Co-op Digital Blog

I joined The Co-op at the beginning of the year as Head of Agile Delivery. It’s my job to help The Co-op get the most out of modern ways of delivering its services, so that:

• It’s quicker to deliver and test them with real people.
• They’re more responsive to feedback from the people that use them.
• Teams self organise around continuous improvement.

Generally speaking, teams and organisations that adopt agile ways of working have a better chance of delivering the right thing, are happier and more collaborative. It is perfectly suited to an organisation built on co-operation and doing the right thing for its people.

Since joining I’ve been doing the rounds in The Co-op to explain it in more detail and how other teams can adopt this mindset to delivery. Some teams are already on their way, but others need help.

The conversation goes something like this:

“Can you help Jamie?”
“Yes, of course. You probably need a Delivery Manager to help get you going.”
“What’s one of those? We’ve got project managers. Is that the same?”

At which point I usually share this excellent post by Emily Webber explaining the role of a Delivery Manager, because the answer is, it is different in important ways:

“It describes the person on the agile team whose main concern is enabling a team of skilled people to deliver value. They create the right environment for the team. They facilitate the team and remove obstacles and blockers that might get in their way. They work closely with the product manager (sometimes known as product owner), but while the product manager is concerned with the vision the delivery manager is concerned with making it happen. The perfect visionary and doer pairing”
Emily Webber

Have a read of the post and if you’re that person and have the right experience then get in touch. It’d be good to hear from you.

You can see more information about vacancies for Delivery Managers on our career site.

Jamie Arnold
Head of Agile Delivery