Organizational Profile:

The American Association for Cancer Research’s (AACR’s) primary mission is to prevent and ultimately cure cancer. As the first and largest cancer research organization dedicated to accelerating the conquest of cancer, employees at all levels of the AACR are uniquely positioned to contribute to directly impact that mission.

Our organization hosts more than 30 scientific conferences and educational workshops annually including the AACR Annual Meeting which has attracted more than 22,500 constituents involved in cancer research. With the challenges facing in-person meetings in 2020 and 2021, our IT team led the charge to pivot our technology to support virtual meetings and the 2020 Annual Meeting had more than 100,000 attendees learning and collaborating on the latest trends and findings in cancer research.

Group Profile:

The Enterprise Platform Services and Data Management Team oversees the software and processes that facilitate the connection and collaboration of the organization’s more than 58,000 members at the forefront of cancer research.

We manage the enterprise Customer Relationship Management (eCRM) solution along with its related systems and customizations that support our Membership, Event Registration, and other business processes. In addition, we are standing up the organization’s Master Data Management (MDM) solution, as well as its enterprise Data Warehouse (DW).

Our group is also responsible for the AACR IT Help Desk and is in the process of building out a more robust customer service offering, for internal and external constituents.

Job Summary:

A Technical Projects Manager plays a pivotal role in overseeing Information Technology projects undertaken by the Enterprise Platform Services and Data Management team (EPS&DM). The role involves establishing project management methodologies and approaches tailored to organizational needs and aligned with Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) best practices. The Technical Projects Manager's responsibilities encompass educating and aligning project team members with the chosen methodology and facilitating its execution, whether working with internal AACR team members or external third-party collaborators.

In the task definition phase, this role facilitates the breakdown of high-level needs and requirements into detailed, actionable items, ensuring that these items contain accurate and comprehensive information to achieve the desired outcomes. When required, the role collaborates indirectly or directly to bridge gaps in understanding and documentation. This responsibility extends to the creation and maintenance of Life of Project and Life of System documentation for all projects and systems within scope. Additionally, the role oversees tasks carried out by third parties, including estimating, tracking, and comparing actual work and costs to estimates to ensure compliance with contracts and agreements.

A deep understanding of the tech stacks utilized at AACR is essential, as high-level requests may necessitate changes across multiple systems. While prior experience with the tech stack tools is preferred, adaptability to evolving technologies and systems is expected, with training provided as needed.

Administratively, the role entails conducting meetings directly with project team members to facilitate project work, including periodic discussions such as daily "stand-up meetings" to review tasks, address pressing needs, prioritize, and identify and mitigate potential blockers. It also encompasses higher-level meetings like "sprint planning" and "sprint review sessions" to assess overall progress and priorities.

Fundamentally, Project Management emphasizes the efficient coordination of tasks, processes, and resources to attain project objectives, with a primary focus on managing these elements rather than individual personnel. While effective leadership and communication are essential, the core of Project Management centers around organizing, planning, and executing tasks to ensure successful project outcomes. In summary, the Technical Projects Manager acts as a catalyst for the team, primarily addressing the administrative aspects of Project Management to enable others to focus on specific tasks.

