Areas Of Expertise:

• Project Management
• Portfolio & Program Delivery

Education:

• Bachelor of Business Administration, University of Huddersfield
• P30 Foundation & Practitioner
• PRINCE2 Foundation & Practitioner ISEB
• Management of Portfolios Foundation & Practitioner ISEB

About Melanie Northrop

Melanie is a strategic and emotionally intelligent Project Leader with 18+ years’ extensive experience leading and overseeing the implementation of technology solutions that transform the way an organisation operates, by supporting IT projects, programs and portfolios in both waterfall and agile environments.

With a background spanning banking, wealth management and insurance, industrial automation, utilities and government in the UK and Australia, Melanie brings diverse perspectives and a solid understanding of implementations that work.

What Melanie brings

• Highly experienced in project governance, frameworks, principals, tools and end-to-end financial reporting & analysis, and risk and issue management.
• Rigorous Analytical ability, and process improvement skills.
• Proven track record of openness and authenticity, that builds trust with stakeholders and collaborative solutions to settle complex technology and process problems.
• Building & developing high-performance project teams.
• Managing & leading multiple & diverse teams & stakeholder groups across multiple locations.

Key Clients:

• Iress
• eHealth NSW
• BT Financial Group
• Yokogawa Pty Ltd
• Sydney Water
• Lloyds Banking Group

Key Achievements:

As PMO Manager at Iress, Melanie conducted a program review and health check on the $30MIL Gilligan program. An assessment was undertaken of the program documentation and artifacts provided by the organisation and a series of 20 interviews was conducted with members of the leadership team and multiple Head of across Australia and the UK, which culminated in the provision of a findings and recommendations report that was accepted and approved by the board.

As Assistant Director, EPMO at eHealth, Melanie developed the maturity of an $892MIL portfolio of programs and projects. She established a program of work to improve and streamline EPMO processes and procedures and successfully implemented several new processes that improved program reporting and quality assurance across 14 programs and significant projects. Melanie provided leadership and direction to the EPMO team, and a strategic overview of all eHealth NSW programs and projects, including ensuring all program governance is in place and providing all program and project reporting. She supported the program budget development / approval process; and coordinated portfolio-level activities around master scheduling, inter-program dependencies, and risk and issue management, including reporting on anomalies and areas of concern

As Project Management Consultant, Demand Delivery at eHealth NSW, Melanie successfully implemented the Project Management Minimum Standards (PMMS) by providing training and writing the PMMS supporting documentation; this has uplifted and standardised the project management capability to ensure improved consistency of service to internal and external health partners, which includes:15 LHDs, 5 Health Organisations, 5 Pillar Organisations and 4 Specialty Networks, and has enabled a better customer experience for customers. She embeded the minimum standards through regular project health checks, providing mentoring and support to ensure appropriate adoption of the standards. Melanie led and encouraged the sharing of knowledge to facilitate learning and improve creativity through effective networking and communication within Communities of Practice meetings and collaborated with technical teams to allocate and recruit project management resources.

As Demand Delivery Group Manager at eHealth NSW, Melanie provided leadership and management to a team of 80 staff, consisting of Senior Project Managers, Project Managers, Project Coordinators, Business Analysts and Scrum Masters, working on over 170 projects valued from $250 to $985K. She Identified stakeholder pain points and then established and maintained positive relationships with Demand Delivery stakeholders, including Customer Account Managers, various teams within Technology & Customer Support Services and Business Management Services, which enabled her to keep abreast of demand pipeline activities to ensure that the right resources were allocated and that the project was able to be kicked off on time.

As Senior PMO Manager, Infrastructure Portfolio Management Support, Melanie was responsible for the development and maintenance of program standards, processes, toolsets and procedures to improve the overall maturity of the Infrastructure Portfolio (5 business transformation programs with a combined value of more than $286MIL). She managed the creation of a PMO for the Infrastructure portfolio, developing excellent working relations with all programs. She successfully led the delivery of the ‘Go to Green’ Initiative, which improved the maturity of all programs in the areas of program governance, risks and issues management, financial management, quality management, stakeholder management and associated governance. In a subsequent review, all programs were reported as having a higher level of maturity. Meanie created a unified standard of reporting across the infrastructure portfolio of programs, from consistent program status reports to steering committee packs. As a result, Infrastructure was recognised at the directorate level and has been used as a benchmark for other areas. Establishing and managing support functions such as planning, tracking, reporting, quality management and internal communication and providing quality assurance for project and program management deliverables to implement stricter quality control in the production of project and program documentation.

As IT PMO Manager on the Panorama program ($100MIL/year) at BT Financial Group, Melanie developed collaborative relationships with major stakeholders, which included senior management, program and project managers, PMO colleagues and others outside of the program. She revised the process for resource allocations to reduce overall costs to the program; ensuring that resources were included in the forecast and could not overcharge the program in Clarity. Melanie reviewed weekly reports from Project Managers and provided the weekly summary to the Executive Team and provided advice and guidance on new budget/forecasting procedures. She adapted reporting style of the program to an Agile environment.

As Manager, Portfolio Management Office at Yokogawa Pty Ltd, Melanie created a strategy to establish and maintained a new Portfolio Management Office to support 20 projects across three sites in Australia: Sydney, Brisbane and Perth. She successfully delivered a new PMO framework to support the Head of Project and Project Managers to ensure projects were governed effectively and controlled. Aligned Project Management Methodology to the organisation’s strategic objectives and PMI Project Management Book of Knowledge (PMBoK), to define the project governance controls to be applied across multiple projects of varying size and complexity.

As PMO Consultant at Sydney Water, Melanie successfully updated and re-launching the change management process on several projects, which required strong stakeholder management skills to implement and manage the necessary changes. She provided ongoing management of the project approval and change control process, deputising for the Project Management Resource Manager, managing the allocation of project management and engineers to site. She also performed financial management and resource allocation support across the IT portfolio (Estimated value of $100M).

As Project Manager at Lloyds Banking Group, Melanie managed and led a team of 14 off-shore and on-shore resources to successfully implement 3 new portfolio services: Meeting Management Service, Mobilisation and Closure Service, and Advisory Service, which were delivered adhering to the PRINCE2-based Lloyds Banking Group Project Management Methodology. She built and managed relationships with a diverse set of stakeholders across all divisions; including Senior Management, Project and Program Managers and fellow PMO colleagues to create a best practice for the IT division.

As Delivery Manager at Lloyds Banking Group, Melanie and leading a new PMO support service for the Wealth & International IT Division; being accountable for PMO services across a $64MIL portfolio spread over 91 projects. She collaborated with Project and Program Managers to determine the level of PMO services to be delivered and adapt quickly and calmly to rapid changes in a dynamic environment.

As Portfolio Management Office Manager at Lloyds Banking Group, Melanie established a new PMO to support the 71 projects within the Wealth & International (W&I) IT division ($28MIL) and which included the provision of governance, structure, tools, processes to ensure consistency in approach. The area in which Melanie excelled was the early adoption, and promotion of new processes and procedures following the appointment of a new CEO, who was particularly focused on sound justification of project budget and expenditure, and compliance to the Sarbanes Oxley and Group IT standards.