Sr Manager IT Portfolio Release Management

Address: USA-ME-Scarborough-145 Pleasant Hill Rd Store Code: OCIO-Project management (2761184) Retail Business Services, ranked No. 25 on Fast Company's 2022 100 Best Workplaces for Innovators, is the services company of leading grocery retail group Ahold Delhaize USA, currently providing services to five omnichannel grocery brands, including Food Lion, Giant Food, The GIANT Company, Hannaford and Stop & Shop. Retail Business Services leverages the scale of the local brands to drive synergies and provides industry-leading expertise, insights and analytics to local brands to support their strategies. We are committed to diversity, equity and inclusion and we foster a community of belonging where everyone is valued.For more information, visit https:// www.retailbusinessservices.com . Primary Purpose: This role is responsible for defining and leading release management lifecycle for the IT investment portfolio, which includes developing and managing the release roadmap across all IT waterfall and agile projects. This role will partner with engineering teams, scrum masters, release train engineers and project managers to plan, build and execute release process for code through development, test, and production environments. The Investment Portfolio release manager will collaborate with enterprise release management to build and grow the release management practice and capability. Duties & Responsibilities:

• Overall accoutability to develop and manage the integrated release roadmap across sets of interdependent programs and projects for the IT Investment Portfolio.
• Define and establish the release management governance and processes for the IT portfolio.
• Provide reporting, visibility and awareness of the release roadmap, progress, and impediments across the IT investment Portfolio.
• Key partnership the recurring cross-program alignment forum to review and track progress of interdependencies across programs, discover and address planning alignment issues, and provide increased visibility across stakeholders.
• Partner with program and project leads and leading the individual release managers to drive coordination and alignment across interdependent projects, including schedules, resource plans, readiness activities, etc.
• Accountability for individual release manager(s) in their efforts to identify gaps and drive alignment across projects included a specific release.
• In partnership with QA and Environment management, facilitate coordination, alignment, and approval of requests to include or remove projects from individual releases, evaluating if a project's approach is aligned with Release entry criteria as well as with the other interdependent projects.
• Collaborate with program and project leads to escalate key Release decisions, issues, and risks to leadership and sponsors, and support mitigation and contingency planning.
• Conduct Release Readiness reviews, Milestone Reviews, and Business Go/No-Go reviews
• Drive the evolution of the Release management process and practices to adjust to the needs of the IT Portfolio and Programs as the approach becomes more deeply established.
• Mentor and coach team of Release managers on the processes and approach.
• Embody and role model a culture of servant leadership.
• Foster teamwork at all levels through influence over authority

• Bachelors degree or equivalent work experience in business, technology, or related field
• 8 or more years of experience delivering IT Programs and Projects leveraging both waterfall and agile methodologies.
• 5 or more years of experience leading release management processes in both waterfall and agile frameworks.
• Strong understanding of the IT application development lifecycle in both waterfall and agile environments, and driving alignment across multiple interdependent projects, including aligning test approaches, environment plans, deployment readiness and go live events.
• Excellent planning and organizational skills
• Demonstrated ability to drive coordination and alignment across a wide range of projects and audiences, with the ability to identify gaps and lead efforts to drive to closure and consensus.
• Proven ability to develop strong relationships with cross functional teams and influence internal and external partners.
• Strong interpersonal and communication skills, both oral and written.
• Ability to communicate technical concepts to non-tech audiences.
• Strong understanding of project implementations, project structure and life-cycle and best practice standards and tools.
• Demonstrated ability to achieve positive results through influence, negotiation, and change management.
• Demonstrated ability to assess situations, define problems, collect data, establish facts and draw valid conclusions.
• Demonstrated ability to handle a wide variety of tasks, and change focus quickly as demands change.

• MBA or Masters Degree in related business or technology field preferred