Senior Agile Project Manager

Knight Frank is looking to hire a Senior Agile Project Manager to work with the ‘hub’ project team, you will be responsible for ensuring Knight Frank has the best software application available to support the requirements of its growing global business.

The hub project team delivers a bespoke CRM and property database application to satisfy complex requirements, with a multi-lingual web application and mobile app, used throughout the Knight Frank global business.

The person who fills this position will have responsibility for managing the delivery of some of the hub team technical resources, including Knight Frank staff and third-party resources, who form part of our Scrum teams. 

hub is a leading-edge bespoke client relationship and property transaction management system, built using a multi Scrum team model, with Scrum of Scrum meetings.  Components currently are combined into a single release across the Scrums every two weeks, being made up of Business Analysts, Developers, Testers, UX etc.

Knight Frank is the leading independent international property consultancy based in the UK offering agency and professional advice across Commercial, Residential and Rural sectors. Established in 1897, Knight Frank now comprises a global network of over 523 offices in 60 territories. 

Responsibilities:

• Handle various Agile Project responsibilities such as planning, scheduling, coordinating, and managing for several hub projects
• Prepare, manage and distribute the governance needed to meet KF standards including status reports of the project, RAIDS, burn downs and financial forecasts
• Identify and support correction of deviations from plans and perform delivery planning for assigned projects
• Lead Agile ceremonies, daily scrum, planning, demo and retrospectives and demos and mentor others in the Scrum Master role
• Track, escalate and facilitate resolution of Scrum impediments
• Support the Product Owner in managing business Service Line expectations for project deliverables, managing stakeholder communications about delivery, and helping to implement an effective system of project governance
• Encourage collaboration between teams
• Work with Product Owners and other stakeholders to help ensure strategy and execution alignment
• Drive relentless improvement via Inspect and Adapt workshops/retrospectives

Delivery:

• Accountability for one or more projects
• Ensuring your projects focus on the business change as well as any technical development, ensuring a fully rounded project delivery.  
• Scope – Ensuring Scope (In scope and out of scope) is clearly defined at an appropriate level for Agile delivery, approved at initiation and managed and controlled throughout delivery.  
• Risks, Issues, Dependencies and Assumptions - Proactively identify risks, issue, dependencies and assumptions and work to communicate, manage, escalate, and mitigate (or accept in certain circumstances) them successfully throughout the project lifecycle. 
• Roles and responsibilities – Ensure clear roles and responsibilities are set at project initiation across the extended project delivery and stakeholder team, ensuring people understand their responsibilities and commitments associated with these.  
• Governance models – Deploy appropriate governance models to the size of the project – ensuring governance is not over-engineered but maintaining appropriate control. 
• Specialist engagement – ensure that all projects, as part of initiation, engage with the relevant specialist areas to assure delivery and protect Knight Frank.  These include, but are not limited to: Data Protection, Information Security, Legal, Procurement, IT, HR, Accounts, Marketing, Communications and Data Office. 
• Stakeholders - Ensure appropriate stakeholder engagement, encouraging the business to identify value in solutions, be involved in shaping solutions and remain engaged with projects throughout their lifecycle 
• Data / Info security – Throughout the lifecycle of a project, ensure data and info security standards are adhered to  
• Change control – Ensure Scope, Cost and Time changes are managed within tolerance and change control is used to agree those changes beyond tolerance, with robust planning and project management allowing early identification of potential changes 
• Training & Communication - Develop appropriate training and communication plans, working closely with the business stakeholders to shape methods, messages and successful execution. 
• Planning – construct strong project plans – allowing easy identification of issues, ensure these are living documents used to support management of the project and to drive timely escalation – linking in with the Agile backlog and the work distribution across multiple sprints.  
• Produce and maintain key documents, such as: Proposals / Business Cases, Reports, Financial Models, decision matrices, RAID logs etc.
• Chair project steering meetings and present project at Board level (as required) 
• Provide regular reporting to line manager, governance forums and PMO 
• Regularly review delivery to ensure workstreams are on track, but also periodically challenging to confirm initiatives still meet the firms strategic needs. 
• Monitoring suppliers performance against contract (where applicable) 

Financial & Resource Management:

• Be accountable for your project’s costs, budgets and forecasts. 
• Ensure Project spend is periodically reviewed against business case, to ensure timely identification of any overspend risks and appropriate senior review to confirm validity of ongoing business case.  
• Work to assure delivery of financial and non-financial benefits agreed at time of project inception, including close liaison with individual business areas who will own individual benefit commitments. 

Stakeholder Management 

• Identify, build, manage and maintain positive working relationships with core stakeholders across the firm. 
• Utilise stakeholder relationships to maintain good business insight. 
• Use knowledge of stakeholder businesses and their drivers to help influence key decisions, in line with business Objectives.  

Leadership 

• Use your technical and business experience to actively support the Projects Department.  Open challenge is encouraged to ensure we deliver our best for the business 
• Share your knowledge freely, investing in us achieving as a team 

To be considered for the position, candidates should possess:

• Strong team leadership and people management skills
• Excellent knowledge of Agile and Scrum, in a multi-team environment
• Experience of working with in-house and outsource providers, as part of Scrum teams
• 7+ years plus project delivery experience, including bespoke software delivery experience
• Excellent knowledge of Microsoft Office applications, Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
• Preferably hold a project manager qualification, such as: APM Agile PM

Particular Aptitudes/Skills Required

• Listen and support teams in problem identification and decision-making
• Understand and empathize with others
• Support the teams’ commitments
• Be open and appreciate openness in others
• Able to translate complex technical challenges into business accessible conversation

To view other vacancies within the Knight Frank Group click here.