James Pettigrew - Profile
I am a highly adaptable, self-motivated problem solver who likes a good challenge. I have honed my project and programme management skills through leading diverse and high-impact projects. I have proven abilities working in high pressure situations. I enjoy being challenged in my work and finding solutions that go beyond the basic requirements. I have strong leadership skills and encourage a positive team environment. All this comes from my history of work on a wide range of projects, as well as a foundation in field ICT work. I am very good at relating to people and maintaining strong relationships with team members, clients, vendors, colleagues, and management.
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- ICAgile Certified Professional
- PRINCE2 Practitioner
- Mar 2014
- ILX Group / APMG International - Australasia
- PRINCE2 Foundation Certificate
- Oct 2013
- ILX Group / APMG International - Australasia
- Avionics Technician
- Nov 2001
- Royal New Zealand Air Force
- Drivers Licence – Class 1 (full)
Christchurch City Council
- Senior Project Manager
- Mar 2024–Present
Delivering a large digital programme of work to provide a frictionless digital platform for interactions between Christchurch citizens and the Council, while also leading a transformation to Agile delivery with this work. I brought experience in a range of areas to bear to help me in these responsibilities:
- Taking the programme from draft business case stage through to approval by liaising with executive management and other critical stakeholders. Shaping and defining the business case appropriately to meet the strategic goals of Council and focus on benefits that deliver relevant value,
- Creating delivery teams by negotiating with internal resource managers and procuring contract resources, following procurement rules. Drafting clear and agreed statements of work to ensure clear understanding of work required,
- Facilitating and assisting with architectural design drafting and decision making. Clarifying options for which mobile architecture to base the app led development on, through assisting with design presentation and gathering cost comparison information,
- Forming a requirements lead plan to fully understand the needs of Citizens and internal business users. Including a multi-point approach to communication, engagement, and information gathering. Partnering with the Customer Service unit to ensure this focus outside IT is maintained,
- Administering and coaching the Agile Scrum methodologies to lead the team, new to Agile, in following Agile principles well, ahead of the departments Agile training plan,
- Developing and maintaining relationships with executives, senior management, subject matter experts, and other stakeholders. I provided a new positive delivery focused vision of a previously maligned programme of work, by having a clear plan for an Agile delivery, and a new focused approach to programme governance
- Setting up and managing programme governance, with clear, ‘to the point’ principles and processes,
- Managing personality clashes in the team to ensure everyone is comfortable and cooperating,
- Assisting and advising my department on the transition to Agile project management,
- Managing other minor projects through planning, delivery, and closure.
Self-Employed - House Renovation
- Project Manager
- Oct 2023–Feb 2024
FUJIFILM Business Innovation NZ ltd
- Senior Project Manager (Contract)
- Sep 2021–Sep 2023
Lead customer facing project manager, implementating IT software and hardware projects, and building the company’s customer facing project practice. This role quickly expanded to a consultancy level, as also being the sole project manager for customer projects it required building up the tools, controls, and governance structures that were initially lacking. This role includes:
- Managing complex multi-stage projects through successful delivery; providing print and scanning solutions that integrate with customers’ systems, requiring:
- Management of mixed project teams including members from the customer, third party vendors, and internal,
- Scheduling and forecasting multiple stages of delivery around availability and customer requirement,
- Managing project change including negotiating changes to commercial agreements with the customer,
- Working with third party vendors to ensure solutions and the delivery of the solutions meets the customer’s needs and wants,
- Managing customer expectations when issues occurred.
- Dealing with uncooperative vendors and customers to ensure delivery continues, escalating as needed,
- Tracking and managing risks, issues, actions, decisions, and dependencies,
- Regular and clear reporting to the customer and other stakeholders, as well as reporting through internal governance,
- Closing out completed projects with performance reviews and documentation.
- Establishment of a project practice foundation for customer facing projects in the company as none existed previously, involving:
- Establishing governance structures for projects through negotiating appropriate management involvement, providing guidance to management on how projects can be governed for best results, and get formal documented agreement on structures and process,
- Guiding team members and management on how to work within a project structure, introducing stand ups and solid communication channels for day to day running of projects,
- Setting up shared document storage that allow collaboration on commercial, design, and project documentation in a way that allowed appropriate, and accessible record keeping.
