ADVENTURES OF A DELIVERY MANAGER — Week 5 & 6
Hello, thanks for tuning in for weeks 5 & 6 of Adventures of a Delivery Manager…
It’s been two weeks since my last check in… What happened last week you might ask? Why the radio silence?
As you might expect, in direct correlation to competence levels growing in the role, so do the number and scale of tasks I undertake. I’m really pleased that this has happened so quickly and so switching to a slightly less frequent article is in part a success!
Of course the key is always in the balancing of things, so we’ll see in the coming weeks where we settle with the rhythm “Adventures of a Delivery Manager”. I have a hypothesis that eventually we’ll settle at monthly, but of course, in true agile spirit, we’ll need to test that and see what the evidence presents. Also we’ll need to see what represents value and most use to the users (in this case readers).
I’m also curious to see who’s reading this and what they think of it… (that’s a hint to comment about the post!!)
So what’s been happening since last time?
- I’ve been turning things inside out…
- I’ve been building a board…
- And I’ve been pulling back the bow…
Enough with the cryptic nonsense…
As discussed in the last entry, +Matthew Cain challenged me to make this adventure more accessible and outward facing!
I chatted this through with +Nicholas Teeman and +Cate McLaurin about how we could make this a reality.
Cate and Nic were keen to know what this really meant. Turning outwards is a nice concept, but what does this actually mean?
(I love this kind of thing — it’s so cool to drill in to something conceptual until we reach definition of done and actionable steps).
We explored who ‘outward facing’ might be facing toward and decided that this was an expanding ‘onion’ like audience. That might start with ex-colleagues and teams with whom I previously interacted with and could later expand to other budding Delivery Managers and even openly share with a wider and wider audience.
We explored what this might look like, and we decided that this should be a continuation of my journey, but making sure that I shared in a way that was translatable to anyone who might be interested in Agile working as a concept (not necessarily people who want to be Scrum Masters and Delivery Managers).
We explored what might be the wider implications and who might be the wider audiences, which opened up the discussion around how would the process be repeatable.
We identified wider audiences as being:
- Personal Networks
- Apprentices
- Professional Networks
- Communities of practice
We also talked about the less tangible aspects of how such activities can inspire, encourage and assist.
So what exactly are the actionable steps to helping apprentices via personal and professional networks through a community of practice whilst engaging my former colleagues in a repeatable manner that could have far reaching intangible effects of which I have no idea?
One… step… at… a… time.
In the same way, it’s unlikely you’ll to go from rookie to accomplished Delivery Manager after a weekend course, it’s also unlikely that we’ll engage half of Europe after a couple of blog posts.
But we can bit by bit.
So actionable steps were that I would seek to expand my audience of Adventures of a Delivery Manager to a handful of former colleagues and invite a wider group of people to the next show and tell.
I will also seek to engage with the existing and next group of apprentices a little more.
This leads me nicely in to “building the board”.
As previously mentioned, at my interview for this job, to tackle the fact that I felt I had less direct experience as perhaps some of the other candidates, I declared that I would make myself my first project. (I might recommend this to anyone who is looking to take themselves to the next level in what they are doing).
This started as a conceptual idea at interview, it developed in to a humorous anecdote during my show and tell and has culminated in a genuine process that we’re going to work on and deliver.
It made sense to start strategising this.
And in the spirit of Agile — we decided to make a Trello board to do this!
We also decided on what the “Definition of Done” is.
A challenge was that the concept of ‘definition of done’ in this instance was unavoidably subjective. How on earth does one determine a feeling of self confidence and clear competence, beyond a subjective perception?
Seek external validation of course!
We decided something extraordinarily ambitious!
When we sense it’s a good time, we will try applying for some jobs! Cate will assess the applications and create a mock interview. Depending on how adventurous and tongue in cheek we feel at the time, maybe even see if I can get an actual interview and get feedback on the experience.
This is quite unconventional, but what I really like about it, is the level of self confidence and trust involved in this process. It’s rare to come across such gestures and I am grateful and excited about it. Perhaps counterintuitively, it actually expands my already strong sense of loyalty and dedication to HackIT.
If I applied, got an interview for a post demanding an experienced Delivery Manager and did really well, citing real life examples, successes and failures — that’s pretty solidly fulfilling “Definition of Done”.
