With over 17,000 employees worldwide, the mission of the Customer Experience & Success (CE&S) organization is to empower customers to accelerate business value through differentiated customer experiences that leverage Microsoft’s products and services, ignited by our people and culture. Come join CE&S and help us build a future where customers achieve their business outcomes faster with technology that does more.

The CSS Change Management Office’s goal is to ensure the right people focused change is landed to CSS roles in line with our strategy, in a consistent manner that is predictable in order to minimize disruption to the global customer support and service organization and customers. The Business program manager team is part of the Strategy, Planning & Employee Experience team which serves as a strategic hub for guiding key decisions and facilitating smooth collaboration across CSS.

Role

The Business program manager will play a key role in guiding CSS through significant transformations. The primary purpose is to develop and implement strategies that help CSS adapt to changes effectively and efficiently:

• Assessing Organizational Needs: Identifying areas where change is necessary and evaluating the potential impact on the organization.
• Developing Change Strategies: Creating comprehensive plans that outline the steps needed to achieve desired changes, including timelines, resources, and key milestones.
• Engaging Stakeholders: Communicating with and gaining buy-in from key stakeholders, including employees, management, and external partners.
• Monitoring and Adjusting Plans: Continuously assessing the progress of change initiatives and making necessary adjustments to ensure successful implementation.
• Mitigating Risks: Identifying potential risks and developing strategies to minimize their impact on the organization.
• Ensure that the organization can navigate changes smoothly, maintaining or improving performance and achieving strategic goals.
  
  

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others and collaborate to realize our shared goals. Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.

Responsibilities

Business Program Planning and Design

• Performs program landscape research and analysis (e.g., internal and/or external market, sales, delivery), forecasting, and examines business trends (e.g., customer feedback and expectations) to identify audience size and program scope, and stays current, agile, competitive, and contributes to programs impacting the broader unit. Demonstrates thought leadership in contributing to overall business goals, objectives, and strategies, as well as short- and long-term business priorities. Understands and identifies current program risks, impact, and develops mitigation plans impacting the broader unit.
• Identifies and scopes opportunities to develop new programs and improve current ones impacting the broader unit. Leads the identification and resolution of root problems (e.g., root-cause analysis) and the definition of the program strategy. Gathers program requirements, identifies resource needs, creates the project plan and targets, and works across teams to align on the plan of record. Improves the operations of existing programs by applying industry methodology, defining highly complex program issues, assessing various scenarios, and selecting the optimal scenario to resolve issues. Drives clarity in highly complex program issues and strives for simplification.
• Leads others who work with cross-functional (e.g., organizational, product, business) stakeholders (e.g., Engineering) to design highly complex programs from initiation to delivery, independently. Provides expertise to produce collateral (e.g., proposals, strategy walking deck, internal and external pitch content) to incorporate stakeholder needs and ensure the business objectives are met.
• Leads the defining and tracking of success criteria and performance metrics (e.g., Objectives and Key Results [OKRs] and Key Performance Indicators [KPIs]), such as quality, adoption, usage, impact, and effectiveness for the program.
  
  

Buisness Program Excellence and Execution

• Shares best practices to define and execute on landing and communication plans, such as the target audience(s) and communication strategy. Leads the rhythm of business (ROB) during plan execution to ensure participants and stakeholders are communicating and responding according to the necessary cadence. Leads others to work across teams (e.g., Landing, Design, Engineering, Supply Chain, Finance, Technical Program Management) to ensure all program requirements are understood and can be met.
• Shares expertise to evangelize highly complex programs to stakeholders, partners, and customers to gain buy in. Leverages data and performance metrics (e.g., Objectives and Key Results [OKRs] and Key Performance Indicators [KPIs]) to demonstrate the value of the program and show business impact. Leads others to adapt communication style and storytelling strategy according to audience and business needs.
  
