Job Purpose:

• Lead project implementation by managing medium to large projects to ensure business requirements are delivered within approved scope, schedule, and budget.
• Build and maintain consensus with all project stakeholders in order to achieve project goals, objectives and deliverables.
• Lead the change management process in a systematic approach to enable project transition, integration and continued use of the solution.

Key Responsibilities:
Lead in Project delivery:

• Prepare project initiation documents and ensure commitment and support from business and project sponsors.
• Oversee gathering and confirmation of business, technical and information security requirements for new projects. 
• Prepare RFI/RFQ/RFPs as per documented business requirements.
• Lead end to end management of vendor evaluation, selection and negotiations in collaboration with the selected evaluation committee. 
• Upon successful selection of vendor ensure that the legal requirements, scope of work and performance requirements are considered as per internal guidelines and policies.
• Approve project plans and critical paths for efficient scheduling of project activities. 
• Make recommendations to HOP & Steerco upon analysis of project physical and human resource needs based on project requirements  at project initiation.
• Continuously review the assigned resources to identify gaps that may negatively impact project success and recommend adaptable solutions throughout the project lifecycle.
• Manage and tracking of cross team/squad dependencies.
• Promote project risk management culture throughout the project management. 
• Proactively monitor project progress, identify and resolve issues and risks and implement mitigation plans for escalated items as approved by Steering Committee.
• Develop, maintain and update Project RAID logs while collaborating with identified risk owners on mitigation strategies and escalating issues that require intervention of the Steering Committee. 
• Approve project expenditure and monitor costs against budget as project delivery progresses to guarantee value on delivery of milestones/contract.
• Ensure adherence to the set quality management processes and guidelines to align all deliverables with the project scope and internal governance policies and procedures by performing periodic checks on task performance.
• Ensure end to end quality project delivery.
• Provide proactive visibility of delivery targets and timelines against commitments and progress through continuous communication and management of all stakeholder expectations, queries and clarifications.
• Develop and deliver periodic (monthly and bi-monthly) project status reports and presentations to the various project committees and escalate issues requiring intervention of project stakeholders.

Stakeholder management:

• Manage stakeholders for allocated projects for Kenya and the subsidiaries. 
• Identify all project stakeholders including their roles, departments, requirements, interests, knowledge, expectations and influence levels.
• Develop and implement appropriate engagement strategies for each set of stakeholders based on their profile, impact, priorities and interests in the project.
• Develop and maintain valuable stakeholder relationships with all project partners.
• Continuously engage stakeholders through frequent interactions to ensure alignment and enhance positive influence thereby promoting fast and smooth transitions, outcomes and support. 

Manage Change and implement requisite Project Governance:

• Recommend most viable change management strategies and frameworks aimed at successful implementation of projects and ensuring project budgets are maintained within the approved limits.
• Collaborate with various teams to recommend or implement learning programs and frameworks for continuous adoption of system changes and improvements.
• Prepare and ensure required change documentation and processes including Data migration, User Acceptance Testing (UAT) signoff, Training, ISO; and obtain necessary approvals for the change. 
• Coordinate with stakeholders for production environment set up and processes in readiness for cut over including UAM (User Access Matrix) approval and Service Level Agreements (SLA).
• Supporting training and communication of the impending change of a system or process to appropriate user base. 
• Lead system stabilization after cut -over and facilitate handover and support.
• Prepare project closure documentation for review of overall project delivery versus expected budget, timelines, requirements and learnings; and obtain the sign offs.

Leadership:

• Lead the project implementation teams for the assigned projects.
• Provide leadership and mentoring by guiding, coaching and equipping project teams in tailoring solutions and adapting to unique project situations. 
• Recommend strategies and frameworks for anticipating, responding to and activating appropriate project related changes. 
• Provide leadership through capacity building, coaching, mentoring and supervising performance of assigned departmental resources.
• Support the HOP & Senior manager in monitoring the work of project team members.

Academic Qualifications & Work Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree from a recognized institution.
• 8-12 years direct work experience in a banking environment. 
• Have qualifications in Project management PMP, PRINCE 2 or training in Agile methodologies (Scrum and Kanban).
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills.
• Strong planning and organization skills.
• Strong analytical skills and problem-solving skills.