Company Description

Krasan Consulting Services is a Chicago boutique management consulting and technology solutions integrator. As a certified BEP WBE with the State of Illinois and a certified WBE, MBE, and DBE recognized by the City of Chicago, Krasan provides complex technology solutions and services for clients in the Public and Commercial sectors. With decades of experience, Krasan specializes in end-to-end technology solutions, integration, and implementation services and is proud to enable the success of our customers.

Role Title: Senior Project Manager

Type of contract: W2

Location: Remote

Client: State of Illinois – Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services (HFS)

Project: MMIS Modernization

Job Description:

Position Summary: The Senior Project Manager will help lead a mainframe application program, ensuring the stability, performance, and support of a legacy environment that includes COBOL, Telon, IMS, and DB2 technologies. This role serves as the primary liaison between the client and the delivery team, overseeing a team of 10 senior developers while ensuring operational excellence, risk control, and adherence to project scope.

Key Responsibilities:

• End-to-End Sustainment Oversight: Lead a team of 10 senior developers and any subordinate project managers or supervisors to ensure stable operations of the COBOL, Telon, IMS, and DB2 environment. Oversee incident resolution, defect remediation, and minor enhancements, maintaining system integrity throughout the entire 60-month duration of the project.
• Single Point of Contact to HFS Leadership: Act as the sole reporting and escalation path to the client. Provide weekly status dashboards, monthly sustainment reports, and quarterly health assessments. Translate the client’s strategic direction into actionable priorities for the development team.
• Operational Readiness & Transition Management: Manage knowledge transfer, access provisioning, and potential rebadging of existing resources. Establish all necessary project management artifacts, including schedules, risk registers, and change logs, even in the absence of a formal charter.

Required Skills and Qualifications:

• 10+ years of IT Project Management experience: Demonstrated ability to manage long-duration (5-year) sustainment projects within legacy mainframe environments.
• Experience managing mainframe development teams (COBOL, IMS, DB2): Essential understanding of technical constraints, batch cycles, and change control processes unique to mainframe support. Experience with Telon is highly valuable but not mandatory.
• Direct client-facing reporting to senior leadership (C-level / Director): The role requires direct reporting to the client, requiring executive communication skills, escalation management abilities, and the capacity to diplomatically handle out-of-scope requests.
• Risk management & scope control: The project manager must prevent scope creep and maintain system stability for the full five-year period.
• Resource management: Ability to oversee a team of 10 senior developers, manage potential rebadging transitions, and supervise subordinate project managers or supervisors as the team scales.

Preferred Skills:

• Experience with Telon-generated COBOL: Understanding Telon’s code-generation layer allows for faster debugging of issues, in addition to required COBOL, IMS, and DB2 skills.
• Prior HFS (Healthcare & Family Services) or healthcare mainframe experience: Familiarity with HFS-specific processes is beneficial, as the role references other HFS Mainframe Developer Statements of Work, reducing ramp-up time.
• Staff transition experience: Managing rebadging, including knowledge transfer, morale, and continuity, is valuable as some resources may transition.
• Ability to draft SOW and charter language: The absence of a project charter makes the ability to write Statements of Work and charter language particularly valuable.
• PMP or Agile certification (or equivalent): Formal methodology training helps bring structure to a project that currently lacks governance.

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