Senior Project Manager, INOW

Guidewire is a software company that provides a platform for P&C insurers to engage, innovate, and grow efficiently. They are seeking a customer-oriented Senior Project Manager to lead and manage enterprise programs during the implementation of InsuranceNow, ensuring successful delivery and strong customer relationships.

Responsibilities:

• Ability to create, maintain, and ‘own’ Project Roadmap for signed customer support efforts
• Ability to track a Project budget forecast for the duration of customer support efforts
• Manages dependencies and timing between work requests
• Ability to draft statements of work and negotiate with customers
• Provide leadership, management, and oversight of a single or multiple Implementation and Support projects
• Demonstrated flexibility in delivering projects using different SDLC methods
• Provide the project team direction and prioritization of activities per defined and agreed
• Builds and fosters strong and trusted relationships with customers. Owns and manages customer relationships during implementation. Determines the appropriate amount of Project Management ‘on-site’ time required to maintain relationships
• Manages customer expectations at both the Project Team and Executive Level through the Project Lifecycle
• Holds the Guidewire team and customer team accountable to agreed-upon deliverables and associated milestones, sets expectations around impacts of delays, and manages stakeholder expectations throughout the implementation process. Escalates delays and project impacts appropriately and creates appropriate project artifacts
• Captures, manages, and plans mitigation/resolution of project issues and risks
• Manages internal and external team/stakeholder expectations through daily, weekly, and monthly communications with resources/stakeholders at all levels (team through C level)
• Tracks project budget, risks, and issues and reports on a weekly basis, presenting to Customer Sponsor/Steering Committee at least once monthly. Provides suggestions on how to manage delivery to Customer Leadership successfully
• Understands customer Production needs and determines Staffing Model, Release Plan, and Roadmap to meet these needs. Direct team as to this plan
• Balances customer Production Support needs with Implementation activities to ensure overall delivery meets customer needs
• Determines ‘Implementation Support’ budget approach with customer sponsors, and enforces
• Travel based on customer needs; typically with new customer kickoff
• East coast time zone work hours and travel (less than 25%) may be required

Requirements:

• Large enterprise program delivery
• P&C Insurance industry – carrier-side is a plus
• Work in a highly matrixed organization
• Proven track record of delivery success
• SaaS software implementation experience
• Executive level customer facing experience
• Extensive Project Management experience; Must have project experience managing complex enterprise level project(s)
• Experience working across multiple projects, and in a project team environment
• Resource management experience
• Demonstrated skill in working with implementation partners, and managing multi-functional projects including software package implementations and information architecture
• Follows Agile, Waterfall, or other project management methodologies to ensure complete, documented deliverables, controls, issue resolution, risk mitigation, etc
• Very strong communication skills (listening, written and verbal)
• Demonstrated excellent negotiation skills within challenging situations
• Ability to anticipate, mitigate, and resolve risks and conflicts across different stakeholders
• Ability to function successfully within fast paced, complex projects
• Experience working with onshore and offshore resources across multiple geographies
• Technical knowledge of Java enterprise projects and assumes excellent usage level of Microsoft applications stack
• Experience managing the migration of applications and data between on-prem versions and cloud
• Demonstrated ability to lead a team with effective decision making
• PMP, Prince2 or Equivalent qualification
• Degree in related information technology or business background