Director, Business Alignment - ITS

About the role

The University at Albany's Information Technology Services (ITS) is seeking a Director of Business Alignment. This role is crucial for ensuring ITS engagement and support are aligned with University priorities across various departments.

Responsibilities

• Responsible for shaping, supporting, and enforcing IT policy for the university.
• Formulate and influence strategic direction in alignment with university-wide priorities.
• Build and enhance strategic partnerships with business areas to develop and maintain a shared vision and roadmap for ITS involvement and support.
• Lead and coordinate business relationship meetings with various levels of university leadership.
• Develop managers to be effective business partners capturing, shaping, and guiding all campus IT needs through ITS work-management processes.
• Ensure the Business Alignment unit takes a lead role in messaging the University's IT governance, guiding principles, policies, and procedures.
• Maintain a continual state of readiness for reporting/show-back to executive leaders.
• Ensure that business needs and opportunities are recognized and recorded in a timely fashion.
• Engage efficiently with customers to capture and shape fully formed requests that articulate value and are ready for review and assessment.
• Confirm executive sponsorship for requests in advance of decision to initiate projects.
• Oversee process development and improvement for demand management.
• Update portfolio prioritizations with executive sponsors prior to advancing new projects to the initiation phase.
• Establish and maintain overall accountability for ITS project delivery and portfolio outcomes.
• Provide strategic leadership for the university's IT project portfolio by setting portfolio governance expectations, decision criteria, and performance measures aligned to University and ITS priorities.
• Lead, through the Project Portfolio Manager, the end-to-end portfolio lifecycle (intake through closure), ensuring consistent business cases, scoping, prioritization recommendations, and transparent decision documentation.
• Oversee portfolio resource allocation and capacity planning in partnership with ITS delivery leaders; escalate and resolve prioritization and resourcing conflicts to protect critical-path commitments.
• Ensure timely, accurate portfolio reporting (status, schedule, budget, benefits, risks, dependencies) and deliver executive-level communications that enable informed decisions and maintain shared expectations.
• Sponsor continuous improvement of project and portfolio management practices, standards, and tools (e.g., stage gates, dashboards, templates), ensuring adoption across ITS delivery teams through training, coaching, and accountability.
• Establish and maintain overall accountability for business analysis capabilities and outcomes.
• Provide strategic leadership for business analysis as a discipline by defining expectations and standards for requirements gathering, customer experience, and value realization.
• Drive high-quality deliverables, including discovery and facilitation, current-state and future-state process mapping, and documentation of functional and non-functional requirements.
• Ensure business analysis activities are integrated into demand management and project initiation, so requests are sufficiently defined, prioritized, and ready for enterprise architecture assessment, estimating, and delivery planning.
• Champion continuous improvement of business analysis practices, templates, and tools, and develop staff capabilities through coaching, training, and a community of practice.
• Lead and manage direct reports by providing guidance, support, and performance feedback to ensure goals, programs, activities, and personnel practices are consistent with and contribute to the University's mission.
• Lead employees for maximum performance and dedication, fostering a positive and productive work environment.
• Complete performance management feedback and goals timely and per requirements, offering constructive feedback and developing improvement plans.

Requirements

• Strong trust and discretion required, including access to sensitive and confidential information related to the university and its employees.
• Excellent relationship management skills, including stakeholder engagement, negotiating and influence, and political savvy.
• Excellent communication and facilitation skills, including active listening, clear, persuasive communication, and facilitation and meeting leadership.
• Competency in portfolio and prioritization management.
• Competency in process design, optimization, and change leadership.
• Ability to use AI-enabled tools (e.g., generative AI assistants, AI-enabled analytics, or AI automation) to improve research, analysis, writing, workflow, or decision-making while exercising sound judgment over AI-generated outputs.
• Exceptional ability to organize work, prioritize tasks, and manage multiple and changing priorities.
• Demonstrate an ability to develop inclusive and equitable relationships within our diverse campus community.
• Demonstrate an ability to support diversity, equity, access, inclusion, and belonging relative to their role.
• Minimum Qualifications: Bachelor's degree from a college or University accredited by the US Department of Education or internationally recognized accrediting organization. At least 7 years of progressive experience in IT project portfolio management and/or IT business relationship management. Experience supervising direct report employees. Demonstrated record of success leading cross-functional teams and managing complex project portfolios.
• Preferred Qualifications: Experience in client account management or other executive sales role. Experience supervising management level, direct report employees. Master's or doctoral degree from a college or University accredited by the US Department of Education or internationally recognized accrediting organization. Experience working in higher education. Experience working in a unionized environment.