The delivery manager role in government, explained

The Government Digital and Data profession describes a delivery manager as “accountable for the delivery of products and services”. On a service team, GDS says the delivery manager sets up the agile environment the team needs, removes blockers and helps the team get better at organising its own work. The role sits in the product and delivery family of the profession’s capability framework, with four levels and nine skills.

What a delivery manager does

At the delivery manager level, the profession expects you to:

• build and maintain teams that are motivated and work well together
• identify obstacles and help the team to overcome them
• focus the team on what matters most to delivery
• encourage the team to keep improving how it works
• coach team members and others to use the most suitable Agile and Lean tools and techniques

GDS adds one more duty in the Service Manual. The delivery manager makes sure “accessibility is factored into each feature or activity the team’s working on”.

The four levels

An associate delivery manager works on a small or mature Agile team and learns on the job, sometimes alongside a delivery manager on a larger team.

A delivery manager is accountable for the performance of the team.

A senior delivery manager is accountable for “the effective delivery of complex, high risk products and services”, and coaches other delivery managers.

A head of (Agile) delivery management leads the community of practice for the role and is responsible for recruiting the right people to the right teams.

The nine skills

The framework’s nine skills for the role are:

• Agile and Lean practices
• commercial management
• communicating between the technical and non-technical
• financial management
• life cycle management
• maintaining delivery momentum
• making a process work
• planning
• team dynamics and collaboration

Each skill has four levels: awareness, working, practitioner and expert. At practitioner level you “apply the skill without support”. At delivery manager level the framework asks for expert level in making a process work, and practitioner level in Agile and Lean practices, planning, maintaining delivery momentum and communicating between the technical and non-technical.

Two of the planning statements at that level are “use data to inform planning” and “provide delivery confidence”. Our guide to flow metrics shows one way to do both from the team’s own board.

The profession also asks for commercial and financial skills. A delivery manager can “act as the point of contact for contracted suppliers”, “monitor cost and budget” and “balance cost versus value”.

How the role differs from a Scrum Master

In the Scrum Guide, the Scrum Master is accountable for establishing Scrum and for the Scrum Team’s effectiveness. Both accountabilities are about one method, Scrum.

The capability framework has no Scrum Master role. It expects a delivery manager to “compare and select the most appropriate delivery methods and processes” and to “use a blended approach depending on the context”. So a delivery manager may run Scrum with one team and Kanban with another. The delivery manager also deals with suppliers, watches the budget and manages the service through its phases, none of which the Scrum Guide asks of a Scrum Master.

GDS’s guidance on setting up a service team lists “a delivery manager or scrum master” for an alpha team, so either can fill that seat.

How the role differs from a project manager

Project managers have their own framework, the project delivery capability framework, which the Government Project Delivery Function publishes. In its profile of the role at SEO grade, “The Project Manager leads and manages the project and project team” and is responsible for objectives that are “achieved within agreed time, cost, and quality constraints”.

So the two jobs are defined differently. A project manager’s job is defined by a project that has agreed time, cost and quality. A delivery manager’s job is defined by a team and the product or service that team delivers through its phases. GDS also asks the delivery manager to help the team organise its own work, where the project manager leads and manages the team.

Check yourself against your level

Open the framework page for the role, find your level and mark each “you can” statement yes or no. The ones you mark no are your development plan, and they give you something specific to take to your line manager.

Our two-day course, Government Agile Delivery Manager Training, suits people at associate to senior delivery manager level and costs £895+VAT per delegate. Day one covers the role in government, Scrum and how to run team sessions. Day two covers Kanban and flow, risk, stakeholders and governance.