Performance & Planning Manager

Xero is a beautiful, easy-to-use platform that helps small businesses and their accounting and bookkeeping advisors grow and thrive.

At Xero, our purpose is to make life better for people in small business, their advisors, and communities around the world. This purpose sits at the centre of everything we do. We support our people to do the best work of their lives so that they can help small businesses succeed through better tools, information and connections. Because when they succeed they make a difference, and when millions of small businesses are making a difference, the world is a more beautiful place.

**Who’s the team?**

Technology Delivery and Operations (TDO) is part of Xero’s Technology organisation; the beating heart of software engineering and technology at Xero. Technology operates with one goal in mind: to be one of the most sustainably excellent software engineering companies in the world. Within that organisation, TDO exists to elevate Technology’s delivery and operational practices, for effective delivery of work at scale.

**What’s the role?**

In this brand new role, as part of the new Performance and Planning team within TDO, you will help us in two ways.

Through a mixture of discovery work and thought leadership, you’ll help to design a multi-year programme of incremental improvements to the way Technology visualises, plans and monitors the delivery of its work (the ‘system of work’), so that work is delivered effectively at scale by its domain, and help individual domains trial, improve, adopt and embed those improvements.

Then, as we quickly evolve and begin to embed improvements to the system of work, you will become attached to one or more Technology domains, as a trusted business partner to its EGM and GMs, with responsibility for both guiding, monitoring and optimizing our planning and performance rhythms and practices within the domain(s).

You will work across the Technology domains, so will be comfortable operating with ambiguity and (sometimes) complex and incomplete information, and bring a can-do attitude and be confident in guiding change within an organisation.

**What you'll do**:

- Facilitate Annual Planning and (probably) Quarterly Planning, and the associated prioritisation of work and management of dependencies (including, considering cross organisational dependencies and priorities).
- Help teams, and Technology’s leaders, visualise all of the work planned and being delivered (including preparing regular reporting on delivery), so that valuable work is delivered effectively, predictably and consistently.
- Identify opportunities to improve the speed and effectiveness of delivery of work and remove friction.
- Help guide the domain(s) Leadership Team to set plans that align to Xero’s strategy and short term needs and that domains own strategy.
- Implement key planning activities aligned to our overall operating rhythms for Technology and Xero, and optimise them for the domain, including ensuring accuracy and currency of roadmapping and planning artefacts within the domain.
- Support GMs to align their forward plans to resourcing / budgeting / hiring plans.
- Deliver reporting on delivery performance, both to drive improvements and accountability within the Domain and ultimately feeding into company-wide reporting.
- Understand and unblock delivery risk.

**What you'll bring with you**:

- Demonstrated experience managing and delivering outcomes with multiple initiatives and programmes
- Proven experience collaborating and building trust and effective working relationships with stakeholders across all levels of the business.
- Proven ability to influence outcomes at a range of levels from individual contributor to executive level leader
- Proven experience in change management
- Experience working within a modern software company, especially those engaged in continuous planning and delivery, is an advantage
- You are a pragmatic and structured thinker with the personal confidence and presence to be able to interact effectively with both executive management and highly skilled individual contributors
- You’re curious, resourceful, and analytical with a big picture mindset
- You’re humble and consultative with good business acumen and very comfortable with ambiguity
- You’re emotionally intelligent with an emphasis on working collaboratively and building relationships
- You’re a safe pair of hands, who thrives on being accountable and lowering the cognitive load on the team you work with
- You’re optimistic and organized, able to pivot quickly based on shifting priorities without dropping the ball on important but not urgent programs of work
- You are thirsty for learning and growth, and have an innovative mindset
- You are continuously striving for clarity and simplicity in your communication

**Why you should become a Xero**

Xero is continuing to grow and so are the opportunities to join us You can choose to perform this role:

- In o