Delivery Lead at The University of Sheffield

Overview

The Delivery Lead leads a team of delivery professionals responsible for ensuring the successful execution of product initiatives across the organisation. This strategic leadership role bridges the gap between product vision and operational execution, providing critical oversight of delivery processes while nurturing a high-performing team of agile practitioners.

As the delivery authority for the product area, this role ensures transparent, risk-managed, and efficient delivery of product plans while championing agile best practices. The Delivery Lead partners closely with the Head of Product and other key stakeholders to maintain alignment between delivery activities and organisational objectives.

In this role, you will have exceptional leadership abilities, deep agile expertise, and strong stakeholder management skills. You will create an environment where delivery managers can thrive, continuously improve, and deliver maximum value to the organisation.

Main duties and responsibilities

• Provide oversight of the delivery landscape for a product area, supporting the Head of Product with a summary view (and other key stakeholders, as required), in real time, to enable and ensure the successful execution of product delivery plans.
• Identify and manage risks and issues that span across the product area, acting as an escalation point for the delivery team and to support unblocking issues, and escalating to the Head of Product as appropriate.
• Lead an agile delivery team, providing coaching and mentor support to enable and empower the team to success; be a role model of agile delivery best practice, identifying and providing continuous development and training opportunities for the team.
• Drive delivery performance across the team, identifying and implementing process improvements, sharing best practices, and refining agile frameworks across teams and within the Delivery Community of Practice.
• Build an ecosystem for delivery success by creating an environment that empowers Delivery Managers to self-organise and provide coaching to unlock further value 
• Coordinate and manage delivery planning, sprint cycles, and delivery schedules across the product area, driving best practice and working closely with the Portfolio team and other product areas to ensure platform level oversight and consistency. 
• Manage change budget and resources across the portfolio of delivery for a product area.
• Ensure clear and timely progress communications with stakeholders at all levels. managing expectations throughout the delivery cycle; represent delivery at steering groups and other governance boards as required.
• Carry out other duties, commensurate with the grade and remit of the post.