White Paper: Responsive Design vs a Mobile Site

Our team is currently working on a series of white papers and have just finished our first one, which introduces businesses to two strategies for designing and developing a site that targets mobile traffic. We invite you to learn how to decide which strategy works best for you.

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Project Manager

Join the Make It Happen team.

Position Summary

The Project Manager is to our team as the conductor is to an orchestra. The conductor's most basic job is to indicate the beat of the music. Likewise, the PM’s most basic job is to indicate the beat of our work. Identify and track key milestones and metrics, help us keep projects on time and within budget, monitor and communicate issues and delays, and work with clients to plan future initiatives. In a nutshell: help our designers and developers Make It Happen for our clients.

We are a small team and wear many hats. In addition to the list of responsibilities below, we also expect all of our team members to participate in our marketing efforts. Whether that’s writing a blog post, offering to speak at a conference, or coming up with ideas for new initiatives.

Responsibilities

• Help us continuously improve our process, increase efficiency and implement change!
• Manage the schedule, scope, and budget of multiple simultaneous projects and initiatives, ensuring quality and mitigating risk.
• Being an available "point of contact" for clients and external vendors.
• Develop and nourish productive, healthy and enjoyable client relationships.
• Consult with our clients on how best to work with our process.
• Collaborating with clients to maintain a per-project roadmap.
• Coordinating the strategy team's schedule to work closely with clients on new project initiatives.
• Meeting note-taker (help us capture actionable items!)
• Iteration planning based on design specs and technical requirements and estimates gathered from the team.
• Assuring that all team members — including design, front-end development and back-end development — understand their roles and accept their responsibilities, tasks and deadlines.
• Shield team from unnecessary distractions.
• Regularly communicate status—including issues, delays or risks—to clients.
• Manage direct and indirect dependencies.
• Manage scope creep.
• Ensure client "signs off" on delivered work.
• Manage client friendly changelog for production releases.
• Facilitate iteration retrospectives.
• Basic analysis (forecasting, retrospective, etc.)

Required Skills / Qualifications

• 3+ years of project management experience.
• Organized, very organized.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Razor sharp memory and quick on feet.
• Good at math!
• Analytical thinker--we love stats!
• History of managing multiple web projects simultaneously.
• Experience working with external clients and vendors.
• Ability to have both a 1k foot and 30k foot view.
• Ability to multi-task and "juggle lots of balls".
• Good with reporting and statistics.

Desired Skills

• Considers themselves a bit of a PMI/Workflow nerd
• Familiarity with the Agile-inspired methodologies.
• Experience in the software industry.
• Experience with JIRA, Basecamp, and online project management tools.
• Experience with Salesforce, Google Docs, Excel (we love/hate spreadsheets!).
• Quality Assurance experience.
• Marketing and Sales experience.

Location and Schedule Requirements

Candidates must be able to interview in Portland. (Remote candidates are not being considered for this position.)

Don’t worry! We keep the kitchen stocked with locally roasted coffee beans, health bars, and fruit.

How to Apply

Please respond with a cover letter and resume to jobs+pm@planetargon.com with the following:

• Describe your overall experience in the Project Management field.
• Tell us why you want to work in the web industry.
• If you don't have experience in the software industry, tell us how your past experiences might bring value to the table.
• Your availability (when can you start) and salary expectations.

This position was posted on March 19, 2013.

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Planet Argon is an equal-opportunity employer.