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Delivery Lead

Rationale​

This document explains the role of a Delivery Lead at Infinity Works and helps you to understand what is expected of you when performing the role.

Delivery Lead is an important role at Infinity Works. One of our core values is "Customer Delivery First". This means every one of us is engaged in delivery as we live and breathe this value, every day, across all our service offerings, engagements, and roles. As a Delivery Lead, you bring the expertise to help our clients and teams deliver the desired outcomes to the best of our ability.

It's not all about frameworks, processes and tools​

Delivery Lead is a leadership role, not a management role. Delivery is people, principles, processes, and tools — in that order.

Delivery is first and foremost about people; their needs, motivations, values and desired outcomes. It is about relationships, interactions, collaboration and conversations.

The answer is often "it depends!"​

Each of our clients and engagements is different. Organisations and the people within them are often complex. Therefore, your approach to delivery will be flexible and pragmatic. As a Delivery Lead, you will use your skills and experience to apply agile delivery principles to the unique context of our clients. You will optimise practices for the effective delivery of value through coaching, experimentation and learning.

The Delivery Lead role is a leadership role and, as such, comprises a relatively senior skill set. You can carry out this role at career level CL9 Consultant for small teams using established ways of working, but it is more commonly performed at CL8 Senior and above.

In some cases, Delivery Leadership will be provided by the Customer as a role or the role may not exist within their organisation. Where this is the case, ensuring we are successful from a delivery perspective falls by default onto the Account Lead who may in turn nominate someone on the team to support with delivery on the engagement. This role guide and the responsibilities detailed below should act as an aid for those supporting an engagement with delivery.

Experience and skills​

  • Has in-depth knowledge of agile and lean principles and is experienced in effectively applying a range of frameworks, tools and techniques.
  • Outcome-focused, with an understanding of the importance of delivering value early, enabling fast feedback loops and making decisions based on data, and experience in establishing these practices.
  • Innovative and passionate about the art of delivery, with a thirst to learn and share knowledge.
  • Proven ability to form, guide, evolve, support and motivate teams.
  • Experience in coaching teams to optimise for agility, building a culture of safety, inclusion and continuous learning.
  • Proven ability to influence, lead and empower others.
  • Understand and are experienced in the differing delivery requirements through the full product life cycle.
  • Experienced in developing relationships with business stakeholders, including those in senior positions who may have priorities which may not align with yours.
  • Recognising dysfunctional teams/organisations, understanding the problems to solve and driving improvement.
  • Experienced in ensuring deliveries meet requirements for governance/compliance / regulatory management and adherence.

Advanced (Principal Consultant and above)​

  • Leading strategy and implementation for agile adoption across teams/organisations.
  • Experienced in developing and aligning relationships with diverse stakeholders at all levels.
  • Leadership coaching.
  • Work across multiple teams/work streams to promote effective cross-functional delivery.
  • Experienced in consciously designing and optimising organisational structures.

Responsibilities​

Agile and lean delivery practice​

  • You will apply agile and lean principles, and take a pragmatic approach dependent on circumstances, using the appropriate tools and techniques for the context, and being able to explain the reasons why each has been applied.
  • You will manage the cadence of delivery and ensure the effectiveness of agile events for your team, or teams, whilst fostering team autonomy.
  • You will champion an outcome-focused approach and understand and measure how deliverables align with business values and objectives.
  • You will use your experience and influence to support the adoption or optimisation of agile ways of working. You will act as a coach at both a leadership and team level, instilling knowledge and developing processes and practice, constructively challenging traditional ways of working as required.
  • You will coach and support the team(s) and stakeholders to ensure the right balance between delivering features and non-functionals, including performance, reliability, operability, maintainability and technical improvement work.

Governance and commercial awareness​

  • You will be transparent, open and honest about delivery status, making visible risks, issues and dependencies, planning for mitigation and escalating where necessary.
  • You will work collaboratively with your client and your team to create a flexible and negotiable plan prioritised to deliver value efficiently and effectively. You ensure this plan is reviewed regularly to accurately represent a shared understanding of the current status and delivery expectations.
  • As the delivery evolves, you will be mindful that your team is the appropriate size, with the right balance of skills, capabilities, and experience, to enable continued effective delivery. This includes both 100% Infinity Works teams and customer/Infinity Works blended teams.
  • Your delivery approach will be cost-effective for both client and Infinity Works and work within the bounds of the commercial agreement.
  • You will understand our legal obligations and ensure that your delivery approach adheres to the agreed contract for your engagements.
  • You will ensure that governance, compliance and regulatory requirements for your client and Infinity Works are met.

Customer relationships​

  • You will build relationships with your clients through working to understand their business, vision, and the problems they need to solve. You will be able to empathise with their challenges and constraints whilst at the same time looking for opportunities to guide and influence them on key areas of delivery performance and improvement.
  • You will foster the trust and confidence required to be seen by the client as a trusted advisor and bring them along on the transformation journey through open conversations and transparent communication.
  • You will build relationships across the client's business to break down silos and encourage cross-functional collaboration and alignment.
  • You will be able to confidently communicate the value of agile delivery to both technical and business stakeholders at all levels.

Culture of continuous learning​

  • You will build a shared understanding with both your team and the client of the importance of delivering value early and enabling fast feedback loops. You will encourage a focus on the delivery of the highest value items first and early mitigation of risks.
  • You will drive a "build, measure, learn" approach at all levels, with both your team and the client, from business goals and outcomes to the delivery roadmap, and through to iterative delivery of features. You will encourage validation of the impact of deliverables against business goals and user needs. You will advocate for the Lean principle of maximum validated learning from the minimum effort, through the promotion of experimentation, learning, and decisions based on data.
  • You will facilitate and ensure the team has agreed on a ways of working that are understood, visible, and open to challenge, improvement, and evolution. You will guide and coach the team through a process of continuous improvement to optimise their workflow and process for flow and effectiveness.
  • You will promote knowledge sharing and engage in and contribute to wider communities.

Team dynamics​

  • You will be a leader, not a manager. Leading by example, coaching, and enabling the ambition of autonomy and empowerment of the team through providing context, and increasing capability and ownership.
  • You will align the team and motivate them towards a goal.
  • You will foster a safe and inclusive environment for all team members where everyone can have a voice, be engaged, contribute, learn, and constructively challenge existing practices and processes.
  • You will promote a team culture and conditions that are conducive to creating and improving team health, wellbeing and resilience, and will be aware of the factors that can impact this.
  • You will cultivate a highly-collaborative environment that is optimised for effectiveness and sustainability. You will actively work with the team to break down silos, share knowledge, and enable and develop the required skills to solve shared problems.
  • You will structure the team(s) for success, mindful of minimising dependencies, duplication of effort and cognitive load.
  • You will advocate open and transparent communications and actions within the team and beyond, through honesty about failure and celebration of success.

Relationships​

Team​

Lead, align, motivate, support, coach and develop.

Tech Lead​

Collaborate, align, and support.

Customer Sponsor and Stakeholders​

Build trust, advise, align, influence and inform.

Account Lead​

Collaborate, align and escalate, inform and advise.

Client Practice Leads / Infinity Works Leadership Team​

Inform, consult and escalate.

Community of Practice​

Engage, contribute and support.

ISO​

You'll carry out your role in accordance with the requirements of ISO9001 and ISO27001 as reflected in the Company's policies and procedures and the ISO9001 and ISO27001 organisational structure charts.

Public page
3rd November 2022