IT Project Manager

Duties and Responsibilities

• Own the end-to-end planning and coordination of assigned technology and transformation projects.
• Establish clear project objectives, scope, deliverables, milestones and delivery plans.
• Develop and maintain detailed project plans showing activities, owners, dependencies, milestones and target dates.
• Coordinate delivery across Business Analysis, Engineering, QA, business teams and third-party suppliers.
• Establish and maintain the project critical path and proactively manage activities that could impact delivery.
• Ensure project dependencies are identified, understood, owned and actively managed.
• Track actual progress against agreed plans and milestones.
• Challenge progress and completion claims where appropriate and ensure project status is supported by evidence.
• Identify slippage early and establish appropriate recovery actions with delivery teams.
• Coordinate project activities through development, integration, testing, UAT, operational readiness and implementation.
• Ensure projects have clearly defined entry and exit criteria for significant delivery stages or gates.
• Support implementation, cutover and post-launch activities where required.
• Ensure projects are formally closed with outstanding actions, lessons learned and ownership clearly documented.

• Establish proportionate project governance appropriate to the scale, complexity and risk of each initiative.
• Maintain project RAID logs covering risks, assumptions, issues and dependencies.
• Ensure actions and decisions have clear owners and agreed completion dates.
• Maintain an accurate project decision log and ensure material decisions are appropriately documented.
• Establish appropriate project reporting and governance meetings.
• Produce concise and accurate project status reporting for Technology leadership and senior management.
• Maintain clear RAG reporting based on defined and consistently applied criteria.
• Escalate material risks, issues, dependencies and decisions promptly.
• Ensure project documentation and delivery evidence are maintained appropriately.
• Support effective change control when scope, requirements, priorities or delivery dates change.
• Maintain traceability between agreed scope, delivery plans and project outcomes.
• Ensure unresolved issues are visible rather than hidden within overall project status.

• Work closely with Business Analysts to ensure project scope and requirements are sufficiently understood before being committed into delivery plans.
• Ensure changes to agreed scope are identified, assessed and controlled.
• Assess the delivery impact of proposed changes across schedule, resources, dependencies and risk.
• Prevent uncontrolled scope expansion and ensure material changes follow agreed governance.
• Ensure assumptions and unresolved business decisions are visible within project planning.
• Support prioritisation of requirements where delivery constraints require trade-offs.
• Ensure launch-critical requirements are clearly distinguished from subsequent roadmap activity.
• Maintain alignment between business requirements, delivery scope and project plans.

• Proactively identify risks to project delivery and ensure appropriate mitigation actions are established.
• Drive issues through to resolution rather than simply recording them.
• Identify cross-project, system, supplier and operational dependencies.
• Ensure dependencies have owners, required dates and clear consequences if they are not met.
• Escalate blockers when they cannot be resolved within the delivery team.
• Support contingency and recovery planning where significant delivery risks arise.
• Maintain clear visibility of decisions required from senior stakeholders.
• Ensure project risks are communicated objectively and without unsupported assumptions.

• Act as a central coordination point for assigned projects.
• Build effective working relationships across Technology and the wider Poole Bay Holdings business.
• Coordinate stakeholders across Technology, Sales, Marketing, Finance, Supply Chain, Operations, Customer Service and other functions as required.
• Facilitate effective project meetings, ensuring clear decisions, actions, owners and deadlines.
• Communicate project status clearly to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Adapt project communication appropriately for delivery teams, operational stakeholders and senior management.
• Challenge stakeholders constructively where actions, decisions or dependencies threaten delivery.
• Ensure stakeholders understand the impact of delays, changes and unresolved decisions.
• Coordinate third-party suppliers and delivery partners where required.
• Prepare project updates and executive reporting for the Group CTO and senior management.

• Work closely with Business Analysts, Lead/Senior Developers, Developers, QA and other delivery roles.
• Facilitate effective planning and coordination across the project lifecycle.
• Ensure teams have clarity around priorities, sequencing, dependencies and delivery expectations.
• Support backlog and delivery planning without taking ownership of business requirements or technical solution design.
• Coordinate resource requirements with Technology leadership.
• Identify capacity or capability constraints that could affect project delivery.
• Support effective hand-offs between requirements, development, QA, UAT and release.
• Help remove organisational and delivery blockers affecting the team.
• Promote accountability while maintaining a collaborative working environment.

