Senior Manager, Agile Delivery Practice

City of Vancouver•Vancouver, BC

About The Position

The Sr Manager, Agile Delivery Practice in Technology Services is responsible for planning, directing and co-ordinating cross-functional teams in the delivery and strategic development of high-quality products and IT Services. This role blends Agile methodology expertise with project delivery, risk management, and team coaching to optimize the performance of technology product and service delivery across areas including Technology Services and the City. Responsible for collaborating with other business and technology leaders to design, implement, deliver and operate enterprise services and solutions that generate business value. The Sr Manager, Agile Delivery Practice will leverage agile methodology to guide teams through defining a product/service’s vision, create the roadmap, continuously manage feature prioritization (includes analysis and fixes) and work closely with project management, supporting IT, Digital and Business areas to ensure scheduled incremental delivery of product versions. Ultimately, the Sr Manager, Agile Delivery Practice works with key business and IT, Digital and 3-1-1-stakeholders to ensure alignment between business drivers and goals, IT capacity and capability and agreed, prioritized direction of product evolution. The role contributes to departmental planning activities, making recommendations for changes in methods, processes and procedures that may impact financial and operational areas as well as staffing workloads, working conditions, changes in positions or staffing levels.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or Business Administration and a minimum of seven (7) years of relevant IT experience as Agile Delivery Manager or Product Manager, or an equivalent combination of education, training and experience.
Experience working within organizations that are multi-disciplinary and have numerous stakeholders with competing interests.
Experience with business analysis and/or process engineering.
Extensive knowledge of the following techniques required to: Deliver products and services and coach teams through agile delivery methodologies
Formulate a product strategy
Develop a product vision
Define MVP (Minimum Viable Product) as a whole and for releases
Feature and activity prioritization (knowledge of different prioritization techniques: KANO, Cost-Value, Quality Function Deployment, Opportunity Scoring, Buy a Feature, Story Mapping and MoSCoW)
Negotiate and obtain agreement among different stakeholders and competing priorities and objectives
Manage agile delivery of multiple products under a single portfolio
Assign value to features with a corresponding measurement (metric)
Extensive knowledge of current IT trends and technologies.
Extensive knowledge of technology solutions relevant to a business unit’s needs.
Extensive knowledge of leadership/management practices and procedures.
Thorough working knowledge of office productivity tools (e.g. Windows, MS Office, MS Project, etc.).
Extensive knowledge of application lifecycle management.
Excellent leadership skills with the ability to motivate, engage and mentor staff.
Strong interpersonal and customer service skills.
Strong negotiating skills and abilities to implement service agreements and settle disputes.
Excellent analytical, writing, and communication skills.
Strong attention to detail.
Excellent customer service skills and expertise in relating to vendors, c-suite stakeholders and business colleagues.
Demonstrated operational and project management skills: outcome focused and team oriented.
Demonstrated problem solving and negotiation skills in a complex business environment.
Ability to effectively and positively influence others in a team-oriented, collaborative environment.
Ability to foster and support professional development of team members and guide career planning conversations to set them up for success.
Ability to communicate effectively; foster high standards; coach; inspire and manage multi-disciplinary teams in a fast-paced, performance-focused environment using excellent interpersonal, visual design, presentation and written skills.
Ability to establish and maintain effective working relationships with a variety of internal and external contacts and team members to provide advice, information and assistance.
Ability to handle business critical, confidential and sensitive information.
Ability to work under pressure, manage multiple priorities and respond to requests in a timely manner.

