Agile Program Manager

Background: Maryland is transforming its approach to Major IT Development Projects (MITDPs), which are significant, costly, and often underperforming initiatives crucial for public services. Driven by a new state policy (Senate Bill 705), Maryland is shifting from traditional project management to a product-centric model. The project manager helps drive this change, improve service delivery, reduce risks, and accelerate value, ultimately helping the department adopt and internalize these agile, modern, product development practices. We are looking for an Agile Program Manager to support the modernization of our State client’s Occupational and Professional Licensing system (Electronic Licensing Modernization [ELMo]). The role covers overall project management including development of an agile (iterative) project plan, creation and grooming of the project backlog, scheduling and management of regular sprint/scrum meetings, and overall coordination, communication, and management or day-to-day project activities including development, test, and release activities.

### About BH Zion

BH Zion, LLC is a woman-owned consulting firm based in Maryland, specializing in Agile Transformation, IT Staff Augmentation, Change Management Advisory, and Professional Services. We partner with government agencies and enterprise clients to modernize operations, strengthen teams, and deliver measurable results. Our consultants support government agencies and Fortune 500 companies in navigating complex IT initiatives and building effective, adaptive teams. At BH Zion, we value integrity, reliability, and collaboration, and we are committed to creating opportunities for diverse talent to thrive in meaningful work.

### Description

Type: Contractor

Location: Onsite (Baltimore,MD 21201). Travel to other offices may be required as needed. Telework: Some teleworking may be permitted.

Rate: $60 - $80 per hour, based on W2 contractor or 1099

Overall Duties

The Program Manager serves as the single point of contact for our Maryland State client, regarding day-to-day IT project operations. The position shall oversee and direct all resources. His/her responsibilities shall include overall project governance, communications with executives, planning, budgeting, execution, monitoring, control, quality assurance and implementing course corrections as needed. The Program Manager is responsible for performing the following:

• Managing day-to-day project activities.
• Identifying issues and risks and recommending possible issue and risk mitigation strategies.
• Facilitating State agency and Contractor discussions / meetings.
• Ensuring that performance is within scope, consistent with requirements, and delivered on time and within budget.
• Identifying critical paths, tasks, dates, testing, and acceptance criteria.
• Ensuring the application of State SDLC standards.
• Providing solutions to improve efficiency (e.g., reducing costs while maintaining or improving performance levels).
• Monitoring issues and providing resolutions for up-to-date status reports; and
• Documenting and delivering project management related artifacts.

Unlike a traditional project manager focused solely on scheduled deliverables, this position is accountable for ensuring that the entire solution lifecycle is positioned to sustain value and impact beyond just the projects and contract’s finite timeline.

Product Strategy and Management Duties

• Create and maintain project plans, aligned with product roadmaps, organize and lead project status and working meetings, prepare and distribute progress reports; manage risks and issues
• Create and maintain product artifacts, prioritize and sequence the delivery of features based on value (expected contribution to eliminating pain points and meeting program goals)
• Manage project content, including policy documentation, business requirements, technical artifacts and code repositories
• Develop and sustain a user research pipeline, create research plans and apply research findings to develop service maps and continuously update the product roadmap
• Manage a prioritized product backlog in the form of user stories and expected sequencing
• Support agency and project leadership in managing expectations for deliverables, maintaining stakeholder communications and collecting, analyzing, and reporting on feedback
• Support agency leadership in implementing project governance processes and documenting decisions

Agile Team Management and Team Building Duties

• Foster development of an agile and iterative culture, while holding teams and staff accountable for their commitments (e.g., sprint commitments). Use standard agile diagnostics (e.g., burndown charts, user feedback trends) to spot potential problems early and keep the team on track
• Facilitate team ceremonies, including standups, inceptions, sprint planning and retrospectives.
• Serve as a ‘scrum master’ to Identify and remove blockers to work completion
• Mentor and develop team members to ensure that each team member is fully engaged in the project, participating in agile ceremonies and making a meaningful contribution
• Establish a sustainable work pace and collaborative work culture.

General Management Duties

• Monitor schedule, budget compliance, and deliverable quality
• Identify, triage, and resolve blockers, including those related to systems, policy constraints, and staffing.
• Lead planning and ensure delivery of working software using agile, iterative methods that provide direction and documentation for; system design, security, performance, accessibility, and scalability.
• Support acquisition and procurement processes including defining and reviewing statements of work
• Initiate, create and deliver presentations to project stakeholders to manage expectations, demonstrate the delivery of value, foster cross-agency collaboration and secure funding
• Ensure implementation of modern engineering best practices, such as DevOps, CI/CD, test-driven development, and observability.
• Coach and mentor agency staff, vendors, and peers in engineering practices, contributing to long-term capability-building.
• Communicate technical decisions, risks, and trade offs clearly and persuasively to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Education Qualifications

• This position requires a bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university in Engineering, Computer Science, Information Systems, Business Data Science, Business/Public Administration, Design or a related discipline. Candidates must possess a Project Management Professional (PMP) certification from the Project Management Institute (PMI).
• This is a senior individual contributor role, requiring technical familiarity (ideally with Cloudflare, Static Pages, Javascript, perl, databases, and Salesforce), strong communication and leadership skills, and the ability to influence agency stakeholders, vendors, and internal teams.

General Experience Qualifications

• The proposed candidate must have at least ten (10) years of experience in project management.

Specialized Experience Qualifications

• The proposed candidate must demonstrate at least eight (8) years of experience managing complex IT development projects, similar to that described in the Statement of Work.
• This individual must also have experience in a leadership role for at least three (3) successful projects with an organizational change management component that involve working with stakeholder groups across the organization.
• Candidate must possess at least five (5) years of experience using PMI's Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBoK) methodologies and artifacts.

Education:

• Bachelor's (Required)

Experience:

• managing similar complex IT development projects: 8 years (Required)
• Project management: 10 years (Required)

License/Certification:

• PMP (Required)

#### Salary

$65 - $80 per hour