Agile Portfolio Planning Head

  • Full-time
  • Business Segment: Corporate & Investment Banking

Company Description

Standard Bank Group is a leading Africa-focused financial services group, and an innovative player on the global stage, that offers a variety of career-enhancing opportunities – plus the chance to work alongside some of the sector’s most talented, motivated professionals. Our clients range from individuals, to businesses of all sizes, high net worth families and large multinational corporates and institutions. We’re passionate about creating growth in Africa. Bringing true, meaningful value to our clients and the communities we serve and creating a real sense of purpose for you.

Job Description

Technology & Architecture

  • Support Solution Train Engineers (STEs) and Release Train Engineers (RTEs) during Programme/Business Increment (PI/BI) and release management planning, and with the establishment of roadmaps for successful execution of strategy
  • Provide guidance and support for capacity allocation in line with guardrails, to ensure that capacity is allocated, balancing the supply and demand of resources, for maintenance and technical debt work
  • Establish and facilitate the portfolio sync to gain visibility into how well the portfolio is progressing toward meeting the strategic objectives
  • Identify potential changes / improvements for the way standard APMO tools are being used; prioritise and implement improvements
  • Facilitate intergroup communication and dependency resolution, ensuring that information is shared openly so that the teams can focus on successful delivery of project objectives
  • Partner with stakeholders across functions to break down barriers to enable teams to optimise flow and to help facilitate resolution of cross-programme dependencies
  • Facilitate alignment dependencies between the project team and third parties, release managers, or between the team and other Scrum Teams
  • Contribute insights to the internal enterprise agility community and participate in external Enterprise Agility communities
  • Identify and pursue opportunities to innovate and improve project execution; recommend enhancements related to new and/or existing workflows based on a broad view of country strategic objectives and the operating model
  • Support the establishment of programme level cadence and support programme level ceremonies (e.g. PI planning, product management council, scrum of scrums, system demo inspect and adapt workshop, etc.) in country

People

  • Play a consultative role and leverage organisational resources to put in place the appropriate people, process, and tools, to improve capacity for project work and team efficiency and effectiveness and coach members of the team as needed to optimise the efficiency of the project teams in country
  • Continuously evaluate time and cost and guide and coach the delivery teams to be committed to their schedules, ensuring proven processes and quality output
  • Provide coaching to the delivery teams (Feature team and Scrum Masters), empowering team members to subscribe and adhere to the new ways of working (WOW).
  • Actively contribute to the banks WOW community through participation in the internal Agile Community of Practice (CoPs)
  • Provide training, support and guidance on the use of standard APMO tools to empower team members to observe the new ways of working (WOW).

Risk, Regulatory, Prudential & Compliance

  • Provide oversight and decision-making of spending, audit and compliance, forecasting expenses, and measurement by applying Lean Governance principles
  • Create and maintain the overall risk profile, assess and manage portfolio level risks, and drive out mitigating actions to de-risk and promote successful delivery of projects in country by surfacing and escalating all cross-portfolio contention that may arise as well as noting projects that could be at risk of contention
  • Guide and ensure implementation of the agile portfolio planning and management toolbox and standards in country, enabling implementation of country technology strategy and efficacy of the operating model
  • Refine and manage project governance structure to ensure successful portfolio execution, including preparation for and facilitation of weekly progress reviews, quarterly programme increment (PI) planning sessions and other programme-level ceremonies (scrum of trains, project demos, etc.)
  • Guide and lead compliance to appropriate delivery processes, standards and procedures and monitor that the documentation and sign offs are adhered to, managed and updated regularly

Strategy

  • Provide measurement support to ensure the alignment of work performed within the portfolio to SBG strategic themes and to enable tracking of the execution of strategy in country
  • Provide input to and adopt frameworks and standards for agile technology delivery and project management in country, ensuring alignment with Group toolboxes, delivery standards and guardrails
  • Participate in ceremonies and forums to align the effort and capacity of the technology function with the country priorities and objectives, making visible progress in short term delivery increments

Client

  • Work collaboratively with business owners, executives and enterprise architects to establish and maintain a portfolio vision aligned to SBG strategic themes
  • Guide and support business owners, executives and enterprise architects to establish and visualise portfolio flow via a portfolio Kanban (or similar method) and  give input to trade-off and prioritisation discussions
  • Work with other members of the APMO/Lean Agile Centre of Excellence (LACE) and RTE / Scrum Master Community of practice (CoP) to optimise portfolio operations,  give input to Value Streams, support programme execution and foster operational excellence

Data

  • Facilitate the efficient production of automated reports using data in the standard toolset and highlighting exception reports to the relevant stakeholders
  • Support Solution Train Engineers (STEs) and Release Train Engineers (RTEs) in the compilation and presentation of progress / status reports that enable tracking and reporting on the delivery of change initiatives
  • Use tools  such as the Lean Portfolio Management (LPM) Assessment to determine improvement opportunities within the portfolio

Financial Management

  • Guide and assist business owners, executives and enterprise architects to shift from project funding, to funding of value streams in line with lean portfolio management practices and standards and to establish and maintain the guardrails to support lean budgets
  • Work with business owners, enterprise architects and other members of the APMO to forecast and budget dynamically in support of lean portfolio principles

 

Qualifications

Type of Qualification: Post Graduate Degree
Field of Study: Business Commerce
Type of Qualification: Post Graduate Degree
Field of Study: Information Technology

Other Minimum Qualifications, certifications or professional memberships

  • Relevant Agile Certifications e.g. Agile/Safe Framework Qualifications (SAFe for Scrum Masters, Advanced Scrum Masters, Release Train Engineer (RTE), Certified SAFe Lean Portfolio Manager (LPM)


Experience Required
Delivery Facilitation / Agile Transformation
Technology
8-10 years
Prior experience in working in a SAFe Program/ Value Stream Layer, demonstrating experience in managing multiple Scrum teams. Proven experience in working under tight deadlines in a project environment. Flexibility to facilitate requests coming from various sources simultaneously and ability to effectively interface with a wide variety of people at all level. Must demonstrate service and team orientation

8-10 years
Prior experience working in large projects identifying cross functional risks and facilitating operational decision making to develop plans that can be successfully executed with the resources available

8-10 years
Significant experience in integrated planning. Knowledge of Agile and Lean frameworks, methods and practices and experience in being a catalyst for organisational change. Experience working in a multi-vendor and outsourced IT environment

Additional Information

Technical Competencies:

  • Agile Development
  • Agile Estimation and Prioritisation
  • Agile Planning
  • Business Process Improvement
  • Project Management (Project Mgmt)
  • Stakeholder Management (IT)

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