Knoldus - Junior Project Manager - Agile

Company Profile: Knoldus is a new age startup which is trying to disrupt the Reactive Software Development, Analytics, Machine Learning and Fast Data space. Locations Knoldus is incorporated in India, Singapore, US and Canada and is 100+ people overall. Wondering who we are? We are the only company which has the distinction of being Select partners with

- Lightbend (Scala ecosystem)

- Databricks (Spark in the Big Data space)

- Confluent (Kafka ecosystem)

- Datastax (Cassandra and Graph ecosystem)

We started working on the Scala ecosystem and Spark in 2009 and have gained an industry reputation of being a goto company for Reactive and Fast Data product development. Some of our marquee clients include Google, HPE, EY, Elsevier, BoA, Cisco, VMWare, Huawei, Philips and quite a few silicon valley startups which have gone from being 2 people companies to 50 million dollars + companies Our process focus Strongly Agile and NO to CMM Knoldus software development model called Knolway is based upon the best Agile practices built on the combination of Scrum and XP where concepts such as Domain Driven Design, Continuous Integration, Test Driven Development and Pair Programming are used extensively.

What do we offer?

1. Opportunity to work with top-notch people who are authors, write blogs, contribute to open source community, speak at conferences.

2. Various social events organized by Knoldus (eg. Community events and conferences with the Industry leaders)

3. Flat organization no hierarchies.

4. Official time for doing your own professional growth which includes open source projects, blogging, pod-casting and technical article publishing. Visit http://blog.knoldus.com/ and https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP4g5qGeUSY7OokXfim1QCQ

5. Weekly knowledge sharing program. See http://knolx.knoldus.com

6. Cubicle free workspace, relaxed and fun-filled work atmosphere. Learn more about us: http://www.knoldus.com

Designation: Junior Project Manager

Job Description

1. Role:- 

1.1 Customer Management

- Manage client requests and expectations; coordinate with the client engineering team

- Assist Onsite Coordinator to Set/ negotiate expectations

- Understand (implicit and explicit) customer feedback and adopt in the subsequent deliveries

1.2 Project Management

- Primarily responsible for successful completion of the project on time, on budget, specification with an objective to delight and satisfy customers

- Performing basic project management activities such as planning, budgeting, resource allocation, high utilization, estimation etc

- Providing technical vision for project(s) (Incase of Technical Managers)

- Primary responsibility for project execution, meeting timelines, achieving planned milestones, ensuring quality of deliverable sent to client, project monitoring & control,and project closure. Engage client in all project Sprint cycle activities for quality delivery and reducing risk

- Ensure project documentation is in place, complete, and of good quality and kept in versioning tool

- Supervise and manage project development effort estimation and precisely calculate project size. PM should have ability to convey and convince Project Estimation to the client

- Set architectural and design Guidelines and Checklist

- Manage customization, integration and QA activities

- Supervise, schedule and allocate tasks, integrate, review and produce status reports

1.3 Issue & Risk Management

- Issue escalation and resolution.

- Anticipate risks at customer's end and mitigate early.

- Understand political & competitive threats and strategize to respond to them.

- Issue escalation and resolution.

1.4 Team Management

- Fair and constructive appraisals of team members at a regular frequency

- Ensure that the team works in proper coordination and in sync with the plans - anticipate personal or professional issues and help sort them out

- Supervise and help the Project lead/ team members working with analysts on the feasibility and work ability of a conceptual design by taking high-level functional / technical specifications prepared by the analyst and designing system components to meet the stated need. Also supervise the preparation of functional / technical specifications.

- Mentor team members to match with the Project expectation.

1.5 Account Mining

- Mine the client account for more avenues of working together.

- Discover and create opportunities.

- Ensure account profitability.

1.6 Organizational activities

- Help in Building future capabilities for the company - both with regard to technology development and managerial talent - in line with the company's overall long term strategy. - Communicate company plans and future strategy to the team members with discretion, with the aim of keeping them involved and informed.

- Liaison with other Project managers / project leads to help solve technical issues at a quick pace, and provide for re-use of components / functionalities wherever possible.

- Establishing, updating and sharing good practices and processes for designing, coding, testing, team collaboration, knowledge sharing, communication, configuration management, documentation, etc. for project.

- Ensure compliance of the performance measurement processes laid down by the organization.

- Participating in Staffing activities of the organization.

- Enabling a professional and friendly work environment.

1.7 Scope:

- Project planning, tracking and execution.

- Team issues management and resolution.

- Client issue management, escalation and resolution.

- Risk management & mitigation.

- Compliance of the organizational quality processes.

1.8 Interfaces

- Client, Business / System analysts, Onsite- coordinator, Team members, Support Groups

1.9 Responsibilities & KRA's

- On time and quality delivery

- Risk identification and mitigation in deliveries.

- Project Status Report and drive and own Process adherence in Project

- Manage the relationship with the client and all stakeholders

- Resolving Team issues

- Timely submission of Timesheet and Timely performance appraisals

- Provide requisite support to HR

- Measure project performance using appropriate tools and techniques

- Report and escalate to management as needed

- Create and maintain comprehensive project documentation

- Track project performance, specifically to analyze the successful completion of short and long-term goals

- Ensure resource availability and allocation

1.10 Authority

- Adopt Organizational process per the nature of the Project

- Resource allocation and Management

- Role assignment

- Performance appraisal

- Performance based rewards

- Training

2. Evaluation for suitability:-

2.1 Personality Type

- Proactive, logical and strategic thinker.

- Passionate for Technology and eye for Process

- Smart mature worker and A solution provider.

- Pleasing and approachable personality

2.2 Personality Attributes

- Should show attributes of a - Servant-Leader-

- Good communication skills and good listening abilities.

- Good logical ability and ability to handle ambiguity.

- Focused, Adaptable / Quick Learner.

- Commitment, Proactive and Innovative

- Good Mentor and Interpersonal skills

- Keen sense of leadership and team spirit

- Strong analytical and problem solving skills - Investigates the problem along with team members by questioning to get at the root of it and generates alternatives for solving the problem. Solves complex cross functional problems and develops consensus in decisions.

- Time Management- Organizes own workload to achieve maximum productivity and completes work in a timely and professional manner. Handles multiple short and long term projects by proper planning while anticipating potential problems and planning for contingencies.

- Team Orientation- Seeks and accepts advice, suggestions and constructive criticism from other team members to achieve team goals.

- Ability to give presentations, a good orator and should have a good convincing capabilities.

2.3 Technical Skills & Qualifications Essential

- Holding a degree of BE/ BTech/ M Tech / MCA / MSc (Computer Science) / MBA

- (Systems) or similar, with a strong software development background

- Experience range - between 4 to 8 yrs of experience in leading a software product or Solutions Company.

- Strong inclination towards Process adherence and deep knowledge and practical exposure on Scrum practices

- Excellent client-facing and internal communication skills

- Excellent written and verbal communication skills

- Solid organizational skills including attention to detail and multi-tasking skills

Desirable:-

- Very strong appreciation and knowledge of development processes and various development methodologies

- Ability to see the big picture, plan for a total solution, and then split it into micro level details.

- Exposure to CMM & ISO quality processes, Version control, Configuration management etc.

- Knowledge of estimation techniques and its implementation.

- Should be aware of different processes in Software development and should have command in one of them and should have good knowledge in others widely used processes.

- Maintains a blog in which personal insights and thoughts on program

PMP / PRINCE II certification is a plus