Program/Project Manager

Roles/Responsibilities:

• Lead complex, multi-department IT projects that strengthen accountability, transparency, and service delivery, including initiatives supporting public safety transformation and City compliance requirements with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights (MDHR) settlement agreement and the Department of Justice (DOJ) consent decree.
• Plan and manage projects from discovery through implementation, including scope, outcomes, schedules, resources, risks, dependencies, decisions, and success measures.
• Create clarity and momentum in ambiguity. Quickly synthesize information, identify what is known and unknown, clarify decisions and tradeoffs, and translate complex problems into practical plans, priorities, owners, and next steps. Proactively define meeting agendas and document meeting notes and action items to keep stakeholders engaged and aligned.
• Take a proactive, hands-on approach to delivery. Anticipate risks, dependencies, decisions, and barriers; bring forward recommendations and options; and take initiative to move work forward rather than waiting for direction.
• Apply Agile and iterative delivery practices to define outcome-based roadmaps, break complex initiatives into manageable increments, prioritize work, test assumptions early, gather feedback, and adapt plans as the team learns.
• Champion progress over perfection. Help teams identify the smallest meaningful next step, make informed decisions with available information, and continuously improve rather than waiting for every requirement or detail to be known.
• Apply human-centered design practices by engaging and co-creating with users and stakeholders to understand their needs, workflows, pain points, and desired outcomes. Incorporate user feedback throughout planning, requirements, solution design, testing, and implementation.
• Use systems thinking to understand the broader environment in which technology operates, including relationships among people, processes, technology, data, policy, and organizational structures. Identify dependencies and downstream impacts across projects and teams.
• Facilitate cross-functional teams and stakeholder collaboration, creating alignment around problems, outcomes, priorities, roles, decisions, and next steps while maintaining accountability and forward momentum.
• Manage and provide executive readouts on project risks and dependencies from both technical and organizational perspectives, including technology, data, integration, usability, adoption, workflow, change readiness, and stakeholder risks.
• Support organizational change and adoption by considering how technology affects people's roles, processes, workflows, and day-to-day work and incorporating communications, training, readiness, and transition activities into project delivery. Create and implement user-friendly business readiness tools and resources to prepare for key project milestones (e.g. go-live checklists, Pilot plans, etc.).
• Measure project success based on outcomes, including traditional measures of scope, schedule, budget, and quality as well as adoption, usability, operational effectiveness, service improvements, and customer/user needs.

Mandatory Skills:

1. Complex IT Project Delivery: Demonstrated experience leading complex, cross-functional IT projects from discovery through implementation. Strong fundamentals in planning, scope, schedule, risk, dependencies, stakeholder management, vendor coordination, and delivery.
2. Proactive Leadership & Navigating Ambiguity: Demonstrated ability to take initiative, create structure where it does not exist, synthesize incomplete or competing information, anticipate barriers, and turn ambiguous problems into clear decisions, recommendations, owners, and actionable next steps. Shows a progress-over-perfection mindset while applying appropriate rigor to high-risk decisions.
3. Human-Centered & Systems-Minded Problem Solving: Demonstrated ability to understand problems before jumping to solutions; engage and build strong relationships with users and stakeholders; understand workflows and pain points; and consider how technology interacts with people, processes, data, policy, and organizational structures. Uses these insights to shape project priorities and solutions.
4. Agile & Iterative Delivery: Demonstrated experience using Agile principles to deliver value incrementally, prioritize work, test assumptions, incorporate feedback, and adapt based on learning. Look for candidates who demonstrate an Agile mindset beyond simply facilitating Scrum ceremonies
5. Cross-Functional Leadership & Facilitation: Demonstrated ability to lead multidisciplinary teams without relying solely on formal authority; facilitate alignment among technical and business stakeholders; navigate competing perspectives; communicate complex issues clearly; and move groups from discussion toward decisions and action.

Desirable Skills: N/A