Programme Manager - Cloud

Methods Business and Digital Technology Limited

Methods is a £100M+ IT Services Consultancy who has partnered with a range of central government departments and agencies to transform the way the public sector operates in the UK. Established over 30 years ago and UK-based, we apply our skills in transformation, delivery, and collaboration from across the Methods Group, to create end-to-end business and technical solutions that are people-centred, safe, and designed for the future.

Our human touch sets us apart from other consultancies, system integrators and software houses - with people, technology, and data at the heart of who we are, we believe in creating value and sustainability through everything we do for our clients, staff, communities, and the planet.

We support our clients in the success of their projects while working collaboratively to share skill sets and solve problems. At Methods we have fun while working hard; we are not afraid of making mistakes and learning from them.

Predominantly focused on the public-sector, Methods is now building a significant private sector client portfolio.

Methods was acquired by the Alten Group in early 2022.

The Role

We are looking for an experienced Cloud Transformation Programme Manager to lead the day-to-day management, integration and control of a major technology transformation programme.

This is a key delivery role responsible for translating the agreed transformation strategy and delivery approach into a controlled, achievable and integrated programme of work. You will bring together multiple technical and business workstreams, ensuring that activity is properly sequenced, dependencies are understood, resources are aligned and risks are actively managed.

The programme will initially establish a strong identity foundation before progressing into a number of parallel workstreams covering areas such as endpoints, productivity, applications, infrastructure, security, testing and transition. You will play a central role in coordinating these activities and ensuring that individual workstreams remain aligned to the overall programme outcomes.

You will work closely with programme leadership, technical architects, project and workstream leads, delivery teams, suppliers and customer stakeholders. Your role will be to create the structure and visibility needed to turn complex technical activity into a coherent delivery plan, while ensuring that emerging risks, constraints and decisions are surfaced early.

This is an opportunity to join a complex transformation at an important stage and take ownership of the integrated programme plan, delivery controls, governance and cross-workstream coordination.

What you will do

As the Transformation Programme Manager, you will provide the day-to-day delivery leadership and programme management discipline required to keep the transformation moving.

You will:

• Develop and maintain the integrated programme plan, bringing together workstream plans, milestones, dependencies, resources and key delivery outcomes.
• Establish and maintain the programme critical path, ensuring that activities affecting key milestones and migration waves receive appropriate focus.
• Identify and actively manage cross-workstream dependencies, ensuring that sequencing and ownership are clear.
• Coordinate mobilisation and delivery across identity, endpoints, productivity, applications, infrastructure, security, testing and transition workstreams.
• Work closely with technical and project leads to translate high-level objectives into achievable delivery plans, milestones and measurable outcomes.
• Establish and maintain effective programme controls covering scope, schedule, resources, budget, RAID, change and decision management.
• Establish clear programme rhythms, governance forums, reporting cycles and escalation routes.
• Run programme governance meetings, ensuring that decisions, actions, risks and dependencies are clearly documented and followed through.
• Produce accurate, concise and meaningful programme reporting for programme stakeholders and senior leadership.
• Provide clear visibility of overall programme health, progress against milestones, emerging risks, resource pressures and delivery constraints.
• Work with technical and project leads to sequence discovery, design, migration planning, testing, cutover and transition activities.
• Ensure that technical dependencies are reflected appropriately within the integrated programme plan rather than being managed in isolation within individual workstreams.
• Identify delivery constraints and potential schedule impacts early, working with delivery leads to develop practical recovery and mitigation plans.
• Escalate issues requiring senior intervention with clear recommendations, options and implications.
• Track programme resources and capacity, identifying current and future resource requirements and potential bottlenecks.
• Support financial management, including budget tracking, forecasting, supplier commitments and identification of potential cost pressures.
• Manage programme-level change control, ensuring that proposed changes are assessed for their impact on scope, cost, schedule, resources, dependencies and outcomes.
• Maintain a clear and current RAID log, ensuring that risks and issues have appropriate owners, actions and escalation routes.
• Maintain programme decision records and ensure that key architectural, technical and delivery decisions are understood and reflected in the programme plan.
• Coordinate internal teams and third-party contributors, ensuring that supplier activity is aligned with programme priorities and contractual commitments.
• Maintain alignment between programme outcomes, contractual deliverables and the evolving transformation timetable.
• Ensure that lessons learned from discovery, design, migration and early delivery phases are incorporated into subsequent programme planning.

The transformation environment

This is a complex transformation programme involving multiple technology domains, teams, suppliers and organisational stakeholders.

