innoSoul:

Job ID: MT-0069AH-PM (90090723)4P

Part-time K12 PM (PMP) with BA, Rules and public education experience

Location: Helena MT (Montana Office of Public Instruction (OPI))
Duration: 42 months (up to 52 hours per month)
Positions: 1 (1/2) The individual will be required to work on-site at OPI offices in Helena.

Experience Requirements
1. 10 or more years of demonstrable work experience as an IT Project Manager and successful outcomes on projects managed.
2. Experience with public education systems/projects and data and/or a background in public education are highly preferred.
3. PMP or other accredited or recognized project management certifications are highly preferred.
4. Four or more professional references indicating excellent performance as a project manager and willingness to hire the candidate again.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities
• Expert knowledge of principles and practices of IT project management.
• Strong organizational skills including attention to detail and ability to multi-task.
• Expert technical background, with understanding and hands-on experience in large-scale and complex data management, software development and technology projects.
• Strong inter-personal skills and ability to establish and maintain good relationships with all persons involved on a project, from highly technical to non-technical (lay-person).
• Demonstrated ability to perform:
o Project Plan development
o Monitoring/Altering Project Schedule /Resources etc. as appropriate
o Meeting Management
o Facilitation skills
o Current and future process gathering, documentation and clarification.
o Confirmation with subject matter experts and stakeholders
o Requirements elicitation
o Functional Requirements gathering
o Business Rules identification
• Other duties as assigned and relevant

Job/Project Description
An IT Project Manager is being sought (starting August 2020) to provide up to 52 hours per month IT Project Management services and expertise for the Montana Office of Public Instruction (OPI) MITI Grant project. The individual will be required to work on-site at OPI offices in Helena.

Background
In 2009, the Montana Office of Public Instruction was awarded our first SLDS grant from the US Department of Education. With this grant the OPI created Montana’s Statewide Longitudinal Data System (SLDS), which is named GEMS (Growth and Enhancement of Montana Students). GEMS is currently running on a javascript based front-end with a RESTful API abstraction layer based on an OpenAPI specification and a Microsoft SQL Server 2019 data backend with PowerBI and SSRS providing visualiation and reporting. The security is through Active Directory and allows for both public and secure data and dashboards to be presented depending on the role of the user. Data visualizations are currently created in both PowerBI and SSRS and routed through the API layer to manage secured access. The API architecture has recently been created and may require some updates to initial assumptions as usage grows while still maintaining support for existing applications.

Objectives of this CEP:
The GEMS project will migrate GEMS from an in-house designed and architected datawarehouse structure to a CEDS aligned structure. As part of the migration the current API layer will be updated to utilize the new CEDS data structure and expanded to provide a more robust abstraction of the underlying structure. The updated API structure will be able to provide access to JSON structured data elements for use by researchers. The project will be architected, built and supported by OPI staff with the assistance of contracted staff augmentation to help us bootstrap the effort. In addition to OPI staff there is an open source community providing resources that may be integrated into our efforts while some of our work may also be provided to the open source community to assist other similar efforts being carried out in other states. We hope to explore additional functionalities that may be enabled through the API layer including the feasibility of self-service data marts for research goals.