1. Project Management
   1. Define, implement, and facilitate the execution of the Enterprise Platform Services and Data Management (EPS&DM) team’s project management methodology based on industry best practices and the AACR’s specific needs
   2. Train/coach teammates and third parties on the methodology and related operations as needed
   3. Oversee the administration of Jira to facilitate the methodology including configuration, workflow, and user management
   4. Aid in the transition of high-level requests/requirements into actionable items in Jira, working with platform managers, internal stakeholders, and external third parties as needed
   5. Collaborate in the assignment of resources to tasks based on needs/prioritization
   6. Monitor and report on individual contributors to proactively identify and prevent overburdening
   7. Communicate statuses to EPS&DM team and other stakeholders as necessary
   8. Facilitate best SDLC practices related to backing up code repositories and the proper promotion of items across environments (i.e. Dev to Test to Prod), ensuring that all deployed items are properly tested before release
   9. Aid in the identification and associated tasks related to creating/updating Life of the Project and Life of the System documents as per SDLC
   10. Ensure assigned project activities are performed in alignment with project timelines and budget
2. Consultant/Vendor Coordination
   1. Serve as liaison between internal team and external project managers to ensure that work items are properly communicated for action
   2. Ensure external consultants are providing accurate estimations for their work as needed, including comparison of estimates vs actual hours worked/billed
   3. Monitor external contributors hours in relation to contracts and proactively report on overages/remaining
   4. Keep track of use-cases for new and existing tools and in what ways they can support the goals of the team
   5. Assist in vendor/product selection conversations as needed
3. Technical Project Scoping
   1. Refine stakeholder needs so they can be effectively understood and accomplished by team members and external consultants
   2. Keep up to date on the AACR's tech stack and data model
   3. Ensure projects are well defined to limit unnecessary expansion of current work (aka scope creep)
   4. Aid team members in using developer tools to investigate bugs, provide quality assurance testing, or execute on new initiatives as necessary
   5. Help manage/administrate code repositories and documentation used by the team, ensuring it's tied to their project tasks
4. Meeting Facilitation and Communication
   1. Host daily standups to help the team communicate pressing needs and any blockers for their current work
   2. Host periodic planning meetings to review assigned tasks for the forthcoming cycles
   3. Deliver monthly release notes to the entire organization denoting significant changes to their user experience for items administered/overseen by the EPS&DM team
   4. Keep any and all project management software clean, understandable, and easy to use for the team
   5. Communicate ad hoc to stakeholders within AACR to flesh out their project requirements as necessary
   6. Facilitate the Architecture Review Board meetings to ensure issues raised are being addressed and meetings run smoothly and efficiently
5. Requirements Refinement/Gathering
   1. Review gathered requirements to ensure the requirements contain sufficient information to complete the tasks/develop a solution
   2. When necessary, facilitate requirements gathering including stakeholder interviews, document analysis, requirements sessions, business process descriptions, use cases, scenarios, business analysis, task and workflow analysis
   3. Liaise with stakeholders on behalf of the EPS&DM team as needed to gather/schedule the gathering of requirements
6. Other Responsibilities as Assigned
   1. The intent is for this position to primarily serve Information Technology projects in general and EPS&DM projects specifically. However as there are organization-wide benefits to embracing industry best practices for project management, a secondary responsibility for the role is to over guidance on project management methodologies and tools that can be leveraged by other groups in a “Center of Excellence” model, on an as-needed basis.

Job Tasks:

Performs all tasks related to the major functions and responsibilities of the position.

1. Project Management
2. Consultant/Vendor Coordination
3. Technical Project Scoping
4. Meeting Facilitation and Communication
5. Requirements Refinement/Gathering
6. Other Responsibilities as Assigned

Core Competencies:

1. Certified knowledge of at least one Project Management methodology is required – more are preferred (e.g. Scrum Master Certification, Project Management Professional Certification, etc.)
2. Ability to extrapolate from unclear stakeholder descriptions and/or limited information to produce requirements that can be verified with stakeholders to confirm their needs/asks
3. Excellent written, verbal, and interpersonal communication skills in English is required
4. Effective problem solving and troubleshooting ability required
5. High attention to detail is required
6. Ability to organize work, prioritize tasks and meet deadlines required
7. Ability to work with resources to complete tasks that are not direct reports is required
8. Ability to think critically
9. Ability to analyze data, communicate with stakeholders, and develop recommendations for solving problems while exhibiting realistic understanding of solutions
10. Excellent analytical, organizational, and time management skills
11. Ability to facilitate/lead discussions
12. A desire to do good in the world by helping support our members and our organization in the mission to ultimately cure cancers

Job Qualifications:

1. At least two years of recent Project Management experience in IT is required
2. At least two years of Business Analyst experience is required
3. At least two years of recent experience in one of the following is required (more preferred)
   1. Salesforce Sales Cloud
   2. Master Data Management (e.g. Boomi MDM, Reltio, Informatica, etc.)
   3. Data Integrations (e.g. Boomi Integrations, Talend, etc.)
   4. Data Warehousing (e.g. Snowflake, Azure, AWS, etc.)
4. At least four years implementing application systems from the functional perspective is preferred
5. At least four years of experience in Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) is preferred
6. Knowledge/Experience with Scrum/Agile methodologies is preferred

Education Requirements:

1. Bachelor’s degree from four-year college or university; or equivalent combination of education and experience preferred. (Note this is a preference and not a requirement. Candidates with demonstrated experience in the role who may not meet this preference are encouraged to apply.)