Senior Manager, IT Programs and Projects

Senior Manager, IT Programs and Projects

Reports To: SVP of Technology

Location: Atlanta – RSC

Department: Technology and Digital Platforms

Revised: April 2026

Responsible for the hands‑on management and delivery of technology programs and projects across Church’s Texas Chicken’s restaurant operations, infrastructure, and enterprise back‑office portfolios, while establishing and maintaining project management standards, governance frameworks, and portfolio visibility practices.

• Directly manage the delivery of selected high‑priority technology programs and projects spanning restaurant operations technology, IT infrastructure, and enterprise back‑office systems, serving as the primary accountable owner for scope, schedule, budget, and stakeholder satisfaction.
• Apply waterfall, agile, or hybrid delivery methodologies as appropriate, demonstrating fluency in both approaches and the judgment to select and adapt the right framework for each engagement.
• Lead project initiation activities including charter development, scope definition, stakeholder alignment, resource planning, risk identification, and establishment of governance and communication cadences.
• Maintain rigorous project tracking at the work package and task level using portfolio management tools such as  or Smartsheet, ensuring that project data is current, accurate, and actionable.
• Facilitate effective project meetings, sprint reviews, steering sessions, and working groups, driving structured agendas, clear decisions, and accountable action items to maintain project momentum.
• Manage project budgets, forecast expenditures, and report on financial performance against approved project budgets throughout the delivery lifecycle.
• Establish and lead cadence‑driven project and portfolio status update processes, developing and delivering appropriate reporting for each stakeholder group.
• Serve as the organization’s go‑to resource for troubled project recovery, applying a proven set of diagnostic and turnaround methods to rapidly assess root causes, stabilize delivery, and restore stakeholder confidence.
• Conduct structured project health assessments on struggling programs, identify scope creep, dependency failures, resource gaps, decision bottlenecks, and stakeholder misalignment, then develop targeted recovery plans.
• Lead difficult project conversations with candor and professionalism, delivering honest assessments of status and recovery requirements while maintaining credibility and team morale.
• Implement recovery governance structures including accelerated reporting cadences, escalation protocols, scope triage processes, and focused work‑stream management to re‑establish control and predictability.
• Build lessons‑learned frameworks that capture recovery insights and translate them into improved initiation and risk‑management practices across the portfolio.
• Develop and manage a portfolio‑level view of all active technology projects across restaurant operations, infrastructure, and enterprise back‑office domains.
• Define and support project intake and prioritization processes that ensure new initiatives are properly scoped and resourced before work begins.
• Establish consistent project reporting standards including status report formats, RAG assessment criteria, milestone tracking conventions, and escalation thresholds applicable to all project teams.
• Champion adoption and effective use of portfolio and project management tooling across the technology organization, serving as the primary owner of platforms such as  or Smartsheet.
• Develop and deliver project and portfolio status presentations for audiences ranging from senior technology leadership to operational field teams and in‑store restaurant staff, translating…