Scheduling Systems Implementation Manager

Wilfrid Laurier University•Montreal, QC

8d•CA$74,052 - CA$92,565•Hybrid

About The Position

This role will report to the AVP Enrolment Services and Registrar. The incumbent acts as the functional lead on the scheduling software project. The incumbent will be responsible for working in collaboration with stakeholders throughout the university to help advance the project through documenting their current business processes and investigating opportunities to improve those processes using best practices and digital transformation. This position will lead the business side of the project through phases such as analysis, requirements elicitation, technical design, build and deploy. This role is responsible for the direction, coordination, implementation, execution, control and completion of the subject matter aspects of this high profile project. The incumbent will manage key strategic internal/external client relationships with project stakeholders, lead cross-functional project teams, and drive project objectives, goals, priorities and deadlines.

Requirements

Undergraduate degree or diploma, preferably in the Information Technology or Business Administration discipline.
Minimum three years of professional experience in academic scheduling at a post-secondary institution.
Experience in development and implementation or functional use of modern academic scheduling software is required.
Proven experience in risk management, change management and mitigation plans.
Demonstrated leadership, facilitation, influence, negotiation, conflict management and presentation skills.
Effective verbal and written communication skills. Should be able to adapt communication style to suit different audiences.
Adaptability and tolerance for ambiguity.
Strong organizational and analytical skills, accuracy and attention to detail, ability to handle multiple priorities and meet short deadlines.
Ability to manage multiple initiatives with competing priorities in a fast-paced and dynamic environment.
Ability to be discreet and to maintain confidential information.
Excellent interpersonal skills with the ability to work in a team environment.

Nice To Haves

Experience in business analysis, project management, or functional leadership is considered an asset.

Responsibilities

Analyze current state of academic scheduling, exam scheduling and room booking business processes, workflows, and system functionality to identify opportunities for improvement in a future state.
Partners with business clients to complete requirements elicitation, fully surfacing requirements; conducts interviews with key project stakeholders and documents and presents the results.
Translate operational requirements into clear functional specifications for technical and project teams.
Synthesizes functional and technical requirements from stakeholders so they can be used to support project planning, solution development and communicated to stakeholders.
Leads discovery sessions with stakeholders to identify functional needs, operational challenges, and project objectives that should inform technical development of a software solution.
Critically evaluates information gathered from multiple sources, reconciles conflicts, decomposes high-level information into details, abstracts up from low-level information to a general understanding, and distinguishes user requests from the underlying true needs.
Assists subject matter experts and IT leadership in optimizing the scope, benefits, and risks of proposed projects; helps manage expectations of clients and management
Defines use cases to articulate new functional software needs and the roles of each class of application user.
Review and validate system configurations, workflows, and testing outcomes to ensure alignment with business needs.
Supports traceability from requirements through to QA; creates test plans and testing strategies, and participates in technical and functional testing.
Drives and challenges functional units on their assumptions of how they will successfully execute their plans.
Serves as the liaison between the client community (including but not limited to the functional units and ICT) and the software development team through which requirements flow.
Collaboratively coordinate functional activities related to project implementation, system enhancements, and operational initiatives.
Supports project planning activities by contributing timelines, deliverables, resource requirements, and risk assessments.
Identifies multi departmental resources needed, coordinates individual responsibilities, and monitors work quality.
Monitor project progress and identify functional risks, issues, or dependencies requiring escalation or resolution.
As the functional lead, the incumbent will have direct responsibility (under the context of the executing project) and supervisory role over the business representatives to ensure that all functional elements of the business are executed successfully.
Facilitate user acceptance testing by developing test scenarios, coordinating participants, and documenting results.
Ensures project documents are complete, current, and stored appropriately.
Implements and coordinates project changes, scope creep and interventions to achieve project outputs.
Conducts project retrospectives/lessons learned, evaluating and assessing results, and identifying changes for continuous improvement.
Collaborate with project lead, technical teams, vendors, and stakeholders to support implementation activities and issue resolution.
Remains on the forefront of emerging industry practices and provides ongoing functional expertise throughout project lifecycles.
Acts as the key liaison for the subject matter expert aspects of the scheduling project between different university departments, ICT and external vendors.
Proactively communicates and collaborates with representatives from a variety of stakeholder groups in a multi-campus environments (technical, functional, and leadership).
Guides decision making and influences stakeholders, sponsors, and vendors, to follow best practices or comply with Laurier policies.
Build collaborative relationships with cross-functional teams to support project objectives and operational alignment and mitigate conflict or communication problems.
Respond to stakeholder inquiries and provide timely resolution or escalation of functional issues.
Collaborates with developers and subject matter experts to establish the technical vision and analyze tradeoffs between usability and performance needs.
Focuses on problem solving, communicating and working with stakeholders to identify challenges and opportunities that have a varying level of impact.
Develops and executes communications plan related to project updates and implementation, and training to business users and project leaders.
Establishes a thorough understanding of technical requirements from developers/technical teams to lead change management activities in support successful transition to new processes or systems.
Creates documentation on the new system and processes that is intentionally designed to support business users across a variety of units with various responsibilities within the system.
Deliver training sessions, workshops, and demonstrations for staff and stakeholders with a wide variety of training needs.
Update documentation to reflect system enhancements, process changes, and operational requirements.
Evaluate training effectiveness and recommend improvements to learning materials and delivery methods.
Support knowledge transfer activities between project teams, operational units, management and end users.
Complies with and helps to enforce standard ICT and University policies and procedures.
Suggests areas for improvement in internal processes along with possible solutions.
Leverages business analysis, project management and change management best practices.
Creates training materials (for different user groups/target audiences) and standard operating procedures to facilitate the adoption of new technology or business processes.
Completes training activities, supporting key stakeholders through the software development life cycle on behalf of a vendor or ICT.
Manage and support In-Person Assessment Coordinator position.
Manage integration of in-person exams into existing processes and systems.
Collaborate with Scheduling team, Faculties, and other key stakeholders.
Support Scheduling and Exams team as required.