Delivery Lead

at  The Economist Group LTD

ESSENTIAL SKILLS AND KNOWLEDGE

• Significant experience within B2C or B2B product development.
• Delivery experience working with content management systems (CMS’s).
• Experience coordinating and managing dependencies across multiple (including external) teams.
• Simultaneous management of multiple software development teams.
• Strong understanding of a variety of Agile approaches e.g. Scrum, Kanban, scaled Agile. Willing to not be prescriptive, and instead adapt ways of working.
• Use agile metrics (cycle time, throughput, Monte Carlo) to optimise team planning, estimation and ways of working.
• Advanced user of Google Suite (including Jira integrations), Miro for workshop facilitation, Jira and Confluence.
• Excellent coaching and mentoring skills - leading in Communities of Practices.
• Significant experience of successfully managing and delivering complex projects.
• Experience managing multiple software teams.
• Experience coordinating and managing dependencies across multiple (including external) teams.
• Strong stakeholder management skills and able to challenge and influence decisions.
• Established leadership, time management, facilitation, and organisational skills.
• Ability to understand and articulate technical ideas clearly.
• Pragmatic and flexible, with a willingness to take on different roles and responsibilities in order to successfully deliver business initiatives.

INTRODUCTION TO THE ROLE

We are seeking an agile Delivery Lead to join The Economist Group’s product delivery team.
The role will initially plan, manage and deliver the roadmap for our Economist Intelligence (EI) CMS and business intelligence tool teams. These teams develop the platforms that provide EI’s world-class economic analysis, forecasts, and data to help businesses, financial institutions, and governments understand economic developments and make informed decisions.
You will work closely with your product managers and engineering managers and across multiple teams to ensure end-to-end delivery and continuous improvement of the Agile ecosystem. It is important you have experience working with scaled agile frameworks.
The Economist’s Technology and Product teams are a passionate group of digital professionals who manage various internal and customer-facing products and services. We are a multi-disciplinary group working in a fast-paced and collaborative environment. We value honest opinion and open debate. We’re in the business of building modern, state-of-the-art products, and delivering a first-rate user experience.
Accountabilities:

IN THIS ROLE YOU WILL BE EXPECTED TO:

• Lead and manage the CMS and Viewpoint (EI’s customer-facing business intelligence tool) squad. Perform the role of Agile Coach and Scrum Master for them.
• Deliver complex “end-to-end” initiatives that touch upon multiple teams.
• Review end-to-end delivery and agile ways of working to ensure the team is working optimally across product, design, engineering and QA.
• Manage detailed, predictable monthly roadmap plans (Jira Plan aka Advanced Roadmaps), quarterly roadmaps (e.g. Jira Product Discovery), and team capacity plans (Google <> Jira integrated worksheets).
• Ensure the overall integrity, predictability and visibility of the roadmap.
• Identify, eliminate and proactively manage dependencies between teams.
• Proactively monitor progress, so that you then take responsibility to take corrective action (e.g. to monitor fragmentation to resolve poorly managed dependencies).
• Liaise and coordinate third party suppliers and dependencies to deadlines.
• Report delivery progress at regular intervals through status reporting, and comms to exec stakeholders.
• Contribute and get buy-in to the Delivery function’s strategic goals of Visibility, Predictability and Collaboration.
• Willingness to grow, as we scale the organisation.
• Although this remit requires specific CMS domain experience, the role itself is not domain specific. Product pillars (in any mature organisation) don’t remain static, and so as the organisation evolves you may move from domain to domain depending on demand.
  Experience, skills and professional attributes: