Project Management Lead

Job Title: Scrum Master/Project Manager

Job Summary:

The Project Manager is accountable for end-to-end planning, execution, governance, risk management, stakeholder communication, and successful delivery of assigned projects. The role ensures that scope, schedule, cost, quality, resources, risks, dependencies, and client commitments are proactively managed while keeping project outcomes aligned to business goals and organizational delivery standards. The Project Manager partners with Program Managers, Delivery Managers, Product Owners, Business Analysts, Scrum Masters, technical teams, vendors, and client stakeholders to drive transparent execution and measurable delivery success

Key Responsibilities:

Project Initiation & Planning

• Understand business objectives, contractual commitments, client expectations, success criteria, and implementation scope.
• Define project scope, assumptions, constraints, milestones, dependencies, deliverables, acceptance criteria, and ownership model.
• Create and maintain a comprehensive project plan covering workstreams, activities, timeline, resources, risks, governance cadence, and control points.
• Work with stakeholders to baseline schedule, cost, quality, resourcing, and delivery approach across Agile, Waterfall, or hybrid execution models.

Execution, Governance & Delivery Control

• Lead day-to-day project execution and coordinate cross-functional teams, workstream leads, Scrum Masters, subject matter experts, vendors, and client teams.
• Monitor project scope, schedule, cost, quality, risks, issues, dependencies, actions, decisions, and change requests through structured governance.
• Ensure project deliverables are completed, reviewed, accepted, and signed off in line with agreed standards and timelines.
• Conduct regular project reviews, status meetings, Scrum of Scrums, governance forums, steering inputs, and escalation discussions as needed.

Project Manager JD | Prepared for hiring / role-definition use

Risk, Issue, Change & Dependency Management

• Identify, document, prioritize, mitigate, and escalate risks and issues with clear owners, target dates, impact assessment, and resolution paths.
• Manage scope changes using a structured change control process, including impact analysis on schedule, cost, resource needs, quality, and contractual commitments.
• Track cross-team dependencies and proactively remove blockers in partnership with delivery, product, technology, operations, and client stakeholders.
• Ensure timely decision-making by highlighting trade-offs, constraints, risks, and options to leadership and client stakeholders.

Financial, Resource & Vendor Management

• Support project budget tracking, effort tracking, billing inputs, cost monitoring, utilization, timesheet governance, and financial health reporting where applicable.
• Plan and manage resource requirements, onboarding needs, allocation conflicts, skill gaps, and capacity risks across project phases.
• Coordinate with third-party vendors and partners to align deliverables, timelines, dependencies, contractual commitments, and performance expectations.
• Provide clear visibility on vendor performance, delivery risks, and improvement actions through governance reviews.

Reporting, Communication & Stakeholder Management

• Prepare clear and accurate project dashboards, weekly status reports, RAID logs, milestone views, executive summaries, and client-ready communication.
• Communicate project progress, issues, decisions, dependencies, forecast risks, and recovery actions to internal leadership and client stakeholders.
• Build trusted relationships with business, operations, technology, PMO, vendor, audit, compliance, and client teams.
• Facilitate transparent communication across onshore/offshore teams and ensure alignment on priorities, decisions, and accountability.

Quality, Compliance & Continuous Improvement

• Ensure quality gates, test readiness, defect governance, deliverable reviews, audit checkpoints, and operational handover criteria are met.
• Drive lessons learned, retrospectives, process improvements, tooling improvements, and delivery playbook enhancements.
• Promote disciplined use of project management methods, templates, tools, documentation practices, and organization-level standards.
• Ensure project documentation is complete, current, accessible, and aligned to governance, compliance, audit, and knowledge-management requirements.

Skills and Competencies

Technical / Delivery Skills

Leadership / Consulting Skills

• Project planning, estimation, scheduling, budgeting, tracking, and reporting

• Agile, Scrum, Waterfall, and hybrid delivery governance

• Risk, issue, dependency, and change management

• Jira / Azure DevOps / Rally / MS Project / Excel / PowerPoint / Visio or equivalent tools

• Project financial tracking, effort tracking, and resource governance

• Understanding of SDLC, testing lifecycle, release management, deployment planning, and production support handover

• Strong stakeholder management and client-facing communication

• Executive-level reporting, storytelling, and escalation management

• Leadership across matrix teams and geographically distributed teams

• Negotiation, conflict resolution, prioritization, and decision facilitation

• Problem-solving, analytical thinking, ownership mindset, and attention to detail

• Ability to influence without authority and drive accountability across workstreams

Preferred Domain Exposure

IT services, enterprise product implementation, insurance / life and annuity, TPA ecosystem, LifePRO / LDS, application modernization, integrations, data migration, and client transition projects.

Key Success Measures

• Project milestones delivered within agreed scope, timeline, quality, and budget parameters.
• Risks, issues, dependencies, decisions, and changes are visible, owned, and actively managed.
• Stakeholders receive timely, clear, and accurate status reporting with no avoidable surprises.
• Deliverables are accepted with minimal rework and strong adherence to quality and governance standards.
• Teams understand priorities, ownership, decision paths, and escalation routes.
• Project closure includes complete documentation, handover, lessons learned, and operational readiness

Required Qualifications

Education

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Business Administration, or related field.