Agile Delivery Managers

How they matter in larger organisations?

Traditionally Project managers focussed on individual projects, planning and stakeholder communication while Delivery managers were responsible for a broader range of activities related to process, practices and “delivering” value aka completed projects to end customers whilst highlighting the risk to the C-level folks.

Scrum ( most popular framework within Agile) brought in a new notion for some of these roles and split traditional Project Management role between the product owner,(PO) team and the scrum master(SM). The team is now responsible for the product increments, the PO for prioritisation and stakeholder management and the scrum master who ensures that the process is followed and helps the team remove impediments.

So where does the Delivery manager role fit into all of this and how do they matter?

One clear goal for Delivery managers — “ Getting stuff delivered”

In larger organisations with more than 5–7 scrum teams working on a single product this role acts as the “enabler” for these teams ensuring the right environment is created for these teams to succeed. This can be done via

What skills are required for a Delivery manager?

Delivery Managers are expected to be servant leaders, coaches, communicators, facilitators and expectation managers who are responsible for seeing overall product delivery while making teams high performant. For a software project it definitely helps if the delivery manager has technical knowledge, scrum knowhow and prior software experience.

Expectations

Clear expectation settings for a delivery manager need to be setup and communicated while avoiding overlaps in the function of the role as every organisation tends to have a different structure.

Delivery is an overall shared responsibility in Scrum and this role should not be chocked or serve as a single point of failure when things go south. With the application of constant learning and an enabling environment where team delivers at a sustained pace — Delivery managers should serve as a catalyst for successful product rollouts. They work hand-in hand with the team and they key stakeholders within the organisation.

Does your organisation have an Agile Delivery manager? Do you see the same function done by a different role (Agile project manager or release/solution train engineer)

While there is no clear set-in-stone approach for structuring larger teams, having a delivery manager (working with a potential Product Manager) in large scrum teams — adds tremendous value in terms of enabling incremental and interactive value delivery through software.

Other articles which may be of interest:

Future of work going into 2023.

Managing Global Teams

Managing High Performing teams

Continuous team improvements using Agile Retrospectives

Common Mistakes in Agile Implementations

Applying AI in The context of eCommerce

Chatbots — A Crash Course for Newbies

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