Director of Business Management

Grade 10

The Director of Business Management will have four major areas of responsibility:

  • Portfolio and resource planning across projects and services
  • Governance, regulations and information strategy
  • Assurance across the portfolio (services and projects)
  • Product management

This is a senior role in the department, located within the Office of the CIO, and requires collaboration with senior leaders and others across the collegiate University to deliver effectively on all four areas. The post holder will be responsible for University-level strategic plans and risk registers, their implementation and ownership; the central resource planning across the Department (c. 370 FTE); the prioritisation of project and service plans; the support for the University governance of IT; vendor relationship management; and monitoring and assurance of all the services and projects under IT Services. In addition, the post holder will be responsible for the review and updating of the University’s IT rules and regulations for ratification by Council.

In all these, the post holder will be required to communicate the details of these plans, regulations and policies to senior stakeholders within the University (senior managers and PVCs) and at senior University committees (such as the IT Committee) in a clear and understandable way. They will liaise across the department at senior manager level, and also externally to business owners and stakeholders on IT Boards.

The portfolio of services under this role are critical to the successful operation of the department, and the delivery of mission-critical services and projects for the University. They also own the responsibility for the University IT Strategic Risk register, the department’s operational risk register, as well as the rules and regulations by which all users (40,000) are governed. Decisions made by the post holder (in collaboration with SMT) are of mission-critical importance to the University, and they will be required to be innovative in terms of solving any problems in a timely manner.

Essential selection criteria

  • A high level of general education to degree level or equivalent
  • Strategic planning experience
  • Proven experience of leading a programme of change
  • Experience in service delivery and management
  • Excellent communication skills, with the ability to interact with staff at all levels of the collegiate University, recognising the demands of an academic environment and the specific challenges that these present
  • Experience of programme and project management delivering a range of applications, preferably within a higher education organisation
  • Significant experience in leading cross-functional teams and enterprise-wide programmes, operating and influencing effectively across the organisation and within complex contexts
  • Excellent interpersonal skills; able to work across business lines at senior levels to influence and effect change to achieve common goals
  • Analytical skills: outstanding analytical and problem-solving abilities
  • High level of skills and experience in budget planning, risk management and issue management
  • Proven ability to shape a range of diverse requirements into coherent and understandable change programmes which can be justified at a strategic level
  • Proven understanding of project management methodologies, tools and techniques such as PRINCE2
  • Good knowledge of programme approaches, preferably Managing Successful Programmes (MSP) Practitioner
  • Experience in product management and marketing

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