Description
Summary
The Delivery Lead is responsible for driving the operational delivery of a first class system support and enhancement function for our HR and Finance corporate platforms. This means owning and effectively managing the delivery of a pipeline of work comprising day-to-day incidents and change requests through to large roadmap items.The Delivery Lead reports into the Service Owner, who in turn reports into the Head of Enterprise Applications within the Enterprise Technology area. This is a key internal role sitting between our external 3rd party delivery partners (who provide the hands-on technical delivery resource and expertise) and our internal business teams. The remit covers our HR and Finance corporate platforms (currently Workday and i-Trent with an increasing footprint as we centralise our corporate platforms)
The Delivery Lead must work closely and collaboratively with the internal business Product Owners, as well as offering active challenge to ensure a coordinated prioritised delivery pipeline, underpinning a strategically aligned successful technical delivery. Regular engagement is also required with key senior stakeholders and other support functions, including Security & Risk, Change Hubs and Architecture.
The role is about creating and delivering effective plans to ensure that things get done whilst ensuring alignment to all relevant standards and processes.
Activities:
Maintains a holistic view of the delivery pipeline for relevant systems (currently Workday/ i-Trent)
Gatekeeper of pipeline deliverables, to ensure appropriate alignment with both strategic business goals and defined technology strategy and approach
Maintain a level of technical knowledge of the Workday and i-Trent platforms to ensure suitable technical ownership, consultative advice and guidance to the business product owners to address the business areas needs
Active stakeholder management to collaboratively engage and also challenge stakeholders of all levels
Proactive business engagement to understand the business domains currently served to improve the operational and future delivery aspects
Management and ownership of deliveries / releases, ensuring best practice alignment with ITIL principles and relevant internal processes (e.g. change control, impact assessment, release management, environment management)
Planning and co-ordination of tech delivery aspects across multiple strategic 3rd party partners as well as internal support and business resources, to effectively deliver customer and technical/ security requirements with optimal resource utilisation
Ensure deliveries meet required scope, timescales, budget, quality levels and KPIs
Ensure high levels of customer satisfaction are delivered through effective and customer-focused IT services
Consider and negotiate dependencies across all technical roadmaps to maximise delivery effectiveness
Develop and apply robust governance approaches to ensure effective prioritisation of workload in line with functionality roadmaps, strategic objectives and business need
Represent the technical voice within prioritisation decisions to ensure systems are optimally maintained
Matrix manage supporting roles as required (e.g. Business Analyst, Architects and Testers across Enterprise and Assessment technology functions
Provide technical leadership in the response for resolution of major incidents impacting Workday / i-Trent
Accountable for environment management including cost forecasting and consumption
Adopt a continuous improvement approach to ensure the ongoing integrity and optimisation of the systems
Stepin cover for Service Owner role as required, to ensure no single point of failure in overall service provision
Demonstrates commercial flexibility by undertaking other responsibilities which are of a commensurate level as business needs change
Apply a robust risk management approach to ensure all risks are proactively identified and managed. This includes having auditable processes and documentation
Ensure AQA is safe and legally compliant by applying AQA’s policies and other legislative/ regulatory requirements
Need to know (to be successful in this role, you will need to know):
Strong customer focus
Ability to lead and operate in conjunction with 3rd party suppliers – operational supplier management
Confident balancing strategic and operational demands to ensure optimal delivery outputs in line with strategic business objectives
Excellent communicator, able to challenge, negotiate with and influence stakeholders of all levels to achieve desired outcomes
Demonstrable experience supporting/ managing equivalent cloud-based software, notably Workday and preferably i-Trent
Excellent technical fluency and understanding
Be results focused, able to make pragmatic decisions and deliver at pace
Good understanding of project methodologies and ITIL principles (certification desirable)
Good understanding of change management / release cycle best practice
Ability to define and deliver plans to achieve defined strategic organisational goals and customer needs
Good understanding of data management principles and their application