Senior PMO Analyst

Job summary

Defra is the UK government department responsible for safeguarding our natural environment, supporting our world-leading food and farming industry, and sustaining a thriving rural economy. Our broad remit means we play a major role in people's day-to-day life, from the food we eat, and the air we breathe, to the water we drink.

Digital, Data, Technology and Security (DDTS) is the trusted team for digital across the entire Defra Group.

We have around 1000 colleagues across DDTS and our ambition is to make it easier and faster than ever for people to interact with Defra. If you are ready to drive innovation and push boundaries, we want to hear from you. Join us and together we will create a great place for living, and a green and healthy future for all.

Find out more about DDTS:

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Job description

This role is part of our Group Infrastructure and Operations' (GIO) Delivery Portfolio. We are pivotal enablers for Defra to deliver its vision and priorities. GIO provides IT equipment to all 34,000 Defra users and along with the connectivity, hosting and IT support required for Defra to provide its digital services to the public, and our Delivery Portfolio delivers projects that support the Permanent Secretary’s priorities to drive sustainable economic growth, science and innovation and national security. For example, we enable Defra Group Property to manage, open and decommission offices and provide a modern workplace environment for all staff. We enable Arm’s Length Bodies to deliver critical services in labs, fields, farms and enable Defra to keep communities safe and thriving.

This is approximately £55m portfolio that consists of seven domains with multiple IT delivery projects within each, delivered by over 70 resources. The strategic objectives of our work is to reduce technical debt, drive efficiencies, provide modern digital services for end users and improve digital sustainability.

Within the Portfolio, essence of what we do as a PMO team is to ensure the Portfolio has the structure, tools and support it needs to deliver to time, cost and quality; and to have the right capacity and capability to do so. We provide an effective governance service and act as a central point of contact and guidance. This role is part of a small team who work closely together. We utilise tools such as Copilot and PowerBi and keep exploring opportunities to automate steps and processes. This means that the person we are looking for needs to be comfortable working in a small team, a proactive communicator, reliable and have a mindset that support exploring AI and automation opportunities. Prior knowledge of PowerBi is required, as well as from Project Online or equivalent project management tools.

Person specification

Responsibilities:

• Deputise where required and support the PMO Lead with overall delivery of operational activities, help set strategy and navigate through change.

• Responsible for delivering core compliance service to ensure projects complete the required steps in the Project Delivery Lifecycle and that risks, issues and escalations within these activities are managed and mitigated. Apply a continuous service improvement approach including driving automation and use of AI.

• Responsible for our demand management process, working closely with DDTS Demand team, project managers and Finance.

• Responsible for our PowerBi dashboards, including maintenance and improvement of existing ones and ability to produce new dashboards.

• Support wider Portfolio reporting including governance boards, PMO team report and other updates and commissions as required, championing PowerBi and automation.

• Provide quality governance services for the Portfolio including acting as board secretariat and support the PMO Lead with overall governance responsibilities.

• Provide guidance and advice to Project Managers on Project Delivery Lifecycle and its core processes, support onboarding and inducting of new resources.

• Proactively engage and collaborate with DDTS Portfolio Management Office and Business Management Offices to ensure alignment to central processes, policies, and industry best practice (e.g., Project Delivery Lifecycle) where required; share best practice, knowledge, build and maintains strong stakeholder relationships.

Skills and experience:

• A strong understanding of project delivery as a profession (as per GOV.Uk project delivery capability framework)

• Demonstrable experience from project/programme/portfolio management roles

• Strong proficiency in using MS Office tools including SharePoint and Project Online (or equivalent tools).

• Strong skills in PowerBI and demonstrable experience from building dashboards and solving common issues such as failed refreshes and broken relationships.

• Strong organisational skills: attention to detail and ability to plan, prioritise and manage workload and deliverables.

• Demonstrable experience from managing central processes, delivering tasks within those processes and managing and supporting others through these processes.

• Proactive communicator (both written and verbal), and able to quickly establish and build relationships with key stakeholders

Selection process

The Civil Service marks each element of the selection process on a merit basis. You can visit the gov.uk website for further information on the Civil Service rating scale.

Ensure you have tailored your CV and Personal Statement to the 'skills and experience' section of the job advert by providing examples on how you are suitable for the role using the STAR method.

Please ensure you demonstrate clearly, within your personal statement, how you meet these requirements, as the information you provide will form a key part when the panel is scoring your application.

For further information on STAR, you can check out our Hints and Tips document.

Application process

As part of the application process, you will be assessed on your experience. This will be evaluated by looking at your CV and personal statement, so please provide the following and ensure your experience is clearly demonstrated:

A CV
A 750-word Personal Statement: Referring to the 'skills and experience' sections of the job advert, please demonstrate how you are suitable for the role by providing relevant examples.

Further details around what this will entail are listed on the applicati