The programme will need to establish foundational capabilities before progressing into a number of interconnected delivery streams. Identity will be a critical early dependency, with subsequent activities across endpoints, productivity, applications, infrastructure, security and transition needing to be carefully coordinated.

The successful candidate will therefore need to be comfortable managing interdependencies rather than isolated projects.

You will need to understand how a delay in one technical workstream can affect several others, how decisions made during design can influence migration sequencing, and how testing and operational readiness need to be built into the plan rather than treated as activities at the end of delivery.

You will also need to operate effectively within an environment where the programme timetable may evolve as discovery progresses. The ability to maintain control while adapting the plan will be critical.

This role is about creating delivery confidence: ensuring that stakeholders understand where the programme is, what is coming next, what could prevent success and what decisions or interventions are required.

Skills and experience required

We are looking for an experienced programme management professional with a strong track record of delivering complex technology or organisational transformation.

You will ideally have:

• Proven experience managing complex programmes involving Microsoft, cloud, infrastructure, identity or organisational change.
• Strong experience developing and maintaining integrated programme plans across multiple concurrent workstreams.
• Excellent dependency-management skills, with the ability to understand and manage relationships between technical and business activities.
• Strong experience with programme governance, including RAID management, change control, decision management, financial tracking and executive reporting.
• Experience managing multiple technical workstreams simultaneously, ideally across infrastructure, applications, security and end-user technology.
• Experience managing third-party suppliers, delivery partners and contractual dependencies.
• Strong resource forecasting and capacity-management skills, with the ability to identify upcoming delivery constraints.
• Experience managing programmes with fixed milestones, migration waves, operational dependencies and complex technical sequencing.
• Practical understanding of the delivery lifecycle from discovery and design through build, testing, migration, cutover and transition into service.
• The ability to understand technical information and translate it into clear programme impacts, delivery choices, risks and decisions.
• Strong financial-management capability, including budget tracking, forecasting and management of cost pressures.
• Excellent reporting skills, with the ability to turn complex programme information into concise, accurate and decision-focused reporting.
• Strong facilitation, negotiation and influencing skills.
• Experience working with architects, engineers, project managers, product owners, security specialists, operational teams and senior stakeholders.
• Strong leadership capability, with the confidence to challenge delivery leads and stakeholders constructively where commitments, risks or dependencies require intervention.

What we are looking for in you

You will be a highly organised and delivery-focused programme professional who enjoys bringing structure to complex environments.

You will be comfortable operating at both strategic and operational levels. You can discuss the overall transformation roadmap with senior stakeholders one moment and work through the detailed sequencing of technical dependencies with delivery leads the next.

You will be confident working with uncertainty and changing information. Rather than treating the programme plan as a static document, you will use it as a living management tool that reflects the latest understanding of scope, dependencies, risks and delivery readiness.

You will have strong judgement and know when an issue can be resolved within the programme team and when it requires escalation. When escalating, you will bring clear options, impacts and recommendations, rather than simply reporting a problem.

You will also be an effective communicator and facilitator, able to bring different teams and organisations together around shared outcomes and create accountability for actions and commitments.

Most importantly, you will be someone who can turn complexity into clarity, control and forward momentum.

Location : London - This will be onsite in the first instance and then hybrid thereafter.

Methods is passionate about its people; we want our colleagues to develop the things they are good at and enjoy.

By joining us you can expect:

·        Autonomy to develop and grow your skills and experience

·        Be part of exciting project work that is making a difference in society

·        Strong, inspiring, and thought-provoking leadership

·        A supportive and collaborative environment

As well as this we offer:

Development – access to LinkedIn Learning, a management development programme, and training

Wellness – 24/7 confidential employee assistance programme

Flexible Working – including home working and part time

Social – office parties, breakfast Tuesdays, monthly pizza Thursdays, Thirsty Thursdays, and commitment to charitable causes

Time Off – 25 days of annual leave a year, plus bank holidays, with the option to buy 5 extra days each year

Volunteering – 2 paid days per year to volunteer in our local communities or within a charity organisation

Pension – Salary Exchange Scheme with 4% employer contribution and 5% employee contribution

Life Assurance – of 4 times base salary

Private Medical Insurance – which is non-contributory (spouse and dependants included)

Worldwide Travel Insurance – which is non-contributory (spouse and dependants included)

Enhanced Maternity and Paternity Pay

Travel – season ticket loan, cycle to work scheme

For a full list of benefits please visit our website (www.methods.co.uk/careers/benefits)