For now however, bringing things back to where we are now, we return to the how and what am I doing to reach that place.
Again…
One.Step.At.A.Time.
Iteratively of course.
This iteration (or sprint) my peers have set my four main tasks to complete this month. A recap and how I am doing:
1) Book a coffee/lunch/chat with 10 colleagues in HackIT that I don’t know yet.
- I’ve undertaken to have an offline chat with members of the projects I have been working.
- I will be joining “let’s network Hackney” this coming week.
- I am going to strike up three random conversations in the office next week!
2) Learn how to be a service assessor to understand governance better.
- This has been switched! There is no service assessor training availability!
- We’ve switched to the other option of learning 3 GDS standards (Cate is happy about this!)
3) Spend 1 hour with each key team learning the basics around terminology & tech language and capture.
- We’ve identified who those teams are — there are lots of them.
- I’m going to target Relationship Managers, Technical Architecture and Applications Management to start with.
4) Invite my colleagues in to my workshops for feedback.
- I’ve been working with Philippa lots this week and we have agreed to do a 360 feedback sesh.
- I’m working lots with David next week and we’ll do the same.
How might this apply outside of ICT or my own personal journey?
Well, let’s translate it…
Could you book 10 new connections with the people around you?
Could you learn 3 new pieces of information about your business area?
Could you spend some time with related teams that you don’t know so much about?
Could you do some 360 feedback with a colleague?
While we’re at it…
What is your ‘definition of done?’ right now?
How are you managing and monitoring your self development?
Who is helping you to expand in your role and business?
So having ‘built the board’ (the Trello board), let’s talk briefly about ‘pulling back the bow’.
By this I mean the final stage of preparation — like when an archer pulls back their bow before releasing the arrow and super velocity is unleashed.
This week it’s been all about preparing for kicking off two projects next week.
I’ve been getting to know the Product Owners and together we’ve been piecing together, step by step, how we are going to deliver for our two projects. We’ve been planning our kick-off and sprint zero phases.
In both instances, both I and the product owner have ‘inherited’ our projects.
This means we’ve had some catching up to do with stakeholders, documentation, previous participants etc.
Taking that information, taking the most successful elements of the most recent HackIT experiment, taking some amazing elements from kick off’s from my colleagues, we’ve reached a place where we are actually going to deliver kick off (aka ‘launch’) the next phases of these projects.
As ever, I like to be emotionally honest…
I am nervous and I do have a mild level of anxiety around whether I’m going to do a good job with these.
I worry about whether I have interpreted the intentions of the stakeholders properly and if I have guided the Product Owners effectively.
This does test however, one of the brilliant self governing aspects of agile.
Through the show and tell mechanism, through weeknotes and through working in the open… Even if I have managed to end up with my thinking wide of the mark, the stakeholders will be kept almost constantly in the loop and invited to contribute every step of the way — so there’s only so far we could go wrong.
That said, I also think it’s healthy to be a bit nervous.
This isn’t about a vacuum of self confidence or a terror of being shouted it. Not at all.
It’s more about recognising the depth and impact of the work that we’re doing and the impact that we can make if we get it right.
It’s about really wanting to do well.
It’s about taking this seriously and having a healthy respect for the task in hand.
In fact, in almost every career, vocation and skillset, the people who commit to playing at the top level often talk about how they push themselves and almost always experience nerves before a big event. Athletes, Rock Stars, CEO’s — it’s really common.
In the last couple of weeks, both of our apprentices talked about how they felt nervous about public speaking and asked about how it might be possible to transcend this.
We had a chat afterwards and I expressed to them that I’ve been doing public speaking for 25 years, trained with many trainers and done countless courses. In fact, I really enjoy it. But I STILL get nerves before I deliver a speech — because I care. I explained to them that it’s less about trying to transcend the feeling, but more about how to harness and use the feeling. Exploring how the physical and emotional manifestations of nervousness can be transformed to serve us in the moment.
Coming full circle, albeit nervous, I am excited at the same time — because I care a lot about how this goes, because I am excited for the growing opportunity and because this matters.
So next week — we release tension from the bow and the arrow of work shoots forward…
…let’s see how close we get to the bullseye!
Over & Out
Ian
