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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for IT Project Coordinator

💰 $60,000 - $85,000

ITProject ManagementCoordination

🎯 Role Definition

The IT Project Coordinator is a delivery-focused professional who supports IT project managers and cross-functional teams to ensure successful planning, execution, and closure of technology initiatives. Responsibilities emphasize project scheduling, stakeholder communication, budget tracking, risk and issue management, vendor coordination, and maintaining PMO-standard documentation. This role requires practical knowledge of Agile and Waterfall practices, familiarity with project tools (Jira, Confluence, MS Project), and strong organizational and communication skills to keep IT implementations on time, within scope, and aligned to business objectives.


📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • IT Support Specialist or Technical Support Analyst
  • Business Analyst or Junior Business Systems Analyst
  • Project Administrator or PMO Coordinator

Advancement To:

  • IT Project Manager
  • Program Manager or Delivery Manager
  • PMO Lead / PMO Analyst

Lateral Moves:

  • Business Systems Analyst
  • Release/Change Coordinator
  • Vendor Relationship Coordinator

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Coordinate end-to-end project schedules for multiple concurrent IT initiatives, maintain baseline and current schedules in MS Project or equivalent, and proactively communicate schedule impacts to stakeholders to prevent delivery delays.
  • Prepare, consolidate, and distribute weekly and monthly project status reports, dashboards, and executive summaries that include scope, schedule, budget, risks, issues, milestones, and next steps to senior leadership and the PMO.
  • Manage project financials by tracking budgets, forecasting spend, reconciling invoices, processing purchase orders, and escalating budget variances to the project manager and finance partners to ensure projects remain within approved funding.
  • Maintain and update the project RAID (Risks, Assumptions, Issues, Dependencies) log, conduct regular risk assessments, coordinate mitigation actions with owners, and follow up to resolution to reduce delivery risk.
  • Serve as the primary point of contact for internal and external stakeholders, facilitating effective communication between technical teams, business sponsors, vendors, and support teams to ensure alignment and timely decision-making.
  • Coordinate vendor and third-party activities including onboarding, contract deliverable tracking, meeting cadence, deliverable acceptance, and escalation for SLAs and performance issues to keep external dependencies on track.
  • Organize and facilitate project governance meetings, steering committee meetings, change control board sessions, and working group workshops; prepare agendas, capture meeting minutes and decisions, and track action items to closure.
  • Support Agile delivery by facilitating sprint planning, daily stand-ups, sprint reviews, and retrospectives where applicable; manage and prioritize backlog items with product owners and development teams using Jira or similar tools.
  • Track and manage change requests: collect scope changes, document impact analysis, coordinate approvals with change control, update project plans and budgets, and communicate approved changes to the delivery teams.
  • Coordinate user acceptance testing (UAT), system integration testing (SIT), and regression testing efforts by scheduling test windows, preparing test scripts, tracking defects, and liaising between business testers and development teams until acceptance criteria are met.
  • Prepare and manage project documentation and knowledge artifacts in Confluence or SharePoint, ensuring version control, auditability, and handover readiness for operations and support teams post-deployment.
  • Coordinate go-live and production cutover activities including runbooks, rollback plans, communications, and hypercare staffing to ensure smooth deployments and immediate support coverage after release.
  • Monitor and report on key performance indicators (KPIs) and delivery metrics (on-time delivery, defect rates, resource utilization) using Excel, Power BI, or reporting tools to drive continuous improvement and inform leadership decisions.
  • Manage resource coordination and capacity planning by tracking team availability, assigning tasks, escalating resource constraints, and working with resource managers to secure required skills and headcount.
  • Facilitate procurement-related activities for project needs by preparing specs, obtaining quotes, coordinating purchase orders, and tracking delivery of hardware, software licenses, and services required for project delivery.
  • Ensure compliance with internal IT governance, security policies, regulatory requirements, and audit controls by coordinating reviews, logging compliance artifacts, and addressing audit findings for project-related activities.
  • Execute change management and communications plans by creating stakeholder communication schedules, drafting status updates, release notes, and training announcements to drive user adoption and minimize business disruption.
  • Support configuration and release management processes by tracking build notes, release backlogs, environment requests, and coordinating deployment across development, staging, and production environments.
  • Investigate and resolve cross-team dependencies and blockers by facilitating escalation paths, coordinating ad-hoc task forces, and negotiating timelines to maintain momentum on critical path activities.
  • Lead post-implementation reviews and lessons-learned sessions, synthesizing findings into actionable process improvements and presenting recommendations to the PMO for institutional learning and future project optimization.
  • Maintain and enforce quality assurance standards by coordinating test coverage, validating acceptance criteria, and ensuring that deliverables meet defined business requirements and technical specifications.
  • Assist project managers with ad-hoc analysis, scenario planning, and impact assessments for scope changes or schedule compression to support data-driven decisions and executive prioritization.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis to provide timely metrics for project decision-making and executive reporting.
  • Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap by aligning delivery priorities and helping translate business analytics needs into project requirements.
  • Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements, facilitating clear acceptance criteria for analytics and reporting projects.
  • Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team to ensure dependencies and priorities are reflected in project schedules.
  • Maintain centralized document repositories and ensure all project artifacts are stored according to PMO standards for easy retrieval during audits and handovers.
  • Coordinate training sessions, user guides, and knowledge transfer activities to prepare operations and business teams for new system functionality and process changes.
  • Provide support for vendor invoicing and contract compliance by validating deliverables against contractual milestones and liaising with procurement for payment approvals.
  • Assist in the continuous improvement of project management templates, workflows, and tool configurations (Jira workflows, Confluence templates) to increase team efficiency and governance adherence.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Project coordination and scheduling using MS Project, Smartsheet, or similar enterprise scheduling tools.
  • Proficient with Agile and Waterfall methodologies; experience supporting Scrum teams and running hybrid delivery models.
  • Hands-on experience with Jira for backlog management, issue tracking, and sprint reporting.
  • Strong working knowledge of Confluence, SharePoint, or other documentation platforms for managing project artifacts and knowledge bases.
  • Budget tracking, invoice reconciliation, purchase order processing, and basic financial forecasting in partnership with finance teams.
  • Risk and issue management, including creation and maintenance of RAID logs and escalation processes.
  • Basic SQL query skills or familiarity with data extracts to support reporting and analytics requests.
  • Familiarity with ITIL processes, change management, incident and problem management coordination.
  • Experience coordinating UAT, SIT, and regression testing, including defect logging and tracking in ALM or Jira.
  • Proficiency in Excel (pivot tables, VLOOKUP/INDEX-MATCH), PowerPoint for presentation-ready status updates, and basic Power BI reporting for dashboards.
  • Vendor management and contract deliverable tracking to control third-party dependencies.
  • Knowledge of deployment automation, release pipelines, and environment promotion concepts for coordinated go-lives.

