Project Manager

AutoNation is one of the largest automotive retailers in the United States and is undergoing a company-wide digital transformation. The Project Manager/Scrum Master will lead technology projects, facilitate Agile ceremonies, coach delivery teams, and apply traditional project management practices as needed. This role will manage project plans, risks, budgets, scope, stakeholders, vendors, and deployment activities to deliver solutions that improve the automotive buying, selling, and servicing experience.

Responsibilities:

• Establish and maintain project governance—cadence, decision forums, and change control—and keep living artifacts current, including the project charter, RACI, RAID/risk log, and decision log
• Develop project plans that manage resources, schedules, and budgets to meet deliverables and reporting requirements
• Track and report key project metrics and budget variances, and lead status meetings, translating delivery status into business impact, risks, and the decisions leadership needs to make
• Manage change requests impacting scope, schedule, and budget through established change control, and communicate impacts to stakeholders
• Actively manage the execution of the project, including assigning work to project staff, managing project scope and finances, and ensuring the quality of deliverables
• Ensure planning of go-live and deployment activities and facilitate their execution
• Keep resource allocations and utilization current and approve team timesheets in the project management tool (Planview PPM Pro)
• Proactively identify, assess, and prioritize project risks; develop mitigation and contingency plans; and maintain a risk/RAID log to track resolution
• Partner with stakeholders, business analysts, and product owners to understand product and organizational impact, and manage vendor implementations
• Define and execute the communication plan for team-level activities, managing expectations and providing status updates to customers and management
• Facilitate and support team ceremonies for one or more development teams, teaching and enforcing the values and principles of Agile while promoting self-organization and the continuous improvement of work standards
• Assist with resource allocation and effective capacity planning to determine what the team can commit to in any given iteration, and monitor velocity to continuously improve efficiency
• Learn and actively use project management and ticket-tracking software (such as Planview PPM Pro and Azure DevOps/Jira) to manage the team’s backlog and sprint-committed items

Requirements:

• • 8+ years of relevant project management experience and a BS degree in Computer Science or a related field, or an MS degree and 6+ years of relevant experience
• • Experience with project management and collaboration tools such as Planview PPM Pro, Azure DevOps/Jira, MS Teams/Office, and SharePoint, and diagramming tools such as Lucidchart, Figma, or Miro (Planview PPM Pro preferred, not required)
• • Proven ability to manage scope, schedule, budget, and resources across multiple concurrent projects in a fast-paced, rapidly evolving environment
• • Demonstrated experience with proactive risk management and project governance, including maintaining artifacts such as RAID logs and applying change control
• • Excellent people and communication skills, with experience collaborating across all levels of the organization, including executive leadership and senior management
• • Results-oriented team player who maintains a positive, can-do attitude and drives collaboration
• • Demonstrated experience managing technology projects using Agile/Scrum methodologies (Scrum and/or Kanban), with the ability to apply traditional/waterfall project management when a project requires it
• • Strong understanding of Agile and waterfall frameworks as well as project management methodologies, tools, and techniques
• • Must meet company's requirements for employment
• • Ability to travel less than 5% between AutoNation work locations as required by work assignments and delivery schedules
• • Work with computers and other common office equipment
• • Work locations are in a corporate office environment with no special physical requirements beyond what is normally expected in a typical modern corporate office
• • Scrum (CSM/PSM) and Project Management Professional (PMP) certifications strongly preferred
• • Scrum (CSM/PSM) and Project Management Professional (PMP) certifications strongly preferred; SAFe and Six Sigma (Green or Black Belt) certifications a plus