at Actalent in Chicago, Illinois, United States
Job Description
Actalent is hiring a R&D Program Manager for a food manufacturing company in the Chicagoland area.
Description:
This role reports to the Global Director of R&D Digital Transformation and works closely with relevant stakeholder groups to drive the Program Management Office (PMO) for R&D Modernization.
This role will be called upon to re-establish the Global R&D Program Management Office for R&D Modernization.
Expected core deliverables from the Program Manager include:
• Establish R&D Modernization Mission Control and Program Management Office: Lead the initiative to establish one source of truth for MW R&D Modernization, which includes linking existing processes to output clear understanding of budget and resource management across portfolio of R&D Digital initiatives. Expected scope includes creating appropriate dashboards and visualization tools to capture and track spending and FTE allocations to enable the R&D leaders to understand investment choices and benefits realized through R&D Digitization and Digitalization activities. The PMO will partner with relevant resources as needed, including Finance, Mars Digital Technology, and R&D subject matter experts to curate the right suite of existing and new tools fit for purpose. In order to maintain command of overall program progress, the Program Manager will perform duties that include coordinating the update of day-to-day workstream and project progress, providing PMO support, tools, and frameworks to ensure progress against deliverables is clear and measurable. PMO services with project teams include operationalizing progress reporting, tracking and visualizing benefits, issue capture and corrective action plan, and change management support with R&D stakeholders.
• Facilitate the R&D Modernization Council: the purpose of the council is to manage stakeholder communications and expectations on Program progress across workstreams, seek decisions from key decision makers, where applicable, and communicate expectations and outcomes with project teams through appropriate communication mechanisms to maintain alignment, including visual dashboards and newsletters, etc.
• Program Management Coaching and Project Management Support: As digital activities span a nascent spectrum of emerging Digital technologies within R&D, the Program Manager may need to step in to upskill teams on how to work through discovery of digital use cases per a data science framework, put parameters around executing test and learns, and build a roadmap path to scale. This role will need to flex and role model project management approaches and structure to create a proxy for others to follow as the overall Program portfolio and platforms are built up. Duties include running workshops to engage teams and doing roadshow events to spotlight use case successes to increase awareness and adoption.
Additional Skills & Qualifications:
• This role is an experience member of R&D Digital Transformation and serves as a business strategy partner to key functional teams on the ever present need to balance program delivery and prioritization of strategic initiatives.
• This role will bring consistency to the team through establishing collaborative ways of working and applying situationally appropriate tools (e.g. meeting notes templates, action trackers, timelines, charters, presentation templates, meeting facilitation guides, reporting dashboards, stakeholder communication documents, etc.).
• The PMO role is focused on the pursuit of continuous improvement of project management activities to maximize the team’s inputs/outputs to achieve our business objectives faster and/or more effectively.
• A Program Manager plays a critical role to ensure that team tacit knowledge is made explicit through the use of business tools for knowledge sharing (SharePoint, One Drive, One Note, etc.) and fosters a team culture of knowledge sharing to maintain business continuity in an environment of constant change in the Digital Transformation arena.
About Actalent:Actalent connects passion with purpose. Our scalable talent solutions and services capabilities drive value and results and provide the expertise to help our customers achieve more. Every day, our experts around the globe are making an impact. We’re supporting critical initiatives in engineering and sciences that advance how companies serve the world. Actalent promotes consultant care and engagement through experiences that enable continuous development. Our people are the difference. Actalent is an operating company of Allegis Group, the global leader in talent solutions.
The company is an equal opportunity employer and will consider all applications without regards to race, sex, age, color, religion, national origin, veteran status, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information or any characteristic protected by law.