Open Polytechnic NZ Ltd
- Senior Project Manager / Programme Manager / Scrum Master (Contract)
- Feb 2020–May 2021
A role managing business and IT projects, moving the organisation towards its key strategic goals in an environment changing due to the Government’s RoVE initiative, including:
- Managing projects within a medium sized Value Stream programme of work, implementing significant changes to the core IT systems that process student access to courses, covering:
- Project Management of a team of 8 to 12 staff, working on 3 separate projects, applying Agile and PRINCE2 principles,
- Scrum Mastering the Agile delivery for the projects, guiding 2 teams through a very demanding workload, using Azure DevOps,
- Stepping into the Programme Management role during extended absences of the Programme Manager, totalling 3 months of the year long programme,
- Guiding the programme through significant change to scope when opportunities for improved outcomes where presented,
- Reporting to the Deputy Execute level for governance on projects and the programme,
- Managing a very difficult existing vendor relationship, progressing delivery without contractual leverage,
- Managing and resolving issues with disruptive team members,
- Managing resourcing issues, ensuring progress continued when critical staff were unavailable,
- Supporting and enabling the team through the working from home transition due to COVID-19,
- Financial management and forecasting using 3 non-integrated systems, calculating and recording with Microsoft Project and Excel,
- Completing project documentation, contributing to the business case, writing projects plans, benefit plans, change requests, decision papers, status reporting and maintaining project registers.
- A small programme of work implementing additions and improvements to the Human Resources Information Systems and organisational structure changes for the Assessment Centre, involving:
- Programme and project management of 8 small projects,
- Taking the initially large programme from investment proposal through business casing stage, including Capex/Opex financial modelling for various options and writing the business case itself,
- Ensuring correct funding requirements were highlighted in the business case for the programmes governance, avoiding work starting without sufficient funding,
- Managing the significant change to scope to fit available funding and changed scope due to RoVE requirements,
- Managing a small project team, leading staff from the affected business units in project activities,
- Reporting to the Deputy Execute level for governance on projects and the programme,
- Business analysis for the organisational structure change project,
- Financial management and forecasting using 3 non-integrated systems, calculating and recording with Microsoft Project and Excel,
- Completing project documentation, contributing to the business case, writing projects plans, benefit plans, change requests, decision papers, status reporting and maintaining project registers.
NZ Police
- EPMO Project Manager (Fixed Term)
- Nov 2017–Nov 2019
A role managing business projects for the improvement of NZ Police, including:
- A large project implementing a new business function for NZ Police that required:
- Working with the new business unit to increase functionality through process implementation,
- Rolling out a new software system supporting the full functions of the business unit,
- Developing information sharing processes with six external government agencies concurrently,
- Managing and developing internal and external relationships in often challenging circumstances,
- Careful communicating with stakeholders about sensitive and serious subject matter to ensure continued buy in,
- Delivering solutions that account for privacy, legislative, and security requirements,
- Picking up an already inflight project that was lacking momentum and clear direction, and implementing strong management techniques to establish a well-planned path to completion.
- A large property project to improve physical staff safety elements of 150 police stations across the country, involving:
- Multi-vendor co-ordination and management,
- Management of a complex funding arrangement requiring precise tracking and forecasting,
- Management of both a distributed and centralised delivery structure,
- Extensive communication management across a very wide stake holder base, ranging from the Police Minister right through to the general public. This includes various vendors, union representatives, and end user, all with a wide range of views of the project.
- A medium sized service delivery transformation project, involving:
- Engaging closely with business group working with financial data,
- Managing expectations to ensure solutions were selected based on evidenced requirements,
- Coordinating and carrying out extensive customer interviews,
- Assisting management to make good decisions that support the group and the project.
- A medium sized Business Intelligence platform transition project, involving:
- Understanding the unique needs of data analytics system and the people that run them,
- Managing initial requirements gathering,
- Engaging with vendors and assessing their solution options,
- Managing the financial and timeframe expectations of management,
- Planning for the business change and support needs to transition from the old system,
- Working with the IT department to plan their involvement in the transition.
NZ Police
- ICT Project Co-ordinator / Acting Project Manager (secondment)
- Jan 2017–Nov 2017
A role supporting the Police ICT Project Practices department, co-ordinating Projects and Project managers.