Soft Skills

  • Excellent verbal and written communication skills for clear, concise stakeholder updates and meeting facilitation.
  • Strong stakeholder management and diplomacy to align technical and business priorities across diverse groups.
  • Exceptional organizational skills and attention to detail for managing multiple projects and documentation concurrently.
  • Time management and prioritization to focus teams on high-impact tasks and meet aggressive deadlines.
  • Problem-solving mindset and proactive escalation to remove blockers and keep delivery on schedule.
  • Collaboration and team facilitation to drive consensus in cross-functional environments.
  • Adaptability and resilience to manage changing priorities and ambiguous requirements.
  • Customer-focused attitude with service orientation toward internal business partners.
  • Critical thinking and analytical skills to synthesize data, identify trends, and present recommendations.
  • Leadership presence to coordinate distributed teams and influence without direct authority.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Business Administration, Management Information Systems, or related field; or equivalent practical experience in IT delivery support.

Preferred Education:

  • Bachelor's degree plus professional certification such as CAPM, PMP, Scrum Master (CSM/PSM), or ITIL Foundation.
  • Coursework or certification in business analysis, data analytics, or change management is a plus.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Information Technology
  • Computer Science
  • Management Information Systems
  • Business Administration
  • Data Analytics

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 2–5 years of hands-on experience supporting IT projects, PMO activities, or technical delivery teams.

Preferred:

  • 3+ years coordinating medium to large-scale IT implementations, with demonstrated experience in Agile or hybrid delivery environments.
  • Practical experience using Jira/Confluence, MS Project or Smartsheet, Excel-based financial tracking, and coordinating UAT or production cutovers.
  • Experience working with cross-functional teams, external vendors, and senior stakeholders in a regulated or enterprise environment is highly desirable.