Salsa Engagement Managers own and drive the delivery of projects for clients. The Engagement Manager is the main point of day-to-day contact with the client team and the Salsa team. Engagement Managers drive the discovery workshops/process and coordinate the agile process during project execution.
Engagement Manager responsibilities
As a Salsa Engagement Manager duties include:
Management of engagements
Salsa Engagement Managers are expected to manage the Salsa internal team and also the client team. They are the prime interface to the client. Responsibilities include:
Maintaining project vision - ensuring the project has an agreed strategic vision and project efforts are aligned to these vision/goals/success factors.
Client stakeholder management - active management of the interface to the client organisation. Building of trust in the client landscape at all levels.
Internal stakeholder management - active management of the Salsa internal team. Building of trust of Salsa resources in representing their interests in executing the project.
Delivery risk management - identification, reporting and active management of project risks to all stakeholders.
Managing schedule - continually updating and communicating project schedule information to the project team, and creating accountability for milestone adherence.
Managing budget - ensuring project team completes tasks on time and scope is well controlled. Communication of budget status and challenges to client team.
Managing project conflicts - engage with all required parties to ensure efficient and constructive conflict resolution.
Engagement mechanics
Salsa Engagement Managers are expected to follow proven Salsa agile process and tooling. Responsibilities include:
Production of agile project plans - backlog formation, agile story grooming and sprint compilation and execution. Setting up projects in JIRA and maintaining such controls.
Actions management - identification of to-do and action tasks and the management and delivery of these.
Task allocation - ensuring internal team members have appropriately allocated tasks (agile stories).
Task fulfillment - ensuring tasks/sprints (agile stories) are delivered on time with reasonable levels of risk .
Change management - managing a change request process with clients in consultation with business analysts (functional analysis) and technical (estimation) resources as required.
Status reporting - compile weekly status reports to present to the client and delivery of these reports to the client team and client executive team as required.
Billable hours - ensure all staff log hours worked on the project accurately to enable forecasting and control.
Agile process - drive/engage in agile formalities such as standups, sprint planning, sprint demonstrations, and retrospective reviews.
Resource management and engagement
Salsa Engagement Managers are expected to plan and manage the resources assigned to their engagements. They are also responsible to have an appreciation of the entire Salsa program of work at any time such that their resource requests are broadly aligned to Salsa’s entire committed work schedule.
Resource capacity planning - represent resource requirements of engagements at Salsa resource planning meetings. Update resource plans to effectively schedule, and manage, Salsa resources.
Resource management - be accountable/responsible to engage project resources per engagement needs. That is, manage a living sprint plan in consultation with clients to optimally inject Salsa resources into projects.
Business analysis (as required)
It's typical in a Salsa engagement that the Engagement Manager also fulfills the role of a Business Analyst. As such, it is highly desirable for an Engagement Manager to have business analysis skills to cover responsibilities such as:
Drive functional workshops - run discovery sessions with clients to understand, document and agree functional requirements.
Functional analysis - proactively communicate and collaborate with external and internal customers to analyse information leading to groomed agile stories. Be able to critically evaluate information gathered from multiple sources with differing perspectives arriving at appropriate functional requirements and brokering the agreement of these.
Formalisation - manage requirements via the production and maintenance of agile stories in JIRA and using other Salsa standard process/tools such functional matrices and feature roadmaps.
QA support - assist Salsa’s quality assurance process by acting as the authority of functional requirements and/or brokering agreement on functional testing results with the client product owner.
Requirements
Must haves
Exceptional communication skill both verbally and written
5+ years experience in delivery of projects/programs of work (government and enterprise experience well regarded)
Significant experience in the delivery of projects/programs using agile methodologies
Experience in the design of work breakdown structures and plans and management of such plans, applying agile methods to govern/execute
Experience in managing project stakeholders, ensuring all stakeholders have transparency into project progress, and are accountable and informed
Nice to haves
- Experience using Salsa standard engagement tools such as JIRA, Confluence, Slack and Google Suite
Salsa Engagement Managers
Salsa's current Engagement Managers are:
About Salsa
Salsa Digital is a Melbourne-based agency with a 16+ year legacy in open source. Currently Salsa Digital is made up of approximately 25-30 Salsarians.
Salsa Digital has become a key contributor to helping governments become more open, more consolidated and more connected.
Salsa is entrusted by the Australian Government (Department of Finance) as the exclusive delivery partner for the next generation GovCMS platform. Salsa has also been entrusted by the Victorian Government as the implementation partner for the Single Digital Presence platform.
On behalf of the Victorian Government, Salsa also manages the open data platform (data.vic.gov.au) designed, built and hosted on CKAN (open source data management system).
Salsa Digital is a values-driven agency with a strong open source and transparent ethos.
Salsa is recognised as an open source digital platform leader in government at state and federal level. Salsa has earnt this reputation through the delivery of high profile programs of work and also via the production of thought leading content.
Benefits
All Salsa Digital employees may expect the following benefits:
Work with others who genuinely want to deliver great work
Be part of a company with a genuine open, transparent and accountable ethos
Become part of an environment where you can contribute and respectfully challenge areas that could be improved, and be well received.
Be part of a company with a strong and focused vision to build a more open government
Be part of a company with a strong culture of pushing the boundaries further
Flexible remote/on-site working arrangements
Work with a team of professionals in a flat organisational culture
Attend professional conferences and events that support and improve your insights and thus knowledge to produce great work