Portfolio Manager

Summary
As a Portfolio Manager you will continuously improve Agile Portfolio Management practices, enabling Portfolios to invest in the right things and deliver the most efficient & agile way, with measurable value.

Working as a trusted business partner alongside Portfolio Leadership, you will play a role in the evolution and maturity of lean, agile and product ways of M&S, working closely with teams and across both technical and non-technical areas of the organisation. You will use your partner management skills to implement good Portfolio Management practices providing data, insight and challenge across Product & Programme health.

The best Portfolio Managers are adaptable, obsessed with delivering strategic value, providing thought leadership - generating ideas that inspire and influence others. Being creative and persistent, constantly advocating continuous improvement, building trust, problem solving, and a great communicator resulting in delivering the most value for the business.
All the details

What's in it for you

Being a part of M&S is exactly that - playing your part to bring the magic of M&S to our customers every day. We're an inclusive, dynamic, exciting, and ever evolving business built on doing the right thing and bringing outstanding quality, value, service to every customer, whenever, wherever and however they want to shop with us.

Here are some of the benefits we offer that make working for M&S just that little bit more special...

• After completing your probationary period, you'll receive 20% colleague discount across all M&S products and many of our third-party brands for you and a member of your household.
• Competitive holiday entitlement with the potential to buy extra holiday days!
• Discretionary bonus schemes awarded based on how you achieve your personal objectives and our performance as a business.
• A generous Defined Contribution Pension Scheme and Life Assurance.
• A dedicated welcome to our teams with a tailored induction and a wide range of training programmes to develop your skills.
• Amazing perks and discounts via our M&S Choices portal to maximise your financial and personal wellbeing.
• Industry-leading parental, adoption and neonatal policies, providing support and flexibility for your family.
• Access to a fantastic range of wellbeing support for all colleagues including access to our 24/7 Virtual GP and PAM Assist to support you and your family.
• A charity volunteer day to support a charity or cause you're passionate about through a dedicated day away from work.

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What you'll do

• Champion and drive Agile Portfolio Management practices and continuous improvement approach, ensuring consistency and standard methodology approaches are used for cost, resource, benefits tracking; delivery metrics and product ways of working (adapting and amending where appropriate for each portfolio)
• Document, maintain and share standard methodology from across the Portfolios to ensure that each Leadership Area and their team has the ability to reuse the best on offer
• Develop strong, trusted partnerships with one or more Portfolio Leadership Teams, providing insight and challenge across all areas of Portfolio Management
• Operate the Portfolio model for the business platform providing standard reports, insightful data and recommendation to the Chief Technology Officer/Chief Product Officer (CTO/CPO) to drive action and improvements to standard cadence.
• Challenge on trends across Project/Product Health at a Portfolio level looking for common areas of improvement and ensuring continual improvement plans are in place
• Matrix lead the Supplier/M&S PMO team to ensure production of standardised, accurate, timely and insightful data that underpins the Portfolio operations and governance processes and reporting with a focus on driving automation of processes and reporting wherever practicable
• Support Op Planning and investment prioritisation processes as defined by the CTO/CPOs and Finance Managers. Understand the strategic direction & transformation themes for the Portfolios and the significance of the initiatives being proposed in order to participate fully in prioritisation
• Support the CTO/CPO's and their Portfolio team to assure the quality, accuracy and probability of the business units, with specific focus on the technology change and on-going costs, overall Portfolio do-ability, and benefits realisation (in collaboration with the Finance Manager)
• Actively support the Portfolios during Quarterly Planning including reviewing of dependencies to ensure ownership, and / or identifying areas to include on the CI / Flow backlog
• Working with the Agile coaches to operationalise coaching and learning plans as agreed with the Portfolio Management, Heads Of and CTO/CPOs to drive flow through agile ways of working
• Work as part of the portfolio leadership team to set the next quarterly objectives.
• Inspect & adapt (PIR) review of quarterly results against quarterly objectives & lessons learned
• Facilitate platform prioritisation in partnership with Product, Delivery & Engineering to give Partners clear trade-off decisions and clarity on capacity
• Take an active role in the Community of Practices to develop, share and embed portfolio-level Agile standard methodology across M&S
• Provide quality assurance for objectives and ensure teams are supported in following standards in Portfolio areas.
• Keep up to date with industry trends relating to Business Agility, Product and DevOps and maintain an involvement in industry agile communities to continuously bring new methods and ideas to the organisation

Who you are

• Job knowledge - specialist skills, experiences, qualifications, specific systems or practices relevant to the role, latest function specific knowledge
• Business knowledge - level of commercial awareness, economic, commercial, political experience, industry specific knowledge to differentiate M&S from competitors
• Problem solving - analytical skills, ability to direct, lead and deliver solutions that go beyond existing ways of doing things
• People & Leadership skills - communications, leadership and talent development skills.

Essential

• Over 5 years' experience in technology portfolio management practices across multiple areas, including Agile PMO
• Excellent analytical skills including financial literacy
• Ability to work in a matrixed management environment & able to use influence, logic and negotiation skills to achieve outcomes and improvements
• Self-starter who is able to work independently, including driving an agenda of continuous improvements from a broad range of Partners
• Highly organised and disciplined approach to work where they are able to manage multiple activities at any one point in time
• Ability to work with a range of third-party suppliers
• Knowledge, and active interest, in technology trends
• Experience of delivering change in processes and systems to improve ways of working
• Proficient in MS Excel, PowerPoint and other reporting tools (e.g. Power BI)

Desirable

• Prior experience working in the Retail Industry
• Strong expertise implementing agile tooling e.g. Jira Align

Everyone's welcome

We are ambitious about the future of retail. We're redefining, innovating and leading the industry into a more conscientious, inspiring digital era. We're redefining how we work together and offering our most exciting opportunities yet. Marks & Spencer strives to be an inclusive organisation, trusted and admired by our colleagues, customers and suppliers. Join us and make change happen.

We are committed to building diverse and representative teams, where everyone can bring their whole selves to work and be at their best. We support each other and work together to win together.

If you feel you'd benefit from any support or reasonable adjustments during any stage of the recruitment process, please don't hesitate to let us know when completing your application. This information will be picked up by our team, so we can try and put steps in place to help you be at your best through this process.

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