Matthew Ho

What's your job about?

I am an ICT Program Manager at Queensland Rail supporting the delivery of IT projects to our business partners and teams. A function of our ICT Delivery team includes meeting with our internal business teams and fellow internal ICT teams to discuss their requests and working together to deliver solutions to meet their requirements.

My role requires me to perform various project management activities to deliver an end-to-end project including sourcing implementation vendors and partners, drafting commercial documents, and providing assurance activities during the delivery of a project to ensure they are successfully delivered.

What's your background?

I was born in Rockhampton, Queensland which is where I lived until I completed high school and then moved down to Brisbane for my university studies at QUT. I graduated from QUT with a Bachelor of Information Technology and Bachelor of Business degrees and was successfully accepted into the Queensland Rail Graduate Program post my university studies.

My graduate position was within the ICT SAP Team after my graduate year I was lucky enough to find a permanent position within the team to continue my career. I spent the next 11 years working within the ICT SAP Team as an SAP Finance Functional Consultant and worked on many exciting SAP projects during this time. In the past three years, I have since transitioned to the ICT Delivery team within Queensland Rail supporting the delivery of IT projects to our internal business teams.

Could someone with a different background do your job?

In my current ICT Program Manager role within ICT Delivery, people from different backgrounds can most definitely be successful in the role. Due to the nature of IT projects and the various business areas that require IT solutions, different skillsets and people from different backgrounds are an advantage as some of our internal clients are from various areas of the business including, Finance, Engineering, Human Resources, Strategy and Safety to just name a few.

What's the coolest thing about your job?

The most enjoyable aspect of working in IT Project Delivery is that no two projects are ever the same. For every new project,ct there is always different scope, different project resources and different challenges and personal, ly for me this keeps my job interesting. Furthermore, with projects ranging in size and complexity levels from small to large, there is always a drive to take on bigger and better projects!

What are the limitations of your job?

As projects ranging various sizes and complexity levels, there is always the challenge of managing each project to ensure they are delivered within schedule and budget for the client. While working in project delivery, my experience is that every project will always encounter unplanned risks and issues and will add additional pressure to the job. This keeps the job challenging but also rewarding at the same time when the project is successfully delivered.  

3 pieces of advice for yourself when you were a student...

1. Don’t think your future areas are limited to what you are currently studying at university. A university degree is just a stepping stone to your first job and there will always be an opportunity to branch out with various experiences.
2. Build as many relationships with people as you can as you may meet them again during your career later down the track.
3. Don’t stress over a bad exam result as you will not think about it 10 years from now.