The Project Manager, Games partners with the Internal Project Leads to effectively manage and support one or more projects with the LAS games division.
* Proactively identify, analyze, implement, execute and maintain best practices and methodology, communicate learning's to all teams and make sure project teams and the Studio are set up for efficient success. * Evaluate project level milestone change from a cross functional perspective; determine and manage intra-project dependencies. Assess the impact on other moving parts within project lifecycle. * Partner and communicate with production leads in each department across the company, including product development, marketing, sales, finance, consumer insights, production operations, human resources and recruiting to determine tactical and strategic implementation for internal and external projects. * Identify, analyze, implement, execute and maintain best practices, to drive the teams and make sure projects, teams and the Studio are set up for efficient success. Drive efficient structure and process for each project. * Identify, learn and leverage processes and practices from other Lucasfilm divisions or other industries to best apply to LucasArts. * Work with the production teams to define and communicate short and long-term development milestones, crafting strategies that will help them reach the goals. * Operate and focus not only for a single project, but overall global priorities of LAS Games and the LAS studio as a whole. * Participate in and contribute to the cohesive interaction of Production Operations with Product Development and cross functionally across the LucasFilm divisions. * Contribute to the review of production plans and anticipate problems in the milestone management plan and proactively work with all the stakeholders ensuring that LAS can meet its company goals and achieve its business plan. * Identify and resolve conflicts between schedule, budget and development goals and estimate the impact of project milestone changes as they affect the upstream and downstream departments. * Working with the project Leads, clearly establish and communicate an agreed-upon leadership hierarchy for decision-making for each game team (all levels). * Assist in the definition and implementation of Best Practice milestone management processes across all departments and draft policies that support reaching milestone targets. * Facilitate Post-mortem meetings and incorporate the lessons learned into future project management endeavors. * Identify and work through the inefficiencies of the studio and put into place a beneficial overall structure and process. * Set optimistic and enthusiastic tone; promote communication and teamwork. * Demonstrate strong leadership qualities: functional expertise; integrity; forward-thinking; collaboration; hard work; compassion; excellent communication skills; mentorship. * Collaborate with the Master Scheduler to provide an overall view of project related information, such as milestone changes and issues, to produce a weekly global schedule. Work with the teams to mitigate and communicate these changes across the organization.
Requirements :
* Bachelor's degree or equivalent work experience. * 5+ years of experience in Computer Games, Project Management in Feature Animation, Visual FX, Animated Television, Software Development or applicable entertainment industries. * Proven successful track record in managing and delivering a complex projects that were between 18 months to 3 years in duration with multiple deliverables and complex project team and studio-wide dependencies. * Experience with a number of project delivery business models advantageous. * Strong leadership skills. Proven ability to work effectively with all levels of a project team; promoting strong peer-to-peer collaboration. * Ability to establish priorities and multi-task efficiently within a high pressure environment while meeting strict deadlines. * Ability to problem-solve in a high-paced creative environment which requires constant adaptability and flexibility. * Exceptional team player. Able to direct efforts and communicate clearly across departments, exhibiting exceptional skills in diplomacy, flexibility and patience. * Strong business analysis skills. Functional understanding and experience with process development, supporting, establishing defining processes, creating best practices a plus. * Ability to balance assertiveness and sensitivity.