Responsibilities

Provides leadership and guidance to staff, contractors and vendors to ensure successful delivery of the Annual Technology Plan as well as operational targets.
Leverages agile methodology to guide team supervisors in the analysis and resolution of complex problems including analyzing the risk and impact of technology solutions and changes on individual business units.
Identifies and measures key customer service KPIs and metrics to develop strategic objectives to improve service delivery and create effectiveness and efficiency.
Provides guidance, structure, and strategic thought leadership to support successful implementation of strategic and operational initiatives and actively partners with City Departments and other internal stakeholder groups to understand their vision, business direction and assess opportunities and risks.
Establishes and leads agile product/service delivery for strategic and tactical priorities, defining project goals, objectives, risks, resources, roles and responsibilities, work breakdown structure, milestones, and deliverables, working collaboratively with Technology Program Managers as required.
Establishes and fosters positive departmental relationships between client departments and Technology Services and supports the management of Service Level Agreements and Operating Agreements with departmental contacts.
Represents the Technology Services department at senior management levels across organization to ensure cohesion as the Technology Services team evolves its processes and procedures.
Collaborates with business leaders to better understand business drivers, challenges and strategy and how to positively influence these to improve outcomes for end users.
Provides leadership to staff which may include hiring, assigning responsibilities, evaluating performance, coaching, career development, succession planning, mentoring, training and development, providing feedback and discipline up to and including termination.
Responsible for the delivery of digital and technology platforms and/or products that support critical business service delivery.
Ensures secure and effective design implementation and maintenance of platforms / product to support business continuity.
Supports the definition of strategy for the product (or group of related products = portfolio), ensuring that it continuously supports the business unit goals while simultaneously being able to be executed and supported within the organization’s IT capacity and capability.
Maintains oversight over key business systems, technologies, related products and operational processes that have an impact on the performance and direction of the product/service.
Provides agile delivery & strategy for a portfolio of products, collaborating with the business and all necessary teams to consistently deliver incremental value with continuous improvement of the product(s) to the organization.
Supports the evolution of the service or product over time, improving customer satisfaction, financial performance and measuring the value of the service or product as defined in consultation with key business and IT stakeholders.
Leverages economies of scale by looking at new and emerging technologies, including software as a service, infrastructure as a service, platform as a service, and other cloud based products or services where product features may be delivered via integration effort rather than development.
Ensures the underlying operational processes are in place that the product(s) drive, output to or rely upon for certain functions / features.
Understands the full IT medium to long term technology plan and architecture to ensure technology decisions for the product/service are aligned to what is possible and practical within the organization.
Provides professional and consulting services to the business unit(s) or the corporate portfolio regarding the use and value of the product(s) and agile ways of working, but also to continually develop a backlog of features (requirements) that drive the product’s evolution.
Manages a backlog of epics and stories (i.e., requirements), some of which may be delivered as part of an Agile approach or where appropriate, become part of a larger program of approved projects.
Works with all product stakeholders and other Technical Product Managers to monitor and communicate impacts of business and technology events / changes on their product(s).
Collaborates with internal and external partners to define a product strategy and roadmap that support business or corporate strategies and ensure that the best balance of technology and business objectives is applied to the product to drive the best ROI.
Defines, develops and leads implementation of agile methodology to support business unit objectives, which could include recommending technology solutions that impact process, procedures, job responsibilities and staffing levels.
Understands how technology and business trends impact operational processes that the product drives or relies upon for target performance.
Regularly conducts technology & process assessments and analyzes the competitive landscape to better understand the potential medium and long term impact on the product(s) and to re-prioritize as needed.
Monitors and incorporates industry innovations into product planning & agile delivery.
Works closely with teams across IT to successfully lead the strategy for the product(s) and understand technical challenges and the implications of decisions to make trade-offs in terms of complexity, depth or timelines.
Supports annual technology planning by ensuring both technology and business considerations are factored into ‘what is likely’ for the product and communicates to key stakeholders accordingly.
Responsible for delivering within a product (or portfolio) budget and re-prioritizing features and activities based on actual budget allocated via the approval process.
Builds processes for approval of all features, fixes and enhancements that affect the product/service.
Enabled development and management of roadmaps and backlogs with a business value (i.e., problem we are trying to solve) approach and related technical or technology decisions / considerations are made in consultation with Product Managers, the Enterprise Architect team and other IT teams that are critical to the support and performance of the product/service.
Responsible for ensuring all epics and stories related to the product are documented and made available to all stakeholders on demand.
This includes ensuring stories are aligned to defined personas applicable to the product.
Maintains a status dashboard for all portfolio products and regularly reports out to the business units and IT.
Leads the work of cross-functional teams, which will include business and system analysts, developers, designers, and business partners, to deliver incremental versions of a product or service, and provide direction, guidance, coaching and support while holding accountability for completion of product deliverables.
May provide leadership to staff including hiring, assigning responsibilities, evaluating performance, coaching, career development, succession planning, mentoring, training and development, providing feedback and discipline up to and including termination.
Accesses highly sensitive, strategic and business information (e.g., business strategy, vendor pricing, etc.) and uses this to inform strategic decision making that materially impacts service delivery to both staff and members of the public.
Other duties/responsibilities as assigned.