Project Manager

The Project Manager will lead corporate technology and digital transformation projects for UN Women, including the PRISM platform, ensuring effective project management, stakeholder engagement, risk management, and change management to enhance organizational performance and efficiency.

Responsibilities

• Lead the strategic direction and management of assigned digital transformation projects, including PRISM.
• Provide strategic vision and project management leadership for the assigned projects in collaboration with the Chief, IST, relevant Business Process Owner, and Digital Governance Board.
• Coordinate the technical implementation of PRISM enhancements and stabilization roadmap during 2027, supporting prioritization of improvements, resolution of post-go-live issues, platform optimization, and adoption.
• Act as a trusted and neutral project manager across all business processes and workstreams; oversee and facilitate process improvement discussions between business owners, build project momentum, and manage escalations to Senior leadership and governance bodies.
• Engage and coordinate business owners and focal points across the Organization globally and provide them with updates on the project.
• Ensure that project objectives and proposed solutions remain aligned with Organization’s goals, priorities, policies and capitalize on UN System and industry best practices.
• Provide high-level analysis and advice on project options, priorities, trade-offs, implementation approaches, risks, dependencies, and resource implications to support timely decision-making.
• Monitor, track, and control technical outcomes to resolve issues, conflicts, dependencies, and critical path deliverables.
• Develop, maintain and monitor integrated project plans, including scope, deliverables, timelines, milestones, and resource allocation.
• Coordinate with various departments to ensure that all aspects of the project are aligned and progressing as planned.
• Monitor project delivery, identify variances and constraints, and coordinate corrective actions and recovery plans where required.
• Provide input to and review implementation plans, component plans, contingency plans, milestones, dependencies etc. attached to the project’s high-level deliverables.
• Provide input to and review project budgets to ensure they are based on outputs and deliverables and clearly linked to milestones and project phases.
• Engage with stakeholders at all levels, including senior management, business process owners, technical teams, regional and country offices, end-users, vendors, and external partners.
• Provide regular progress reports to Digital Governance Board and other stakeholders as needed.
• Ensure that stakeholders are appropriately informed, involved, consulted, and supportive of the project's goals and progress.
• Coordinate cross-functional discussions to resolve competing priorities, clarify ownership, and facilitate timely decisions.
• Establish and maintain effective mechanisms for managing project scope, requirements, changes, risks, issues, assumptions,and dependencies.
• Ensure proposed changes are assessed for business value, cost, schedule, and dependency impacts and are submitted to the appropriate governance body for decision.
• Identify potential risks and develop mitigation strategies related to the implementation of the projects.
• Monitor risks throughout the project lifecycle and take proactive measures to address any issues that arise.
• Monitor and report on effectiveness of project risk framework, related controls, and indicators to the Digital Governance Board.
• Identify and manage dependencies across business streams and other corporate initiatives.
• Support the development and monitoring of project budgets, ensuring costs are linked to approved scope, outputs, milestones, and project phases.
• Manage these resources efficiently to avoid delays and cost overruns.
• Plan and coordinate the efficient and effective deployment of human and financial resources required for project delivery including necessary recruitment and procurement of additional resources.
• Monitor resource constraints and capacity risks and recommend to governance bodies on resource allocation and priorities.
• Identify opportunities for efficiency and cost optimization wherever possible.
• Ensure appropriate quality assurance processes are integrated into project deliverables to meet the required standards and specifications.
• Coordinate with business and technical teams on requirements validation, UAT, defect resolution, sign-off and release readiness, as applicable.
• Monitor critical defects and issues through resolution, including post-go-live stabilization activities.
• Develop and coordinate regular communication with the project team, Digital Governance Board, and stakeholders during project implementation.
• Provide updates on project status, progress, and any issues that need attention.
• Support change management activities required to facilitate adoption of new or enhanced systems, business processes, and ways of working.
• Establish and coordinate necessary collaboration with other UN System Organizations and UN Women partners.
• Lead and coordinate the organization and facilitation of workshops and training to ensure ongoing business transformation, process changes, and system evolution is understood and appropriately used by stakeholders.
• Ensure that end-users are trained and supported during the rollout of the new system.
• Coordinate training sessions and provide support to ensure a smooth transition.
• Coordinate the maintenance of a dedicated site of UN Women Intranet to ensure all the relevant documents and training materials are available and accessible to all UN Women personnel in user-friendly manner.
• Promote reuse of lessons learned, templates and project management practices across future initiatives.
• Coordinate PRISM closure, including confirmation of deliverables, outstanding actions, financial status, documentation, lessons learned and transition arrangements.
• Support post-implementation reviews and audits.
• Identify opportunities and lessons learned to strengthen project management governance and practices within IST and across UN Women.

Requirements

• A Master’s degree in business administration, management, project management, Information Technology, or other related fields is required.
• A first-level university degree in combination with two additional years of qualifying experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree.
• Project Management Certification (Prince2; PMI) is desirable.
• Agile/ SCRUM Certification is desirable.
• A minimum of 7 years of experience that combines strategic and managerial leadership in complex IT, digital transformation projects, including planning, design development, and implementation, in large and/or international organizations is required.
• Experience in successfully running software development and product implementation projects is required.
• Experience in organizational change management, risk mitigation, and conflict management is required.
• Experience in roles as a Programme Manager, Project Manager, and/or Business Analyst is required.
• Experience in the development and management of project budgeting, and tracking is required.
• Experience leading a cross-functional team is required.
• Experience working within the United Nations or at a global/corporate level is highly desirable.
• Experience with quality assurance and testing is desirable.
• Experience in data integration across different technical platforms is required.
• Experience with enterprise services like Microsoft 365, Oracle Cloud ERP (or any ERP platform), SaaS, IaaS, and PaaS models is required.
• Experience in the use of standard office software packages (MS Word, Excel, Power Point, etc.), spreadsheet and database packages is required.
• Fluency in English is required, including excellent drafting and editing skills.
• Knowledge of another official UN language is desirable (French, Arabic, Chinese, Russian or Spanish).

Skills

• Project Management
• Prince 2 Certification
• PMI Certification
• Agile Product Certification
• SCRUM Certification
• Strategic Leadership
• Managerial Leadership
• IT Project Management
• Digital Transformation
• Software Development Project Management
• Product Implementation
• Organizational Change Management
• Risk Mitigation
• Conflict Management
• Programme Management
• Business Analysis
• Project Budgeting
• Financial Tracking
• Cross-Functional Team Management
• Quality Assurance
• Testing
• Data Integration
• MS Office 365
• Oracle Cloud Fusion ERP
• ERP platforms
• SaaS Delivery
• IaaS
• PaaS
• MS Word
• Excel
• Power Point
• Spreadsheet Software Knowledge
• Database Software
• Drafting and Editing

Languages

English