Executive Head: Lean Portfolio Management

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Business Unit:

Vodacom Group Digital & IT focuses on enabling digital transformation to unlock efficiencies, better serve our customers, and drive profitable growth. We aspire to be the lowest cost telco, delivering standardized platforms, products, services, processes, and customer journeys, enabling and incentivizing sharing of code.

Role Purpose:

The key purpose of Lean Portfolio Management, demand management and product sharing is to ensure that we deliver value to customers faster while using resources in the most effective way. The role will work in an Agile environment with a high degree of collaboration across the Group and Local markets technology team as well as Group commercial and other cross-functional teams (HR, Finance, Regulatory, SCM, etc.), to design, develop, and end-to-end Group IT shared capability. The role will lead and manage portfolio demand across Business & IT end-to-end, ensuring alignment of strategy and execution thereof.

Your responsibilities will include:

• Manage and prioritize Digital & IT portfolio demand (Group Loyalty, Big Data Analytics and Machine Learning, Digital & Engineering, Enterprise Services and Consumer) from customers and ensure the assignment of resources based on commercial/business objectives.
• Compile, present full transparency on demand, capacity, and budget commitments across Digital & IT, enabling alignment with business expectations.
• Manage, facilitate, and drive the annual budget shaping and guidance in collaboration with Group Commercial, Group Technology, and Local markets CIOs to ensure priorities are aligned and markets make the required budget provision.
• Responsible for the proper collaboration and linkage into cross-portfolio planning, Commercial Technology Steering Committee; operationally managing planned budget against actuals and capacity management across the Portfolio value stream.
• Own and coordinate with Digital & IT Demand Management roles in local markets to create an end-to-end view of the Digital & IT project portfolio across the African footprint, with a focus on common parts across the geography; identify synergies and potentials for re-use in conjunction with IT architecture.
• Manage and drive the design and development of product and service sharing end-to-end to ensure support in the completion of the Business Case and Board resolution submission in the local markets.
• Responsible for managing market adoption of Vodafone Scaled Agile ways of working and run the Group Product increment planning and governance; drive consistent implementation across the portfolio verticals.
• Manage resource utilization and management of VSOL/VOIS central pool of resources (Business Analyst, Project Manager and Solution Architect) to support the current and future demands of Group Commercial & Strategy and Group Digital & IT.
• Collaborate with key stakeholders to ensure solution design and development end-to-end (HR, Finance, SCM, Commercial portfolio leads, technology leads, service contract management, regulatory, security).

The ideal candidate for this role will have:

• Must have technical/professional qualifications:
• University degree (Masters/MBA preferred)
• Business/Financial acumen
• Program/Portfolio management
• Experience in Agile frameworks
• A minimum of 8-10 years of experience in IT, Network in Technology and Finance experience

• Core competencies, knowledge, and experience:
• In-depth knowledge/experience of the Telecommunication Industry in the following domains:
• Knowledge in managing Shared capabilities End-to-end from demand management, design and development, service query handling, stakeholder management in both Business and Group IT, inputs to service contract and financial recon and reporting with Digital & IT leads and Finance.
• Business Casing
• Strategic planning & execution
• Process & project management
• Stakeholder management, influencing skills, and ability to express and communicate clearly to both technical and non-technical senior audiences.
• Strong knowledge and understanding of IT and Digital trends and best practices as well as the impact of those to the wider customer/organisational context.
• Experience in / strong appreciation of working in matrix, virtual and multinational teams.
• Expertise in shaping and running large-scale markets business transformation programmes incl. ability to understand, support and articulate complex Business change processes, datasets, and governance.
• Knowledge of tools and techniques for both Agile and Waterfall delivery
• Expertise in Lean Portfolio Management, budget, resource, and capacity management

Closing date for Applications: 20 September 2024.

The base location for this role is Vodacom Midrand Campus.

The company's approved Employment Equity Plan and Targets will be considered as part of the recruitment process. As an Equal Opportunities employer, we actively encourage and welcome people with various disabilities to apply.
Vodacom is committed to an organisational culture that recognises, appreciates and values diversity & inclusion.