Associate Director, IT Portfolio & Demand Management

Harvard University • Cambridge, MA

1d • Hybrid

About The Position

The Associate Director, IT Portfolio & Demand Management leads Harvard Kennedy School IT's (HKSIT) department-wide portfolio governance, demand-management, and quarterly planning practices. Working closely with the CIO, Director of Strategy & Innovation, and HKSIT leadership, the role translates School and departmental priorities into an integrated portfolio spanning strategic initiatives, projects, major operational commitments, service improvements, and approved institutional demand. Across this portfolio, commitments are clearly defined with accountable owners, expected outcomes, target dates, dependencies, capacity decisions, and regular executive review.

The Associate Director maintains the authoritative view of HKSIT’s material active and proposed work, establishes consistent standards for planning and status reporting, identifies stalled or at-risk commitments, and ensures unresolved issues are brought forward for timely leadership action. The role facilitates decisions about what should start, stop, pause, continue, or be deferred as priorities and organizational capacity change.

This position serves as a strategic integrator across planning, operations, governance, stakeholder engagement, and delivery. It helps HKSIT engage earlier in institutional conversations so that business needs, desired experiences, expected outcomes, and alternatives are understood before an organizational or technology solution is selected.

By connecting early demand and institutional planning with execution, operational support, and outcome review, the role helps leadership understand tradeoffs, remove impediments, and keep commitments aligned with School priorities and available capacity. Through this work, the Associate Director helps HKSIT focus its capacity on the highest-value priorities, execute consistently, and solve the right problems for the School before determining the most appropriate solution.

This is a senior leadership position without direct reports. The Associate Director operates through influence, facilitation, organizational judgment, transparent management processes, and executive escalation. Functional leaders and initiative owners retain accountability for delivery, staffing, and results; the Associate Director ensures that material commitments do not remain ownerless, invisible, indefinitely delayed, or disconnected from a leadership decision.

Requirements

• Minimum of seven years’ post-secondary education or relevant work experience
• Eight or more years of progressively responsible experience in portfolio management, program management, demand management, business relationship management, business analysis, organizational operations, strategy execution, or a related field.
• Demonstrated experience managing complex portfolios that include projects, operational commitments, and cross-functional initiatives.
• Experience developing and operating portfolio management, planning, governance, workflow, prioritization, or organizational reporting processes.
• Demonstrated experience establishing accountability mechanisms, identifying delivery risks, and facilitating timely resolution or executive escalation.
• Strong analytical skills with demonstrated experience using operational and portfolio data to identify trends, risks, capacity constraints, and opportunities.
• Demonstrated ability to facilitate decisions involving multiple stakeholders, competing priorities, limited capacity, and organizational ambiguity.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including preparing concise executive-level analyses, recommendations, decisions, and presentations.
• Experience in higher education or another complex, decentralized organization.
• Experience with Business Relationship Management, Business Process Improvement, business analysis, Lean, organizational change management, IT service management, Agile, or continuous improvement practices.
• Experience using ServiceNow, Smartsheet, or comparable portfolio, service-management, workflow, and reporting platforms.
• Curiosity, sound judgment, executive presence, comfort operating in ambiguity, and a demonstrated commitment to continuous improvement.

Nice To Haves

• Relevant professional certification in portfolio or program management, Business Relationship Management, business analysis, process improvement, organizational change, IT service management, or related disciplines.

