The mission of an IT Project Manager is to make sure that the project stakeholders will benefit from project deliveries according to commitments and expectations by constantly managing the triangle of scope, timing and capacity. In this particular case, we're looking for a Project Manager with a large experience in Infrastructure projects and more specifically in Business Intelligence (BI) Infrastructure projects.
Note that since this BI project may not be a fulltime job, Project Manager in charge could also be requested to manage other Infrastructure or Lifecycle Management projects.
Contextual Information
Some time ago , the need to review our BI IT landscape has been identified and a number of actions were undertaken in order to find the most suitable solution both on the short and on the long terms. Time has come now to consolidate the outcome of all those actions into a bigger project that will consist in a rebuild of our Oracle Datawarehouse.
Project short desciption
The project will restore proper life cycle management for the Oracle DWH and upgrade the performance of the environment to respond to future business needs. In order to bring this complex project to a success, a close cooperation between , our Infrastructure partners, and an external Oracle partner will be needed.
Project is expected to go live during summer 2021.
Main project challenges are
- Coordination of the different parties including the business
- Understanding and portability of the functional requirements
- Short and strict deadline
Project goal and expected outcome
- We want to restore proper lifecycle management and make sure all components underpinning an application are using vendor supported versions. This includes operation system, database engine, Middleware and application version.
- The Oracle Data Warehouse is outdated and needs to be upgraded in order to guarantee security compliancy and operational supportability.
- The DWH is also expected to go through an extra load of +/- 30%. Fear is high that current environment cannot handle this extra load. The new environment will need to be sized correctly to the expected workload.
The delivered environment will need to comply with best practices of
- Configuration for DWH purposes
- Alignment between Dtap environments.
Content of the current DWH needs to be migrated to the new environment.
The new environment will need to be operational, meaning daily load processes and business user consumption applications connected and operational.
Current BI landscape
Our current BI landscape consists of the following components/capabilities
- Data Storage : An Oracle database is the central location to store all information (using different database schemas for different purpose/phase of integration).
- Data integration : SAP Data Services are used to extract, transform and load data from many different sources. For Salesforce we use a specific Simba connector (plugin). For Jira we use a Cdata synch solution and some Market Pricing data is loaded via SAS. SAP Data Services is also used to implement bulk data integration (file interfaces).
- Data visualization : SAP WebI is used for e.g. metering and allocation reporting, while the newer reports (e.g. sales dashboards) are built with Qlik Sense.
- Data analytics/science : SAS and SPSS are used by business for both data preparation and analytics. R, Python and Khiops have been used to create a big customer analytical record
The following Data domains are covered:
- B2C
- B2B
- Genwind
- IT
- Optimisation
- Retail
- Analytics
- Finance
- Wind
- BI KPIs
- Mid Term
- Billing &Collection
- Churn
- Marketing
- Perf Office
- Short Term
- Marketing
- Pricing
- Portfolio
- Sales
- Pricing
- Sales Mgtm
- Marketing
- Services
Current situation
The existing Oracle DWH is outdated
- Hardware is outdated
- Operating system is not supported anymore (Win2008 server)
- Oracle version is not supported anymore (Oracle 11c)
Also the Dtap landscape is not aligned anymore with regard to versions, config and databases.
The current infrastructure and setup is not well configured and sized with regards to
- Applying Oracle best practices for configuring a Data Warehouse
- Sizing with regard to CPU, RAM, I/O
- Maintenance of statistics and other system maintenance tasks
- Oracle is installed on a Windows cluster, but the cluster does not function well
An assessment of the current workload has been done and new recommendations have been presented. A proposal for new Hardware is currently being cost estimated with our Hardware partner.
Principal Accountabilities (the outputs of the job) - Activities and decisions
1- As a Project Manager you will plan and ensure execution of the IT initiatives assigned to you by defining and managing elements such as the scope, solution, planning, budget, risks, resources, dependencies and quality, in close collaboration with your internal clients and subcontractors.
2- You will ensure the complete delivery of the solution by integrating both IT and business stakeholders, where ensuring will be based on the satisfaction of the users of the implemented solution. You will be the trusted companion of your sponsors and stakeholders during the whole project, and especially during the steering committees, and provide them with regular and clear project statuses and prepare actively management decisions requested.
3- You will actively pursue and coordinate the end to end implementation. You will make sure the necessary resources are available and confirmed by the different capacity managers. You will act in a team accountability mode, where you as a PM will be the key spokesperson working closely with key stakeholders such as business process owners, key users, solution architects, Infrastructure managers, business engagement aanagers, ... and other business units where needed.
4- You will ensure that all reports and dashboards always contain the latest information on your project
Knowledge & Skills
Knowledge :
- Great educational background, preferably in the fields of computer science or engineering for technical project managers;
- Solid technical background, with understanding or hands-on experience in software development and Business Intelligence technologies such as Oracle, SAS,SPSS, QlikSense,...
- Master English and at least conversational in Dutch or French;
- Thorough experience in working with project management tools & MS Office
- Ease in project management methodologies
- Experience in Agile framework
- You know the techniques of managing scope-time-budget-quality-risk management
- A good general understanding of business context and complex IT projects technologies and systems including complex and diverse interfaces between systems (Salesforce, SAP, BW, ODBC, ...)
- Experience in Utilities is an asset.
Skills :
- Have successfully ended large and/or complex project implementations, including fixed price projects and 3rd party sub-contractors management.
- Able to work in a team accountability environment and able to forge collaboration between business and IT colleagues;
- Possess client-facing and internal communication skills, both verbal and written;
- Able to manage stakeholders;
- Excellent and proactive organizer with strong tracking and follow-up skills;
- Correct, though , persistent;
- Show discipline and report correctly project status;
- Like to work within a changing environment and under pressure;
- Has leadership skills, even when not hierarchically empowered
- Is able to set and change priorities and perform under pressure
- Analytical skills & problem solver
- Capable to understand fast new technologies
- Prepares for decision, management decision support, including SteerCo & Exec reporting
- Set the pace, prompts for decision
- Good organizer, Common sense
- Solid organizational skills including attention to detail and multi-tasking skills