• Use Jira and agreed project-management tools to maintain transparent delivery information.
• Ensure Jira and project reporting accurately reflect delivery status.
• Develop consistent project-management templates, controls and reporting practices.
• Identify opportunities to improve project delivery, governance and communication.
• Support implementation of consistent Definition of Ready (DoR) and Definition of Done (DoD) practices.
• Contribute to improving Technology portfolio and resource planning.
• Capture lessons learned and ensure relevant improvements are incorporated into future projects.
• Support the development of a consistent project and programme delivery framework across Poole Bay Holdings.

Person Specification

• Relevant professional experience in Technology Project Management, Programme Delivery or Business Transformation [Essential]
• Recognised Project Management qualification such as PRINCE2, APM, PMP or equivalent [Desirable]
• Agile, Scrum or related delivery qualification [Desirable]

• Excellent project planning, organisation and delivery-management skills [Essential]
• Ability to create and manage detailed project plans, milestones, dependencies and critical paths [Essential]
• Strong risk, issue, dependency and action-management capability [Essential]
• Excellent stakeholder-management and communication skills across technical and business teams [Essential]
• Ability to facilitate meetings and workshops and drive clear decisions, actions and ownership [Essential]
• Strong analytical and problem-solving capability [Essential]
• Ability to identify delivery problems early and develop practical recovery actions [Essential]
• Ability to challenge stakeholders constructively and hold individuals accountable for agreed actions [Essential]
• Excellent written communication and senior-management reporting skills [Essential]
• Strong Jira and project/delivery-management tooling capability [Essential]
• Ability to manage multiple priorities and projects within a changing environment [Essential]
• Strong attention to detail while maintaining an understanding of overall project outcomes [Essential]

• Strong knowledge of project-management principles, governance and delivery controls [Essential]
• Understanding of the software development lifecycle and technology delivery [Essential]
• Understanding of Agile and iterative software-development approaches [Essential]
• Understanding of requirements, development, QA, UAT, release and operational-readiness processes [Essential]
• Understanding of scope and change-control principles [Essential]
• Understanding of integrated technology environments, systems dependencies and third-party delivery [Desirable]
• Knowledge of eCommerce, ERP, PIM, order management, fulfilment or digital-platform environments [Desirable]

• Proven experience managing complex technology, digital or business transformation projects [Essential]
• Experience managing projects involving multiple systems, business functions and delivery teams [Essential]
• Experience coordinating Business Analysis, Engineering, QA and business stakeholders through the delivery lifecycle [Essential]
• Experience managing project risks, issues, dependencies, critical paths and change control [Essential]
• Experience producing project reporting for senior management and executive stakeholders [Essential]
• Experience recovering projects experiencing delivery challenges, unclear scope or significant dependencies [Desirable]
• Experience managing third-party technology suppliers or delivery partners [Desirable]
• Experience working within eCommerce, retail, B2B, distribution, supply chain or other complex operational environments [Desirable]

Benefits

• Hybrid working (up to 2 days working from home after successful training)
• 25 days holiday per annum (including Christmas closure) rising to 26 days after 5 years and 27 days after 10 years, plus bank holidays (pro-rated for part-time staff)
• Enhanced Maternity pay
• Enhanced Paternity pay
• £200 per annum for health and wellbeing activity / gym membership (after 1 year of service)
• Voucher awards for ideas
• Quarterly prize draw (after 1 years service)
• Social committee organising departmental events and activities
• Summer BBQ and/or Christmas party for whole company and partners
• Free parking
• Modern offices with kitchen and break facilities
• Community / Charity day with line manager approval after successful probation
• Opportunity to get involved with events and initiatives to support local charities
• 1 piece of PBH branded merchandise as a welcome / thank you for being part of the PBH team!
• 10% discount at a local independent gym
• Ongoing support, development and training in line with needs of the role and business.
• Financial support to cover cost of specialist eyesight tests for DSE users & glasses for DSE use (including frames that cost up to £50)
• Auto-enrolment for eligible staff - 8% Pension with NowPensions – (3% Employer & 5% Employee on qualifying earnings)