Delivery Manager

SUMMARY:
Delivery Manager | Cape Town/ JHB

POSITION INFO:

Delivery Manager

Cape Town/ JHB

Role Description

The Delivery Manager leads all aspects of assigned delivery projects within one of the company’s Solution Centres and actively drives projects to deliver to agreed time and quality commitments. The role requires an uncompromising focus on delivering to project milestones and the ability to motivate teams to achieve those milestones.

The Delivery Manager has responsibility for managing the day-to-day activities of all the Analyst Testers, Analyst Developers and other assigned team members for the project. The Delivery Manager will liaise on a regular basis with the client engagement Project Managers.

The role reports directly to the Head of Delivery and may include other duties as required by the Head of Delivery and the Head of Solution Centre from time to time.

Specific Role Responsibilities:

Project Delivery Management

• Scope management: Maintaining an accurate understanding of project scope, deliverables and schedule and delivery expectations from Solution Consultants, Project Managers and Client Directors. To be ruthless in managing change to agreed scope. Understand broader business context of the Client and business case for the project.
• Estimation: Creating, owning and maintaining accurate and detailed estimates of project activities and determining the most efficient project approach and resource utilisation. Ability to dissect and challenge all delivery estimates. Maintaining resource allocations in the required tool(s) with the appropriate Resource Manager.
• Planning and scheduling: Creating, owning and maintaining project schedules/plans, detailing all activities to be completed by the Solution Centre on a project. Assigning responsibilities for project activities and their delivery milestones to ensure the most efficient use of resources and skill sets. Identify upfront and secure the resources (people, services, infrastructure, 3rd party) required to deliver the project and to forward plan with efficient capacity planning.
• Project tracking: Daily monitoring of progress against project milestones and expected daily throughput, promptly reporting any deviation from plan to the Head of Delivery.
• Quality assurance: Monitoring the quality of deliverables and working with the functional heads to manage quality.
• Delivery focus: Ensuring the project team tracks and delivers against the milestones in the project schedule and being ultimately accountable for the success or failure of the work the team is responsible for delivering. Ensure sprints are managed meticulously and all analysis/build/test activities are managed in line with sprint dates and exit criteria.
• Risk management: Identifying and managing project delivery issues, risks and dependencies, promptly reporting any variation to the Head of Delivery.
• Continuous Improvement: Contributing to post implementation reviews, when required, to identify learning and improvement opportunities for future projects.

Reporting and Communication

• Providing clear, concise and accurate reports on project status, progress against milestones, daily velocity and burn down, issues and risks in the agreed format and within the agreed timeframes.
• Create, manage and track project artefacts, including, but not limited to:
  • Project development schedules
  • Detailed build project plans
  • Build scope statements
  • Build estimates
  • Maintains visibility across the team and group by encouraging communication and organising regular project team meetings.
  • Proactively communicate project status and issues and provide timely escalation where appropriate.
  • Liaising with internal departments such as IT Infrastructure, Investment Operations and engaging in client meetings; liaising directly with the client to facilitate information exchange or remove dependencies.
  • Help to facilitate efficient communication between the client engagement and Solution Centre teams.

SDLC

• Understand and adhere to company SDLC, ensuring that all controls and relevant processes are completed satisfactorily by the project delivery team. Specifically, the agile user stories are well defined in business language and testing is prioritised by the developers.
• Ensure that at all times the project is compliant with all PMO reporting requirements and standards.

Leadership

• Be familiar with daily scrum sessions and the role of a scrum master and employ that to help with day-to-day management of project teams of Solution Consultants, Analyst Developers, Analyst Testers and other assigned team members.
• Be an innovative leader by planning and delivering the project in the most efficient way
• If required, support and manage other delivery managers within the solution centre (only required for Lead Delivery Manager)
• Ability to elicit and interpret risks / issues / roadblocks from the team and help / co-ordinate ways to mitigate / fix these.
• Ensuring all team members are motivated, productive and focused on completing their assigned work activities as quickly and efficiently as possible and to agreed quality standards. Actively tracks team velocity and quality as an objective measure of performance and takes proactive action to correct where appropriate.
• Providing feedback on performance, managing poor performance promptly and escalating to Solution Centre management as appropriate.
• Proactively raising any potential personnel issues or delivery risk with the Project Manager and Head of Delivery.

General:

• Maintaining a healthy relationship with Project Managers, ensuring that expectations of delivery timeliness and quality are aligned at all times.
• Collaborating with other Delivery Managers to share knowledge and best practices.
• Work with the technical leads and Delivery Managers to identify synergies between projects to increase the overall efficiency of the Solution Centre.

Experience Required:

• Strong leadership ability and interpersonal skills
• Experience in project management with a track record of successfully delivering complex projects
• Significant experience of software development delivery preferably with the financial services industry
• Strong background in software development, ideally with relevant technologies to the company.
• Degree qualified or equivalent
• An independent, self-directed and delivery-focused working style
• An uncompromising attitude towards delivering to project milestones and not missing dates
• Highly outcome focused, seeking the best outcome for the company and its clients
• Excellent relationship and stakeholder engagement skills and experience
• Confidently able to take the initiative in a client and delivery focused environment
• Tenacious and energetic – able to define and apply solutions effectively to keep projects on track
• Pragmatist that is capable of operating effectively in a highly fluid and ambiguous environment
• Excellent planning, organising, time management and administration skills
• Project management professional qualifications (e.g. PMP, PRINCE2, Agile project management)
• Familiarity with the Agile project methodology desirable
• Familiarity with financial products and markets desirable

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