Agile Delivery Manager at Department for Work & Pensions, Manchester/Remote, 12 Months, £Contract Rate

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is responsible for welfare, pensions, and child maintenance policy. As the UK's biggest public service department, it administers the State Pension and a range of working age, disability and ill health benefits to around 20 million claimants and customers. As such, we operate on a scale that is almost unmatched anywhere in Europe and most people in Britain come into contact with us at some point in their lives.

Working with DWP, you will be helping us to drive our priorities to:

• Help people to move into work and support those already in work to progress, with the aim of increasing overall workforce participation
• Help people to plan and save for later life, while providing a safety net for those who need it now
• Provide effective, efficient, and innovative services to the millions of claimants who rely on us every day, including the most vulnerable in society
• Improve experience of our services while maximising value for money for the taxpayer.

An Agile Delivery Manager will deliver end to end projects including owning service delivery. They will deliver projects across all phases including Discovery, Alpha, Beta and subsequent lifecycle stages. Work with the team on a day-day basis and have a good understanding of the research, design and development activities to help track and deliver these. This includes, software engineering, business operational process design, user research, user experience design and aspects of policy development to help manage and set the pace for delivery. Acting as a servant-leader, they will ensure a productive work environment, building high performing teams where members are engaged with the work they are undertaking . They will support more experienced Agile Delivery Managers in delivering projects, help build delivery roadmaps or own parts of a bigger programme of work. They will actively track project financials and drive governance on their projects. They will work to share their knowledge and best practices with other agile delivery managers and actively work to increase their own knowledge and experience around agile techniques and tools.

Responsibilities

• Builds a high performing team through encouraging continuous learning, adaptation and improvement.
• Utilise meaningful metrics in order to drive the team towards their goals and understand areas for improvement.
• Creates a safe, supporting environment for the team, encouraging them to experiment and making failure a safe part of learning.
• Leads by example, acting as a servant-leader demonstrate the right behaviours. Deals with conflict and helps establish a team culture that allows for constructive criticism.
• Manages and builds relationships with the teams, relevant stakeholders and third party sub-contractors utilising effective and appropriate governance mechanisms. Managing team dynamics to ensure the team is aligned to the same objectives.
• Works with Product Owners and other business teams to ensure that new products and services are delivered effectively to realise measurable benefits.
• Supports Senior Agile Delivery Managers and Product Owners to define a delivery roadmap to show when features and associated outcomes and value are likely to be delivered.
• Drive the creation of the business case, co-ordinate activities across stakeholder groups. Iterate the business case throughout the lifecycle of the project.
• Facilitate workshops, meetings with a variety of stakeholders, driving out outcomes and establishing the pace of delivery.
• Manage risks, issues and dependencies (external and internal), taking responsibility by owning them till they are mitigated or resolved.
• Drives the pace of delivery across their project with support of the senior delivery managers, owning key blockers till they are resolved.
• Manage external assurance groups so that they are appropriately engaged and aware to avoid any risks related to formal approvals.
• Ensure funding is in place and track spending and forecasts regularly and accurately.
• Leads agile events across the project, ensuring business and delivery teams are working to a common objective and vision to deliver specific outcomes.
• Follows standards of agile practices set by the agile delivery manager community, helping senior delivery managers to adapt and/or adopt agile methods and tools for use on projects.
• Communicating consistently across all project stakeholders, ensuring that stakeholders are aligned around the core messages coming from the project.
• Be an active part of the agile community, helping organising local events. Helps educate members of other business and IT divisions on agile principles, methods and tools.
• Actively promotes a culture of working in an agile manner utilising agile delivery principles

Please be aware that this role can only be worked within the UK and not Overseas.

Disability Confident 

As a member of the Disability Confident Scheme, DWP guarantees to interview all candidates who have a disability and who meet all the essential criteria for the vacancy. In cases where we have a high volume of candidates who have a disability who meet all the essential criteria, we will interview the best candidates from within that group. This scheme encourages candidates with a disability and/or neurodivergence to apply. In exceptional circumstances, we may also need to apply the desirable criteria in our shortlisting process which may include holding active security clearance.

Armed Forces Covenant

DWP guarantees to interview veterans or spouses / partners of military personnel who meet all the essential criteria for the vacancy. In cases where we have a high volume of ex-military candidates / military spouses or partners, who meet all of the essential criteria, we will interview the best candidates from within that group. In exceptional circumstances, we may also need to apply the desirable criteria in our shortlisting process which may include holding active security clearance.

In applying for this role, you acknowledge the following this role falls in scope of the Off Payroll Working in the Public Sector legislation. Any rates of payment quoted will reflect the gross rate per day for the assignment and will be subject to appropriate taxes and statutory costs. As such the payment to the intermediary and your income resulting from this contract will be different.