Content Project Manager

Cengage Learning • New York, NY

39d

About The Position

The ed2go Content Project Managers (CPM) work closely with internal onshore and offshore ed2go team members and external vendor resources to manage all assigned projects, ensuring that each is properly resourced and delivered on time and on budget. This role is key to maintaining the continuity and quality of our production and overall course catalog. The CPM's primary role is managing the workflows and resources for all project types, including improving and refining processes and procedures, data gathering, and key metric reporting on all projects in process. It is the responsibility of the CPM to consistently lead projects holistically and strategically, while also controlling the resources for each individual project. The CPM role provides mentorship, guidance, and continuous training to the GCPM offshore Operations team members. This role will work with the teams and projects associated with Course Quality and Advanced Career Training roadmaps.

Requirements

• 5+ years work experience in an educational or course production setting
• Minimum of 2 years' experience managing small digital projects
• Demonstrated success managing multiple projects and requisite organizational skills
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills
• Experience or general knowledge of learning design related to adult education and self-directed online learning
• Keen attention to detail, skilled at time management, with excellent organizational agility
• Consultative, cooperative, solutions-oriented, and service-minded perspective
• Experience with vendor management
• Ability to embrace, assimilate, and implement new processes, procedures, and standards in an environment of continuous improvement and change
• Equal ability to collaborate and work effectively and efficiently with a team, as well as autonomously with little supervision
• Extensive experience working with MS Office Suite (particularly Word, Excel, Teams, PowerPoint, and SharePoint)
• Proficiency with technology, including productivity software, databases, project management tools, and cloud-based storage solutions

Nice To Haves

• Preferred: Bachelor's degree in a relevant field or equivalent professional experience and 2+ years work experience in an educational or course production setting
• Experience working with instructional/learning designers or in an educational setting
• A desire to become more proficient in learning/instructional design
• Smartsheet experience is highly desirable
• Experience or general knowledge in programming languages (including HTML, CSS, and JavaScript) preferred.
• 2+ years' experience managing learning design or technical projects
• Demonstrated success managing a large volume of projects simultaneously
• Flexibility and adaptability to thrive in a fast-paced and dynamic environment.

Responsibilities

• Procure and manage key resources including personnel, budget, and schedule.
• Align resources to a project within the approved profile
• Monitor resources and scope alignment, identifying when additional or different resources are needed to bring a project to successful completion
• Negotiate SME and vendor compensation based on project profile, required resources, and available budget
• Ensure that individual projects are properly resourced to achieve projected launch
• Works closely with Content Team, Product Managers, SMEs, vendors, and other ed2go team members to manage project workflow from inception through launch.
• Contract with external resources, including SMEs and vendors, as needed
• Facilitate project communication between team members
• Ensure team access to digital and print products and other materials as needed
• Act as a liaison with the Intellectual Property Team to obtain permissions for text, images, and videos as needed
• Act as a liaison with Creative Studios or other media providers, making the initial requests and working with the production team throughout projects, as needed
• Lead project lifecycle, ensuring projects are on time, on budget, and that all collaborators are working effectively.
• Prepare the project for kick-off, working with Product Manager (PM) to be sure all planning meetings are scheduled, and pre-project documents are ready for team review
• Create and run the production schedule and budget, including Milestone check-in meetings
• Monitor scheduled deliverables
• Ensure all collaborators are aware of potential project blockers and delays
• Work closely with Technical Review (TR) and Configuration for project launch
• Work directly with Cengage Legal to complete contracts for all projects, vendors, and other external resources
• Responsible for implementing key process operations, including the documenting of all key processes and workflows; data updating, gathering, and integrity; and aggregating data into monthly, quarterly, and annual critical metric reporting.
• Assist in the authoring of workflows as new product and project types emerge
• Collaborate with key stakeholders to improve workflow processes, procedures, increase agility, and expand the overall capacity
• Act as an internal authority on Cengage-based systems including Data Warehouse, Alfresco, Teams, Slack, Smartsheet, Single Sign On (SSO), Catalyst, Jira, PLANit, Geyser, IPS etc.
• Provide data that support important metrics related to resource forecast and actual usage
• Suggest new metrics that align with evolving processes
• Align with current best practices for onshore/offshore blending to mitigate delays or reductions to critical production
• Responsible for assisting in the identification, vetting, onboarding, of design vendors hired to create new courses or revise courses currently in the ed2go catalog. CPMs are responsible for all project management tasks, as well as providing some learning design support to vendors to facilitate all stages of development and reduce the reliance on additional internal team capacity.
• Work with Cengage Strategic Sourcing to identify new vendor resources needed to fill gaps
• Review content delivered by the vendor, applying learning design thinking, style guides, and quality standards to delivered content
• Coach vendors on ed2go design and quality standards
• Answer learning design and multimedia design questions by reviewing project vision, strategy, or other like documents
• Route questions to a learning designer or multimedia designer, when needed
• Build robust relationships with current and new vendors in order to scale up the number and types of projects
• Create documents, workflows to support consistent vendor management
• Help internal team members to work effectively with vendors

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Industry: Publishing Industries