Whats the difference between a Project manager and a delivery manager?
I am going to bulk a couple of roles together, so Project/Programme management (PM) on one track and Delivery/Engineering manager (DM) on the other as; in my experience they are much the same roles with a few differences such as project often smaller than Programme and Delivery Manager often being a new way of reflecting Engineering manager roles.
Tl;dr
My most simple and basic way of describing the differences is that a PM is accountable for the delivery of a Project whereas the DM is accountable for the team, “the team” is a mix of delivery, recruitment, ways of working, team morale, team makeup and anything else that is longer term to create great teams.
The more in-depth version
Everything here is all based on my experience and my preferences, your role and the company you work for might be different, or you might completely disagree.
So first off a table of main responsibilities from what I have experienced over the years and the way I prefer things to work:
I do believe in large corporations who are moving towards working in a more Agile manner that there is often still a place for the PM when a project spans multiple teams although, in my opinion, a better way to do this is to have an outstanding product manager sitting at the top who is paying attention to budgets as well as scope.
Being More Agile:
The PM duties are easily shared out between the Product managers/owners and the Delivery managers within the teams; the Product Manager should be accountable for the delivery of a project on their Product, of course at a lot of companies there isn’t the right set up for this.
There’s a great image from Erin S Beierwaltes on moving traditional Duties from PM out to others here:
There are also lots of guides on how to transition project management to Agile if thats your desire so I recommend just googling that and having a read up.
Thats my 2 pence worth and happy to hear any comments even if you disagree as I think the discussion is always valuable.
