Role Overview
PMO Lead (Retail) – Waterloo, Hybrid Working (Full Time, Fixed Term Contract 12 Months, Grade 4).
As the primary point of accountability for ensuring retail engagement across the FY27 transformation portfolio, you will identify projects with retail impact, ensure that impact is understood, governed and managed, and work with project teams and retail stakeholders to manage risk, readiness and delivery quality on behalf of stores and the wider retail operation.
Retail Impact Identification & Triage
* Maintain a live registry of all active and planned portfolio projects with a retail footprint, drawing from Planview, CCB submissions and New Demand / 3YP pipeline.
* Triage and classify retail impact by type (technology, process, colleague, customer, trading) and severity, escalating material risks to the Head of Portfolio and relevant Head of Retail.
* Work with the Enterprise PMO to embed retail impact as a mandatory assessment checkpoint in the CCB stage‑gate process.
Retail Readiness & Impact Assessment
* Lead structured impact assessments for projects entering delivery or go‑live phases, coordinating input from Retail Operations, Store Experience and commercial teams.
* Define and track retail readiness criteria for each impacting project, ensuring deployment readiness is evidenced before significant change lands in stores.
* Challenge project teams where retail impact is insufficiently assessed or proposed timelines create unacceptable risk to store operations or trading performance.
Stakeholder Engagement & Communication
* Serve as the primary interface between the Portfolio & Delivery PMO function and retail leadership, providing a consolidated view of upcoming change, dependencies and risk.
* Produce a regular Retail Change Calendar, giving retail stakeholders clear forward visibility of impacting projects, key dates and change volumes.
* Facilitate retail input into project SteerCos and relevant governance forums where retail impact is material.
Governance & Assurance
* Own the Retail PMO risk log – tracking risks and issues arising from portfolio activity that could affect retail performance or colleague experience.
* Support the CCB processes by providing retail impact assessments for relevant submissions, ensuring that decision‑makers have adequate retail context before approvals are granted.
Continuous Improvement
* Identify systemic patterns in how retail is impacted by portfolio activity and recommend structural improvements to planning, sequencing or governance processes.
* Contribute to the development of Enterprise PMO standards and tooling to embed retail impact thinking at the point of project initiation.
* Support the annual planning cycle by providing retail impact data and capacity insight to inform FY project prioritisation, sequencing and demand decisions ahead of the next financial year plan.
Required Skills & Experience
* Proven PMO or programme assurance experience in a large, complex portfolio.
* Experience working with or within a retail operations, store experience or trading environment.
* Demonstrable experience of managing stakeholder relationships at senior level.
* Experience of governance frameworks including change control, investment governance or SteerCo management.
* Strong analytical and risk assessment skills, with ability to synthesise complex information for senior audiences.
* Clear, confident communication skills – written and verbal.
* Ability to challenge constructively and hold project teams to account without direct line authority.
* Comfortable operating across ambiguous, cross‑functional environments.
* Proficient in Microsoft Office suite, particularly PowerPoint and Excel.
* Experience with portfolio management tooling (e.g. Planview or equivalent) is desirable.
Equality, Diversity & Inclusion
We are committed to making inclusion and diversity part of everything we do, including how we strengthen our workforce. Every voice has a space at our table and we aim to give you a fair opportunity to show your talents during our application process. If you need any additional assistance with your application, we will do our best to help.
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