IT Program Manager - Operations Digitalization at Mastercard Foundation

Mastercard Foundation is a global foundation based across four hubs in Kigali, Rwanda, Nairobi, Kenya, Accra, Ghana and Toronto, Canada. Our programs promote financial inclusion and advance education and learning in Africa, primarily for young people, and in Canada for Indigenous youth. The Foundation was established in 2006 through the generosity of Mastercard when it became a public company. From inception, the Foundation was designed to be a separate entity and independent from Mastercard. Our policies, operations, and funding decisions are made by our President and Board of Directors.

The Foundation believes that youth employment is key to unlocking prosperity, both for youth and their societies. Enabling young women and men from disadvantaged communities to secure dignified and fulfilling work will ensure inclusive development and economic growth in Africa.

We are recruiting to fill the position of:

Job Title: IT Program Manager - Operations Digitalization

Location: Nigeria

The Opportunity

• Reporting to the Head of Technology PMO, the IT Program Manager - Operations Digitalization, will be required to develop and lead a high performing, multi-disciplinary team.
• The successful candidate will play a key role in fulfilling the vision of product owners and managers, and driving the implementation of products, software and processes and setting standards for the team to follow. Manage delivery in accordance with agreed processes, procedures, governance and strategy, within scope, quality, budgetary and time targets.
• The Program Manager - Operations Digitalization will be responsible for:
• Developing collaborative relationships with IT, business and external parties with a key outcome to transform our ways of working to Agile.
• Understanding the end-to-end business processes, not just the technical components and impact from the product owner’s perspective.
• Collating and analyzing financial information to ensure value-driven decisions taken and understand the impact to the organization, being able to guard the allocated resource budget.
• Ownership and accountability for establishing agile values, methods, principles, and practices for the delivery of projects and products.
• Leading by example and actively engaging and motivating their scrum team.
• Facilitate agile ceremonies, e.g. product backlog refinement, pre-planning, planning, daily standups, sprint reviews, and retrospectives.
• Coach and mentor team members on agile standards and best practices, e., Lean, Kanban, Scrum, XP, DevOps, SAFe, etc.
• Configure and maintain an agile project management tool.
• The successful candidate will be based in any of our listed offices in Africa (Kenya, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Uganda, Ghana, Nigeria and Senegal)

Ways You Can Contribute

• Confirm business requirements (Functional and non-Functional), solution architecture and defining the projects boundary and what is in and out of scope.
• Ensure business requirements are translated into features and user stories, that are in line with the MCF strategy.
• Develop sprint delivery plans for end-to-end products containing business and technical components, including security, data privacy and transition to the support organization and business as usual.
• Manage all aspects of delivering the defined products, business and technical, according to the agreed definitions of done.
• Manage and report on project planning, progress, financials, issues and risks according to MCF PMO Methodology or to agreed Agile Methodology as defined by PMO.
• Manage intra- and interdependencies closely collaborate with impacted stakeholders within the foundation, IT or external to manage dependencies and mitigate risk.
• Establish a project governance with clear roles and responsibilities and an effective process for escalating issues and communicating decisions.
• Define, plan, request and secure resources/skills to meet delivery requirements.
• Make sure 3rd party delivers their products (deliverables), to agreed quality and acceptance criteria and within the agreed contractual framework.
• Manage project budget decisions as well as financial risks and opportunities.
• Develop a robust business case that clearly identifies the total cost of ownership of the solution business benefits and quantifies business value and benefits (for smaller projects benefits should be clearly articulated).
• Construct cost plan, secure funding and actively manage and control spend, forecasts and budgets.
• Conduct a business and technical risk assessment and implement a plan of action with clear ownership to mitigate risk.
• Maintain and keep track of project and program management developments and share knowledge with colleagues and relevant stakeholders.
• Together with Procurement and Legal teams in the foundation, ensure contract scope, terms and conditions are fully understood, revised and suppliers managed within the agreed engagement rules and governance.
• Facilitate process workflow modeling in order to collaborate on process improvements, automation capabilities, and clearly defined end-to-end use cases.
• Facilitate process workshops that involve eliciting process requirements and liaising with users.
• Work with customers to analyze, design, and develop/configure workflows to meet their needs using existing software functionality.
• Collaborate with business and (vendor) IT teams to design new work processes, resolve issues, and develop business/client-friendly solutions.
• Provide support for the adoption of new processes and/or workflows by creating user documentation, preparing communications, and conducting end-user training where appropriate.
• Proactively identify, manage and mitigate risks and issues during the project.
• Must ensure project delivery and deliverables meet the requirements of MCF Standards & Procedures, including those for Cyber Security and legal. To achieve this the project manager facilitates and coordinates the decision making process between the project, business end-user and relevant stakeholders e.g. Security Officer, local P&CI and local Privacy champions.
• Create, manage and maintain RAID, and effectively remove blockers during a sprint.
• Identify and actively engage key internal and external stakeholders and establish collaborative, win-win relations.
• Motivate and manage cross-functional and multi-disciplined project team focused on delivering the end-to-end solution.
• Ensure the project team understands the solution from a user’s perspective and actively manages the transitions of the solution to the Run organization in collaboration with the IT Ops team.
• In partnership with the Business functions, achieve organizational transformation objectives by managing impacts and driving organizational change.

Who You Are

• Bachelor's Degree in IT; Informatics or related is required.
• Masters or Postgraduate qualification in Project Management, IT, Business Administration or related.
• PMP certification advantageous.
• Agile related certifications advantageous.
• Experience in Agile delivery approach – SAFe or Scrum.
• Experience in delivering programs across ERP roll-outs (SAP, Oracle, Microsoft Etc.), HRIS, Finance Systems, RPA (Robotics & Process Automation), system integrations.
• Appropriate project management and/or business analysis training/qualifications are preferred (PMP/PMIBOK, BCS/ISEB diploma, IIBA certification, etc.)
• Possess excellent verbal, written, and presentation skills with the ability to articulate information to a variety of constituents across cultures.
• Flexible, adaptable, and able to execute a range of job duties and changing priorities.
• Possess excellent verbal, written, and presentation skills with the ability to articulate information to a variety of constituents across cultures.
• 8-10 years of experience in an IT project management role.
• Minimum 5 years’ experience in a similar role.
• Experience working as a Project Manager or Lead on projects with small Agile teams.
• Experience in project management and business analysis across several business processes applications, data definitions, integrations, and varieties of infrastructure.
• Experience reviewing and examining business processes and systems, modeling data, organizing activities, and developing business strategies.
• Possess professional maturity, sensitivity with different cultures, and impeccable integrity.
• Commitment to Mastercard Foundation’s values and vision.
• Ability to travel 20% of the time as required.
• Ability to manage multiple projects simultaneously and meet deadlines
• Demonstrates a high level of quality in work products, including diligence and detail-oriented in analysis performed and precision in statements made
• Effective leadership skills and ability to listen, communicate and motivate teams to achieve results. Can demonstrate the ability to manage demanding and challenging stakeholders.
• Demonstrates accountability and leadership.
• Competent ability to deliver under pressure and respond to a changing environment.
• Has worked in and feels comfortable with international, virtual, multi-cultural, multi-disciplined, and high-performance working teams.

How to Apply
Interested and qualified candidates should:
Click here to apply

Application Deadline  10th July, 2022.