- Project management
- Managing smaller projects, including in-house software upgrade projects and a project to obtain security certification and authorisation for a core existing system,
- Management of the large applications refresh programme during extended absences of Programme Manager, consisting of taking large software systems through the software development life cycle to complete iterative system updates with both vendor based and in-house resources,
- Management of both Agile and PRINCE2 waterfall project structures,
- Delegated management of components of large projects.
- Project Co-ordination
- Negotiating and managing project resources both internal and external,
- Financial planning and management for initial financial approval and management of project budget through the project life cycle,
- Writing of project documentation for communication and management of projects,
- Monitoring and resolving project risks and issues,
- Communicating and negotiating with senior Police management,
- Recording monitoring, management and reporting of projects within various project management tools,
- Extensive use of other software products for project management including Microsoft Excel, Project, Visio amongst others,
- Organising, contributing to, and recording of meetings including Project Board and Steering Committee meetings,
- Contributing to the overall improvement of project processes and documentation.
NZ Police
- ICT District Service Engineer - SME Telephony
- Jun 2012–Nov 2017
A diverse role involving many responsibilities. Supporting internal staff by maintaining, repairing and installing ICT infrastructure and radio systems, while also acting as a liaison and relationship manager to customers and contractors.
- Providing Subject Matter Expert (SME) Telephony support to the Lower North Island region and its ICT staff, including supporting the critical 111 Police and Fire Communications Centres,
- Management of smaller projects and work packages from larger projects,
- Key roles in most ICT technical refresh programmes working closely with Police Project teams to ensure successful outcomes,
- Repair of IT, radio, and telephony systems, including contributing to the ITIL environment to improve service process,
- Extensive updating of out of date documentation for Radio and Telephony systems, using the full suite of Microsoft Office applications,
- Development of training tools and resources for Telephony technology, including a range of “How to” documents for both administrators and users,
- Maintaining strong customer relationships across Police including frontline Police staff right through to the Police Executive Management team,
- Supporting and acting as an ICT liaison to the Royal New Zealand Police College, ensuring all the training and support staff have the technology needed for their roles,
- Establishment and ongoing relationship management of contracts,
- On call fault response for IT and Radio issues,
- Carrying out scheduled maintenance at radio repeater sites,
- Repairing and escalating IT and Radio system fault.
Transfield NZ Ltd
- Telecommunication Technician
- Feb 2010–May 2012
A role working with radio and fibre communications networks. Supporting various clients including Transpower, PowerCo. and Vodafone with scheduled maintenance, fault repair and infrastructure installation projects. Covering the lower north island with project work throughout the country.
Travelling in Europe
QV NZ Ltd
- Helpdesk Analyst (contract)
- Aug 2008 – Jun 2009
A service desk role in a small IT infrastructure team supporting 500 New Zealand and Australian internal staff and providing first level assistance to users of 4 public facing web sites.
Unisys NZ Ltd
- Helpdesk Analyst (Contract)
- May 2008 - Aug 2008
A contract working with the Vodafone New Zealand and Australia service desk team. Providing IT support to over 3000 Vodafone staff and business partners.
The Radio Network Ltd
- Senior Technician
- Feb 2002 – Apr 20
A broad role involving an extensive skill base to cover radio, IT, and Project management in support of over 600 staff.
- While in this role I completed some considerable projects including:
- Project managing the complete refitting of 3 separate radio broadcast studios, each completed in less than 6 days (as per the project requirement),
- Managing the logistics, technical set-up, and production of the Wellington Rugby Sevens for radio as host broadcaster supporting the international contingent from 2005 to 2008.
Royal New Zealand Air Force
- Avionics Technician
- Jan 1998 – Dec 2001
- First aid and CPR training
- Upgrading Your Skills to MCSA Windows 8.1
- Auldhouse Computer Training
- Jul 2016
- ADDIE Training Designer Course
- Supporting users running the Microsoft Windows XP Operating System - Microsoft 2261B
- ACE Training Ltd
- Aug 2005
- Supporting users running Applications on a Microsoft Windows XP Operating System - Microsoft 2262B
- ACE Training Ltd
- Aug 2005
- Project Management Introduction course
- Classic car restoration
- Electric vehicles
- Electronic design
- Audio and video recording and production
- Hiking