Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Senior Delivery Manager
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Bristol, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Reading, Warrington, York
Job Summary
Defra is the UK government department responsible for safeguarding our natural environment, supporting our world-leading food and farming industry, and sustaining a thriving rural economy. Our broad remit means we play a major role in people's day-to-day life, from the food we eat, and the air we breathe, to the water we drink.
Digital, Data, Technology and Security (DDTS) is the trusted team for digital across the entire Defra Group.
We have around 1000 colleagues across DDTS and our ambition is to make it easier and faster than ever for people to interact with Defra. If you are ready to drive innovation and push boundaries, we want to hear from you. Join us and together we will create a great place for living, and a green and healthy future for all.
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Job Description
A Senior Delivery Manager is accountable for the effective delivery of complex, high risk products and services. Within Defra, you could be helping to protect homes and businesses from flooding, make our air and rivers cleaner, protect animals and the environment, support farmers, and ensure food security.
Successful candidates will bring a delivery-focused mindset and the ability to apply their skills where they can add most value, supporting a range of products and services as organisational priorities evolve.
Person specification
Responsibilities
- Build and maintain teams, ensuring they are motivated, collaborating and working well
- Identify obstacles and help the team to overcome them
- Focus the team on what is most important to the delivery of products and services
- Encourage and facilitate continuous improvement of the delivery team
- Coach and mentor both team members and others to apply the most appropriate Agile and Lean tools and techniques
- Have strong communication skills and engage senior stakeholders
Skills And Experience
This role is aligned to the Government Digital and Data Profession Capability Framework for senior delivery managers:
- Agile and Lean practices: You can coach and lead teams in Agile and Lean good practices. You know how to create and tailor the right approach for a team, challenging, evaluating and iterating the approach through the life cycle. You can experiment with new and innovative ways of working to improve delivery across the organisation. You act as a recognised expert and advocate for Agile and Lean approaches
- Commercial management: You can take responsibility for complex relationships with contracted suppliers. You know how to identify appropriate contractual frameworks and appropriate suppliers, and how to ensure good value through negotiation
- Communication skills: You can mediate between people and mend relationships, communicating with stakeholders at all levels. You can manage stakeholder expectations and facilitate discussions about high risk and complexity even within constrained timescales. You can speak on behalf of, and represent the community to, large audiences inside and outside of government
- Financial management: You know how to influence or create budgets that are complex. You can manage the budget you are given and make it work
- Life-cycle perspective: You know how to work and consult with the right people at the right time to move through the product life cycle and deliver value. You can use evidence to decide when a team should continue, change direction or stop. You can identify tools and techniques required at different phases, and know how to guide colleagues and stakeholders through the entire life cycle.
- Maintaining delivery momentum: You know how to optimise the delivery flow of teams. You actively address the most complicated risks, issues and dependencies including where ownership exists outside the team, or no clear ownership exists. You can identify innovative ways to unblock issues.
- Making a process work: You can identify and challenge organisational processes that are unnecessarily complicated. You add value and can coach the organisation to inspect and adapt processes. You can guide teams through the implementation of a new process.
- Planning: You know how to lead a continual planning process in a very complex environment. You can identify dependencies in plans across services and co-ordinate delivery, and plan beyond delivery. You are able to coach other teams as the central point of expertise.
- Team dynamics and collaboration: You choose the right type of feedback at the appropriate time and ensure the discussion and decision stick. You can identify problems or issues in the team dynamic and rectify them.
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For further information around the technical elements of this role please see the framework.
Selection process
The Civil Service marks each element of the selection process on a merit basis. You can visit the gov.uk website for further information on the Civil Service rating scale.
Ensure you have tailored your CV and Personal Statement to the 'skills and experience' section of the job advert by providing examples on how you are suitable for the role using the STAR method.
Please ensure you demonstrate clearly, within your personal statement, how you meet these requirements, as the information you provide will form a key part when the panel is scoring your application.
For further information on STAR, you can check out our Hints and Tips document.
Application process
As Part Of The Application Process, You Will Be Assessed On Your Experience. This Will Be Evaluated By Looking At Your CV And Personal Statement, So Please Provide The Following And Ensure Your Experience Is Clearly Demonstrated
- A CV
- A 750 word Personal Statement: Referring to the 'skills and experience' sections of the job advert, please demonstrate how you are suitable for the role by providing relevant examples.
You will also be assessed on the Technical Skill ‘Agile Delivery Methodology’ at application and will be asked to provide a 250 word statement on how you've implemented Agile Delivery Methodology in your work and any relevant training you've undertaken.
Further details around what this will entail are listed on the application form.
Sift
Sift will begin shortly after the advert closes.
Should there be a large number of applications, an initial sift will be conducted using your personal statement. Candidates who pass the initial sift may be progressed to a full sift, or progressed straight to assessment or interview.
Interview
If successful at sift, you will be invited to an interview where you will be assessed on the Behaviours listed below.
Interview dates are to be confirmed. Please note that these may be subject to change.
Interviews will be held virtually on Microsoft Teams.
For further information on Success Profiles, you can visit the links below and watch our videos on DefraJobs.
Behaviours
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- Delivering at Pace
- Managing a Quality Service
- Developing Self and Others
- Seeing the Big Picture
Technical skills
- Agile Delivery Methodology
Salary and Benefits
Alongside your salary of £56,375, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs contributes £16,331 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (opens in a new window).
- 25 days leave (rising to 30 days over 5 years) plus bank holidays.
- A Civil Service pension with an average employer contribution of 28.97%.
- A day off per year for the King's birthday.
- Access to a range of retail discounts (these include supermarket, tech, gym, holiday, phone and more).
- Flexible working options such as condensed hours, part-time and flexi time.
- 3 paid volunteering days per year.
- Funding for professional membership of a recognised professional body.
- Learning and development tailored to your role and budget for training or qualifications.
- A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity.
- Cycle to work scheme.
- Health cash plan to help you manage health costs for a reduced monthly fee.
- Access to the Employee Assistance Programme open 24 hours, 7 days a week, that provides support to you during any times of stress or difficulty.
- Free access to Headspace for wellbeing.
- Season ticket loan for public transport.
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.
Selection process details
This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours, Experience and Technical skills.
For further information on the selection process for this role, please refer to the person specification section of the job advert.
Location
As part of the pre-employment process for this post, successful candidate(s) will be able to agree a contractual workplace from those locations listed in this advert. The agreed contractual workplace is then the substantive and permanent place of work for the successful candidate(s).
Where the location is ‘National’ the successful appointee should discuss and agree an appropriate contractual location in line with both Defra’s location policy and site capacity, prior to proceeding with pre-employment processes.
The agreed amount of time spent at a workplace for this post will reflect the requirement for Civil Servants to spend at least 60% of their working time in an organisation workplace with the option to work the remaining time flexibly from home. Working time spent at a workplace may include time spent at other organisational locations including field-based operational locations, together with supplier, customer or partner locations. This is a non-contractual agreement which is consistent with common Civil Service expectations.
Travel costs to non-contractual workplaces will be subject to departmental travel and subsistence policies. Travel costs to contractual workplaces are the responsibility of the employee
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