AISB - 1067 - IT Project Portfolio Manager (PMO)

Abakus IT-Solutions; Namen; Hybrid; EUR 70,000 - 95,000; Full time

Job summary

Abakus IT-Solutions is seeking an experienced Portfolio and Programme Manager to strengthen the PMO of a public-sector IT department in Belgium. You will oversee priorities, manage resources across development teams, and ensure alignment with business objectives.

The role requires extensive experience in dashboard design, dependency management, capacity planning and Agile/Scrum practices, with strong stakeholder communication and leadership to drive continuous improvement across

Qualifications

• At least 6 years in portfolio and programme management: dashboard design, dependency management, capacity planning and resource allocation.
• At least 3 years in project management methods and techniques.
• At least 3 years managing IT projects using Agile/Scrum practices.

Responsibilities

• Monitor the delivery of projects and business objectives, identify deviations and facilitate the necessary trade-offs or corrective actions.
• Ensure that approved priorities are applied and flag any deviations or priority conflicts.
• Maintain a progress status of business objectives that reflects reality.
• Coordinate resource allocation across teams, for greater efficiency and flexibility.

Skills

Dashboard design

Dependency management

Capacity planning

Resource allocation

Agile/Scrum

Stakeholder management

Communication

Leadership

Tools

JIRA

Power BI

QA methodologies

Job description

Context and project

A public-sector organisation has launched an enterprise architecture initiative. The aim is to establish a reference architecture framework and align the information system with the business strategy.

As part of this initiative, the Project Management Office (PMO) of the IT department’s development service is being strengthened. The PMO monitors the work of the development teams: adherence to timelines and workloads, quality of deliverables, and compliance with functional and non-functional requirements.

The PMO covers four areas:

• Strategic and operational objectives: prioritising business objectives in line with the organisation’s strategy.
• Human resources: allocating resources across all development teams.
• Talent: managing talent and skills, in cooperation with the competence centres.
• Software development framework: optimising the development lifecycle, in cooperation with the competence centres.

Responsibilities

Portfolio and priority management:

• Monitor the delivery of projects and business objectives, identify deviations and facilitate the necessary trade-offs or corrective actions.
• Ensure that approved priorities are applied and flag any deviations or priority conflicts.
• Maintain a progress status of business objectives that reflects reality.

Resource and skills management:

• Manage resource allocation centrally across teams, for greater efficiency and flexibility.
• Ensure each team has all the skills it needs, with a focus on multidisciplinary teams.
• Oversee talent management with the competence centres: training, career prospects, balancing individual expectations with the needs of the service.
• Maintain the development lifecycle and ensure it is properly applied, for the delivery and maintenance (evolutive and corrective) of business applications.
• Coordinate the optimisation of this lifecycle with the competence centres.
• Monitor compliance with the lifecycle within the scope jointly defined at the start of the assignment.

Communication:

• Ensure effective communication across teams and towards internal “client” entities: IT steering committee, urbanisation, operations and helpdesk services, management.
• A consolidated, regularly updated portfolio of business objectives: status, priority, key milestones, dependencies, risks and points of attention.
• Consolidated resource allocation planning: needs, availability, overloads, missing skills.
• An up-to-date map of available and required skills, with recommendations for development, reinforcement or reallocation.
• Periodic dashboards and reports: progress, workloads, timelines, risks, dependencies, pending decisions.
• Communication and reporting materials tailored to each audience: development teams, Product Owners, IT steering committee, urbanisation, operations and helpdesk services, management.
• A software development lifecycle framework, maintained and improved with the competence centres: rules, practices, milestones and deliverables.
• Monitoring of lifecycle compliance, with findings, corrective actions and continuous improvement proposals.
• Minutes of arbitration, coordination and follow-up meetings: decisions, actions, owners, deadlines.

Candidate profile

Experience

• At least 6 years in portfolio and programme management: dashboard design, dependency management, capacity planning and resource allocation.
• At least 3 years in project management methods and techniques.
• At least 3 years managing IT projects using Agile/Scrum practices.

Technical skills

Required:

• In-depth experience as a JIRA administrator (at least 3 years).
• Design, build and maintenance of steering dashboards in Power BI (at least 1 year).
• Implementation of quality assurance approaches.

Nice to have:

• UML2
• BPMN
• Leadership and decision-making.
• Strong interpersonal skills to bring together all stakeholders in an IT project: assertiveness, communication, active listening, conflict management.
• Meeting facilitation and group moderation.
• Ability to drive continuous improvement and foster collective intelligence within multidisciplinary teams.