The Project Management archetype for Universal Mind has a good mix of technical project management, executive producer and relationship management skills.

A PM at Universal Mind has deep experience driving large, complex enterprise custom development efforts. This individual should have a strong command of not only the user experience process, but also the technical side of managing a complex application development engagement. This individual should also have a good understanding of the technologies and delivery methodologies we employ.

The user experience led approach Universal Mind employs calls for a project manager who has a hybrid personality in that they have experience working within the creative as well as the technical process. The Universal Mind project manager can empathetically straddle both creative and technical processes to ensure we squeeze the most innovation out of every dollar spent.

The way Universal Mind continues to win the work we want to do (and excel at delivery) is by ensuring we quickly build strong relationships of trust and mutual respect with our clients. Through the day-to-day activities of reconciling difficult and different client expectations, politics and relationships across internal lines of business, external partners, etc., the PM at Universal Mind demonstrates our brand promise. The Universal Mind PM should have a healthy collection of client accolades illustrating how they’ve won-over recalcitrant stakeholders and a solid track record of Account Management and/or Business Development.

Knowledge, Skills, Abilities and Education

• Minimum of 5 years experience managing people, technology engagements, tasks and clients with skills and experience in the following areas:
  • Ability to effectively lead and manage multi-disciplinary engagement teams including experience designers, solution architects, developers, quality assurance resources, partners and client resources. locally, at client sites and/or in remote/distributed locations
  • Ability to effectively manage engagement P&L (which required a comprehensive understanding of financial and operation metrics and levers)
  • Ability to build strong relationships within client organizations through quality work and thought leadership
  • Ability to effectively balance client’s needs and priorities with engagement team’s needs and priorities; ability to influence client decisions
  • Budget/schedule development and management/oversight
  • Resource management and forecasting
• Minimum 3 years experience in similar role in a web development firm, IT consulting firm, professional services firm or agency environment; or equivalent transferable client-side experience
• Experience as a PM who has travelled as part of the job and spent time at a client site as a professional consultant who was billed by the hour and expected to deliver commensurate value at those hourly rates
• Experience with or at least good knowledge of agile development frameworks (Scrum, Kanban, etc.)
• Excellent problem solving, research and analysis, technical team building and leadership skills
• Experience preferred, or at least knowledge of the creative/UX process related to user research, interaction design, choreography, animation, visual design, and how these activities and disciplines impact application design and development
• Familiarity with Rich Internet Application development in Universal Mind’s technical space (Adobe Flex, Flash, Air, Coldfusion, Silverlight, Mobile platforms) desired
• PMP (PMI) and/or Scrum Master certification a plus
• Bachelor’s or Master’s Degree in a business or technical discipline required

Duties and Responsibilities

• Responsible for client satisfaction, successful engagement delivery, account revenue growth, and profitability in services provided
• Manage client engagements with client organization in terms of scope of work, communications, schedules, tasks, budgets and resources
• Grows the client relationship in terms of revenue generated and profitability
• Provides leadership, support and ongoing guidance to engagement team members
• Implements engagement review and quality assurance procedures in accordance with Universal Mind methodology to ensure profitable and successful execution of consulting engagements as measured by regional goals and client satisfaction
• Provide weekly status report
• Schedule and host daily/weekly/monthly team (internal and client) meetings
• Maintain project management environment (e.g. Jira Studio) for each client engagement
• Contribute experience, lessons learned, engagement deliverables, artifacts, and templates back into the UM project delivery methodology