Job Title: IT Programme Manager
Duration: 12 months
Location: Remote with some travel to London, Bristol or Portsmouth on occasion
Rate: Up to £750 per day via an approved umbrella company
Job Purpose
Our client is looking for a contractor to lead the identification, management, and governance of all programme level dependencies across Group IT. The role ensures upstream and downstream impacts are clearly understood, documented, and proactively addressed to protect delivery performance. The Programme Manager provides early insight into cross portfolio impacts, enabling strategic prioritisation, accurate financial forecasting, and effective resource planning across all IT portfolios. This role operates as a central control point for dependency management, risk visibility, and escalation, strengthening alignment between the Engagement & Delivery Teams (EDT), Heads of Portfolio, and senior stakeholders.
Major Tasks, Activities and Outputs
Dependency & Impact Management
- Manage all programme level dependencies across Group IT projects, ensuring upstream and downstream impacts are fully captured, validated, and monitored.
- Identify emerging cross portfolio impacts early and provide clear insight to Heads of Portfolio to support prioritisation and decision-making.
- Facilitate early engagement with impacted teams, ensuring mitigation plans are agreed and executed to prevent schedule or cost deviation.
- Provide early warning on impacts to Group initiatives, enabling accurate budget forecasting, timely financial adjustments, and effective resource planning.
- Maintain a central view of interdependencies across sectors and functions, ensuring alignment with strategic priorities.
Risk, Constraint & Delivery Assurance
- Monitor, track, and report emerging risks, constraints, and delivery pressures, ensuring early visibility to stakeholders.
- Proactively engage with project teams to drive mitigation activity and ensure issues are escalated promptly where needed.
- Facilitate regular dependency and impact reviews, ensuring all assumptions, risks, and interdependencies remain current and actionable throughout the lifecycle.
- Provide delivery assurance by ensuring dependency related risks are reflected in plans, stage gates, and governance materials.
Stakeholder & EDT Engagement
- Maintain strong working relationships with the Engagement & Delivery Teams, supporting transparent communication and timely escalation.
- Work collaboratively with Heads of Portfolio, Service Managers, Enterprise Architects, and PMs to ensure coordinated planning and decision-making.
- Support preparation of executive level reporting, providing concise summaries of dependency risks, impacts, and required decisions.
Delivery Process and Governance
- Ensure adherence to IT portfolio management processes, reporting standards, and delivery methodologies.
- Contribute to continuous improvement of dependency management, risk reporting, and planning processes across the PMO.
- Provide guidance to project teams on best practice dependency identification, analysis, and documentation.
Person Specification
Qualifications & Experience
- Project or programme management certification (e.g., PRINCE2, MSP, PMP, Agile PM).
- Significant experience managing complex IT delivery portfolios or programmes.
- Demonstrated expertise in dependency management, cross programme impact assessment, and risk governance.
- Experience operating across multi disciplinary IT delivery environments.
- Proven ability to influence and engage senior stakeholders without direct authority.
- Experience working within a PMO or structured portfolio environment.
Technical & Specialist Knowledge
- Strong understanding of planning, dependency mapping, critical path analysis, and scenario-based forecasting.
- Skilled in risk and issue management, portfolio reporting, and cross project coordination.
- Familiarity with Agile, Hybrid, and Waterfall delivery methods.
- Understanding of IT architecture functions and the interplay between design, build, and delivery phases.
- Ability to produce clear, insightful reporting for executive stakeholders.
Key Competencies
- Strong analytical and problem-solving skills
- Excellent communication and stakeholder engagement capability
- Strategic thinker able to maintain a portfolio level perspective
- Collaborative and adaptable, with strong attention to detail
- Able to operate confidently across multi disciplinary teams
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