  

Business Program Management

• Leads a portfolio of projects including the project plan, timelines, milestones, financial management, performance metrics, and/or resource needs for highly complex programs. Communicates the program status and risk to relevant stakeholders and holds them accountable for following the established schedule, risk mitigation plans, and processes. Establishes objectives and success criteria for the project in an inclusive, collaborative manner with all stakeholders.
• Provides insight to lead others to understand mapping or how people, process, technology, and systems work and impact one another. Leads the collaboration including leveraging other teams (e.g., Supply Chain, Engineering, Sales) to ensure program processes are rigorous and executed efficiently. Develops processes around scope and scheduled changes for programs impacting the broader unit, and communicates them to stakeholders. Recognizes process gaps/inefficiencies and drives strategies for optimization.
  
  

Business Program Evaluation and Improvement

• Provides insight to cost-benefit analyses to examine performance to value drivers (e.g., profit and loss [P&L], return on investment [ROI]). Leads monthly business review (MBR) and runs rhythms regularly to identify what is working and what is not, and makes improvements accordingly.
• Provides insight to collect and evaluate success criteria and performance metrics (e.g., Objectives and Key Results [OKRs] and Key Indicators [KPIs]), such as acquisition, usage, impact, effectiveness, and customer feedback, and uses scorecards and dashboards to monitor highly complex programs and ensure all activities align with business and program objectives. Leads the synthesis of data analytics (e.g., scenario analyses) to derive insights and training that help identify current and future program risks and mitigation plans, as well as opportunities to streamline and optimize programs based on lessons learned that impact the broader unit.
• Utilizes direction and strategy from leadership to advocate and influence sponsorship regarding business area of expertise in order to create and execute plans that shift current priorities to new organizational initiatives and objectives, and influences others to change behavior accordingly. Leads the definition of the vision and strategy for change, broad and specific impact, and the flow of communication to the organization. Ensures buy in and adoption of the new program or change by others in the organization. Leads others to develop the collateral required to enable key stakeholders and others to be on board. Leads the training, reskilling, and mapping of individuals in partnership with Human Resources (HR).
  
  

Other

• Embody our Culture and Values
  
  

Qualifications

Required/Minimum Qualifications

Bachelor's Degree in Business, Operations, Finance or related field AND 6+ years work experience in program management, process management, process improvement

• OR equivalent experience.
• Proven change management Experience with Prosci® or other Change Management qualification or demonstrated experience
  
  

Other requirements: Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and / or government security screening requirements are required for this role. These requirements include, but are not limited to the following specialized security screenings: Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud Background Check upon hire / transfer and every two years thereafter.

Citizenship & Citizenship Verification: This position requires verification of citizenship due to citizenship-based legal restrictions. Specifically, this position supports United States federal, state, and/or local United States government agency customers and is subject to certain citizenship-based restrictions where required or permitted by applicable law. To meet this legal requirement, and as a condition of employment, the successful candidate’s citizenship will be verified with a valid passport.

Additional Or Preferred Qualification

• 5+ years of change management/program/project management experience in architecting large scale change efforts across an IT department, operations team or matrixed, cross-functional business
• Ability to develop an understanding of the Microsoft Customer Experience & Success organization and operations at all levels, including integrated and familiar with the annual planning process
• Demonstrate structured thinking, planning, execute by working with others, influencing without authority, and the ability to deal with ambiguity
• Hands-on experience in architecting and designing complex change in matrixed business environments, including Engineering, extended functional support teams and customer-facing teams.
• Executive communication skills to communicate effectively and concisely with stakeholders, senior managers, and senior leadership
• Negotiation skills and ability to design, create influence systems of change
• Demonstrated ability to work effectively in a multi-cultural, diverse environment
• Anticipate changes and dependencies that could affect key programs or projects and effectively adjust executive level decision making, landing plans, goals, actions or priorities to respond to our agile changing environment
• Demonstrated experience and success at delivering cross functional programs and validated ability to influence without direct authority, taking ownership and driving results
• Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, Communications, or other related disciplines, or equivalent
• Previous experience as a change architect/strategist.
• Prosci Change Management Certification.
• Other relevant certifications such as ITIL for IT-related change management.
• Experience leading large organizations through transformational change.
  
  

Business Program Management IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $115,000 - $200,300 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $146,200 - $219,200 per year.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:

https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay

Microsoft will accept applications for the role until September 10, 2024

#CES #CSS

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. Consistent with applicable law, all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.