Responsibilities

• Establish and enforce clear portfolio standards for documenting accountable ownership, intended outcomes, priority, status, target dates, dependencies, risks, capacity assumptions, decisions, and measures of success.
• Maintain the authoritative, comprehensive view of HKSIT’s material active and proposed commitments, including strategic initiatives, projects, annual goals, major service improvements, cross-functional operational commitments, and approved institutional demand.
• Provide leadership with concise, decision-oriented reporting on portfolio health, competing priorities, resource pressures, unresolved dependencies, and commitments requiring intervention.
• Identify work that is stalled, inadequately defined, competing for constrained resources, or no longer aligned with organizational priorities, and drive timely review, escalation, reprioritization, or closure.
• Work across HKSIT leadership so that commitments are clearly defined, appropriately sequenced, and aligned with School priorities and organizational capacity.
• Translate priorities established by the CIO and HKSIT leadership into an integrated portfolio, coordinated action, and visible follow-through.
• Maintain a clear record of material portfolio decisions, including work approved, deferred, paused, redirected, or stopped and the rationale for those decisions.
• Lead and continuously improve HKSIT’s demand-management framework for capturing, clarifying, evaluating, prioritizing, approving, and governing new work.
• Ensure proposed work is evaluated against existing commitments, strategic value, urgency, risk, dependencies, organizational readiness, and available capacity before it is initiated.
• Facilitate early discussions with stakeholders to clarify business needs, desired experiences, intended outcomes, affected populations, dependencies, constraints, and measures of success before implementation approaches are selected.
• Apply Business Relationship Management, business analysis, and Business Process Improvement techniques to evaluate needs through multiple organizational lenses, including process, policy, roles, training, communications, organizational change, data, and technology.
• Develop clear options and recommendations that enable leadership to make informed decisions regarding priority, sequencing, resource allocation, sponsorship, and institutional investment.
• Establish criteria and governance checkpoints that prevent material work from beginning without sufficient definition, ownership, priority, sponsorship, and capacity.
• Lead HKSIT’s quarterly planning and review process, integrating departmental commitments, annual goals, strategic initiatives, major operational work, and emerging demand.
• Facilitate explicit decisions about what should start, continue, pause, stop, or be deferred when priorities, risks, or organizational capacity change.
• Maintain and continuously improve HKSIT’s planning, reporting, and portfolio-management environment using Smartsheet or successor platforms.
• Establish a consistent reporting cadence and clear expectations for leaders and work owners to provide timely, accurate, decision-ready information.
• Convene recurring portfolio and planning reviews that focus on commitments, outcomes, capacity, risks, dependencies, tradeoffs, decisions, and required leadership action rather than status reporting alone.
• Surface missed commitments, unclear ownership, stale status, and unresolved impediments promptly and escalate issues that cannot be resolved through normal coordination.
• Make commitments and progress transparent, recognize accomplishments, and reinforce a culture in which risks are raised early and ownership is clear.
• Work with HKSIT leaders to keep commitments realistic, actively managed, and aligned with available organizational capacity.
• Analyze data from Smartsheet, project portfolios, operational metrics, ServiceNow, and other systems to identify service pressures, trends, delivery risks, capacity constraints, and opportunities for improvement.
• Develop meaningful portfolio, demand, operational, and outcome metrics that support executive decision-making, organizational planning, and continuous improvement.
• Establish practices for reviewing whether completed initiatives and service improvements achieved their intended business, operational, or institutional outcomes.
• Use outcome reviews, lessons learned, and performance data to improve future prioritization, planning, investment, and delivery practices.
• Design, implement, and continuously improve portfolio management, demand management, planning, governance, reporting, and related operational processes that strengthen HKSIT’s effectiveness.
• Evaluate existing operating models and introduce practical improvements that simplify work, clarify decision rights, strengthen accountability, improve visibility, and increase consistent execution.
• Build productive relationships with stakeholders across Harvard Kennedy School and the broader Harvard community.
• Facilitate conversations that help departments define institutional needs, evaluate alternatives, establish priorities, and build consensus around practical, executable paths forward.
• Help diverse stakeholder groups navigate ambiguity by integrating perspectives from strategy, governance, finance, operations, business processes, communications, organizational change, data, and technology.
• Identify initiatives requiring broader institutional coordination, governance, executive sponsorship, or cross-School decision-making.
• Communicate priorities, decisions, tradeoffs, dependencies, risks, and capacity constraints clearly and constructively.
• Support HKSIT’s continued evolution from a technology service provider toward a strategic institutional partner.

Benefits

• Generous paid time off including parental leave
• Medical, dental, and vision health insurance coverage starting on day one
• Retirement plans with university contributions
• Wellbeing and mental health resources
• Support for families and caregivers
• Professional development opportunities including tuition assistance and reimbursement
• Commuter benefits, discounts and campus perks

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed