.
To maintain health checks of performance and process conformance and help the portfolio team correct where actions are required.
To hands on manage projects within the portfolio to ensure the Target operating model process is practiced.
To understand the challenges within work delivery and help adjust and continuously improve the operating model of the organisation.
To look for opportunities to improve the benefits, value and look for cost reduction.
To develop working relationships with all key portfolio and business stakeholders
Working with the technical leadership and product management to ensure prioritisation and capacity delivery of the portfolio.
Working with the technical leadership to ensure correct utilisation and level of capacity and skills within the teams to achieve desired portfolio outcomes.
People & Leadership: communicating and building commitment to a shared vision, supporting business stakeholders to take decisions.
Creating and maintaining a portfolio delivery plan, understanding the critical path and dependencies between key milestones within the projects at a portfolio level.
Identifying, monitoring and mitigating key portfolio risks at a project, programme and portfolio level, documenting in RAID logs and leading the resolution to these.
Mapping stakeholder interest and influence across all work in the portfolio and ensuring stakeholders and sponsors are identified and held accountable for their responsibilities.
Supporting the business to develop benefits plans and mechanisms for monitoring benefits together with identification of the benefits holders and responsible.
Develops detailed business cases in support of projects in partnership with the product manager.
Ensure the team has the right people, with the right skills are in the right roles to ensure effective delivery of key priorities for the team:
Proactively enable and empower our teams to deliver at their best through timely coaching and feedback
Role model a performance driven culture and process, In line with required timelines and processes
Proactively manage performance, conduct or capability cases