We have partnered with our client in their search for a Senior Director, Strategy and Transformation.
This position is a critical member of the senior technology leadership team, reporting directly to the EVP, Chief Information Officer. This position partners closely with the CIO in transforming IT into a business-oriented organization. The position focuses on ensuring that the IT organization does the right things through strategy and architecture.
The Senior Director leads a team that is responsible for defining and maintaining a future state business architecture that aligns with business strategy, and manages gaps, risk, and technical debt. The business architecture clearly articulates business capabilities enabled by technology solutions. The role will stay on the leading edge of thought leadership / technology by bringing relevant emerging technologies, vendors, engineering best practices and innovation. The position is accountable for creating and maintaining the technology strategy/ roadmap and establish a system landscape that is scalable, agile, fit for purpose, simple and cost effective. The function will ensure a pragmatic adherence to the architecture standards without stifling delivery and drive acceleration of technology innovation.
This position is responsible for managing the overall IT portfolio/program/project management, designing prioritization frameworks, implementing best practices to manage complex programs with cross functional business teams and effectively driving significant change management efforts. This role will enable the IT organization to adopt agile methodologies and drive process and tooling changes to improve throughput of execution. This role will ensure that we build and effectively manage a partner ecosystem to meet our talent needs. This includes vendor management, performance metrics and driving best practices to improve the partnerships.
This role will also lead IT’s own transformation program and work with the CIO and IT Leadership Team to ensure plans are in place to holistically transform the organizations across several pillars such as business partnering, talent & culture transformation, business of IT, rebranding of IT etc. The Senior Director will ensure the transformation scorecard is tracked and reported to all stakeholders on a regular basis.
Key responsibilities include:
- Strategy & Architecture related responsibilities:
- Builds and maintains a coherent IT strategy that successfully delivers a pipeline of value-creating innovation, and drives consensus/buy-in for that strategy with internal and external stakeholders
- Develops, leads, and refines architecture governance functions to include cross-functional business and technology representation; establishes guardrails teams can use to make independent architecture decisions
- Leads development blueprints, roadmaps, and other artifacts that help teams coordinate
- Establishes sustainable architecture patterns to streamline and enable nimble modular development
- Accountable for adherence of the company’s platforms to architectural best practices
- Manages the development and evolution of the enterprise business architecture (EBA), which represents the taxonomies, principles, requirements, and models for the enterprise's business processes and capabilities
- Develops and executes efficient processes for technology selection and application rationalization, across the enterprise
- Manages standards for application selection, development, DevOps, and testing, and enable broader architecture team to represent them inside agile teams
- Keep track of key developments in the technology space (in retail and beyond) to continually identify new ideas, tools and innovation trends that could provide opportunities. Evaluates current and emerging technologies, determining strategic application to business needs
- Program and Vendor Management / Agile Transformation / Business of IT related responsibilities:
- Oversees the Project Management Office governance including:
- Project methodologies, both Agile and Waterfall
- Portfolio governance, including intake, prioritization, execution
- Investment Management
- Value Management
- Resource Management processes
- Oversees change management efforts across large IT programs
- Partners with Procurement to drive vendor negotiations and manage the overall vendor performance. Establish business reviews with key strategic partners
- Establishes and implements continuous-improvement programs for the IT organization
- Responsible for directing the preparation, review and consolidation of annual and long term budgets for the IT organization in collaboration with Finance
- Partners with the CIO and IT Leadership Team to establish monthly business reviews and comprehensive IT performance scorecard to monitor the ongoing health and operations of IT
- IT Transformation related responsibilities:
- Drives a significant transformation program to evolve IT to be a strategic enabler and driver of competitive differentiation..
- Establishes and reports regularly on the transformation scorecard
- Acts as a strong change advocate and implements regular communications and change programs to drive a culture change throughout the organization.
- Works closely with the IT Business Partners to establish effective regular communications with business stakeholders to share meaningful strategic and operational metrics, value delivered etc.
- Conducts research and prepares presentations and talking points for CIO on an array of topics and for a breadth of constituents.
- Owns development and delivery of strategic messaging and communication within and from IT to the broader organization. Develops and manages both internal and external CIO communications in a way that demonstrates a deep understanding of message content and impact on the intended audience
- Ensures talent development / upskilling programs are established for the IT organization in partnership with HR
Key Experiences / Competencies:
- Ability to improve operational efficiency, service delivery and information management across the IT organization
- Broad knowledge across web standards, ITIL, ERP, Supply Chain systems, Marketing systems, SaaS, Cloud infrastructure Relevant Enterprise Architecture and Cloud Engineering certifications desired (e.g., TOGAF, CISSP, AWS Certified Solutions Architect)
- Deep understanding of every aspect of enterprise architecture, including enterprise architecture, solutions architecture, data, cloud, and the role of newer technology areas (i.e., Machine Learning) and their potential implications and roles in driving the overall IT strategy
- Knowledge of technology concepts and implementation methods covering API architecture, next-generation computing, big-data analytics, and cloud platforms
- Desire to make processes and technologies better with a strong focus on delivery and execution.
- Ability to successfully manage through ambiguity and organizational change.
- Strong understanding of strategic planning and a creative problem-solving nature.
- Innovative digital leader with a proven track record of driving digital transformation of core operations.
- Effective communicator who can serve as a change agent in a culture which is deeply focused on embracing digital practices and leveraging technology.
- Politically astute; able to navigate complex organizations; demonstrated ability to achieve results through influence in a cross functional, global matrixed team environment.
- Assesses quickly with a track record of getting up to speed and adding immediate value to new situations.
- Exceptional ability to co-create and work collectively with various IT and business leaders and other key stakeholders.
- Effective change agent, can lead change, think out of the box, & make new ideas happen. Ability to communicate vision and strategy.
- Leadership Competencies:
- Enterprise Mindset
- Strategic thinking: takes a broad view of the business and IT to anticipate and plan for the future.
- Leads through influence, often without direct authority, persuading through use of data and facts; demonstrate sufficient gravitas; inspire and motivate others.
- Aligns and Engages the Team in the Vision: Provides clarity to each team member on their role in achieving the vision, strategy, and goals.
- Self-starter: Proactive, and willing to take on whatever work is required to get the job done
- Demonstrated ability to thrive in a fast-paced environment.
- Demonstrated ability to think creatively; anticipate problems and opportunities.
- Strong intellectual capital paired with equally strong emotional intelligence and “servant leadership”.
- Possesses the right combination of strategic thinking and operational excellence.
Education / Expert Skills:
- Bachelor’s or master’s degree in business administration or related field, or equivalent work experience
- 15+ years of experience in IT, with at least 7 years in leadership positions overseeing strategy, enterprise architecture and program management teams
- Expert knowledge with:
- AGILE methodology
- Strategic IT Planning
- Design thinking & Problem Solving
Title: Senior Director
Location: MA
