Delivery Manager - Office for National Statistics - SEO

The ONS operates a flexible hybrid working model across the UK, with colleagues linked to one of our contractual locations working between office and remote throughout the week. The locations for this role are Newport and Titchfield (Fareham). All colleagues are required to work from their contractually allocated site for at least 40% of their working time. The induction process for the role will be conducted in person.

About the job

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is the UK’s largest producer of official statistics, covering a range of key economic, social and demographic topics. These include measuring changes in the value of the UK economy, estimating the size, geographic distribution and characteristics of the population, and providing indicators of price inflation, employment, earnings, crime and migration.

This Delivery Manager vacancy sits within Social Surveys Telephone and Ports Collection (SSTPC) division which encompasses the International Passenger Survey community, who are based at airports, seaports, and international train stations across the UK, and the Telephone Operations community, which is based within our HQ offices. The division also incorporates the Survey Enquiry Line, who support field interviewers and the public who call in requesting assistance, and the Survey Validation team who undertake critical coding and editing work. The Operational Delivery Profession Hub team, which provides profession‑specific support and development across Social Surveys Directorate and the wider ONS, also sits within this division.

Social Surveys Directorate (SSD) is the largest Directorate in ONS, comprising 2000 colleagues, including the field communities, split across six divisions:

• Social Surveys Field Collection (SSFC)
• Social Surveys Telephone and Ports Collection (SSTPC)
• Social Surveys Research and Production (SSRP)
• Social Surveys Strategy, Research and Innovation (SSRI)
• Social Surveys Transformation (SST)
• Social Surveys Central Division (SSCD)

As a Delivery Manager you will be accountable for the delivery of products and services. Build and maintain motivated teams, making sure there is an iterative plan to work towards. Protect the team and make sure the team collaborates, communicates, and focuses on what is most important. Coach team members and others. Facilitate continuous improvement and apply the most appropriate agile and lean tools and techniques for their environment. Proactively manage dependencies, overcome obstacles, and get the best value against constraints. You may manage risks, budgets, and people. A delivery manager will build and maintain teams, ensuring they are motivated, collaborating and working well.

In this role you will:

• 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.
• Work with stakeholders and end users to plan and configure systems, to develop solutions that will achieve needed objectives.
• Oversee the deployment of programs, systems, or services, coordinating all of the parties involved to ensure a smooth process with minimal disruption.

Responsibilities:

• Demonstrate leadership skills, manage risk, and guide projects towards successful delivery.
• Proactively identify potential issues and take action to prevent them from hindering progress.
• Oversee the financial aspects of project delivery, ensuring efficient use of resources.
• Actively engage in project planning and estimation, preparing for potential challenges and changes.
• Experience in leading Delivery of software systems against business requirements, ideally when using telephony.

Person specification:

• Commercial Management Working - Act as the point of contact for contracted suppliers. Understand appropriate internal contacts and processes within a government department. Understand how and when third parties should be brought into digital, data and technology projects.
• Communicating between the technical and non-technical Practitioner - Listen to and interpret the needs of technical and non-technical stakeholders and manage their expectations. Manage active and reactive communication. Support or host difficult discussions within the team or with diverse senior stakeholders.
• Life cycle management Working - Manage the delivery of products and services that add value through different phases of the life cycle, with some support. Identify if the product or service should move to the next phase and, if it should, how to do this ensure the product or service is developed in line with the appropriate service standards for a phase. Use new information to adapt approaches to life cycle management.
• Making the process work Expert - Identify and challenge organisational processes of increasing complexity and those processes that are unnecessarily complicated. Add value and can coach the organisation to inspect and adapt processes. Understand external suppliers’ delivery approaches and adapt to ensure interface to ONS delivery approach is smooth, challenging external supplier to align more closely where appropriate. Guide teams through the implementation of a new process.
• Planning Practitioner - Understand the environment and is able to prioritise the most important or highest value tasks. Use data to inform planning. Manage complex internal and external dependencies. Provide delivery confidence. Remove blockers or impediments that affect the plan and is able to develop a plan for difficult situations. Ensure teams plan appropriately for their own capacity.