Delivery Manager

As the living, growing home of our national story, The National Archives is a special place to work. We’re an institution nearly 200 years old with a collection spanning 1,000 years of history.

We’ve set ourselves the challenge of becoming the 21st Century national archive - a different kind of cultural and heritage institution: Inclusive, Entrepreneurial, Disruptive. We won’t become this overnight. It will take time, focus, effort and daring.

That’s where you come in. Because we can’t do this without you.

Job Overview

• Salary: £53,100 per annum
• Contract: Fixed Term Appointment for 6 months
• Band: F / Senior Executive Officer
• Closing Date: Thursday 24th September at midnight

The National Archives is looking for an experienced Delivery Manager.

At The National Archives we aspire to create outstanding digital services for our users (government, the public, students and academic researchers). This is a key element of our ambitious vision to transform our services, ensure the public record thrives and survives, and open up access to 900 years of British history.

As Delivery Manager in the Access to Digital Records team you will be responsible for delivery managing services and providing free and open access to Case Law via https://caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk/.

You will work within a blended multi-disciplinary product team made up of in house staff and contractors. The team will comprise of a service owner, product owner, back-end and front-end developers, user researchers, designers and data specialists.

This is a full time post. However, requests for part-time working, flexible working and job share will be considered, taking into account at all times the operational needs of the Department.

A combination of onsite and home working is available and applicants should be able to regularly travel to our Kew site for a minimum of 60% of their work time.

• Application Process:
• •Interview: Interviews will be held on-site and as part of the interview process you will be asked to give a presentation relevant to the responsibilities of the role.
• •Personal Statement: We ask all applicants to submit work history details and a personal statement, not exceeding 1200 words, addressing the 4 criteria listed below.

Selection for interview will be based on how you meet these 4 criteria, so please ensure that your statement demonstrates in detail how you meet these requirements, using subheadings for each criteria where possible. The remaining criteria will be assessed at interview stage, alongside these criteria. (please see job description below for full list).

Essential criteria for personal statement:

• •A proactive, passionate, positive and delivery focused expert and strong advocate of Agile product delivery practices. You will have practical experience in a range of Agile methods, frameworks, methodologies and tools, and understand which best to apply in a given situation
• •User-focused, with proven experience of delivering robust, secure and inclusive digital products that meet user needs, technical requirements, legal or policy constraints and the quality expectations of the business.
• •Experience of managing multi-disciplinary teams who may work across one or more projects, with a proven ability to build a positive team culture
• •Experience of developing product roadmaps, structuring and tracking work, managing spend and communicating and forecasting progress and velocity

Applicants invited to interview will be assessed against ALL of the essential criteria (see full job description below).

Artificial Intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please visit the Civil Service Careers website where you can find further information on the use of AI in the application guidance section.

Sponsorship: We are unable to offer sponsorship for this role.

Job Description

Role and Responsibilities

Enable and facilitate a multi-disciplinary team and build a positive, open Agile working culture using Scrum or other appropriate Agile methods. Have a deep knowledge of and be able to apply a range of tools and methods, taking an innovative approach and keeping up to date with trends in Agile product delivery. Promote and advocate effective management and appropriate tools and techniques.

Apply appropriate methods to create an open and collaborative working environment where the team (and other stakeholders) have a strong situational awareness of what team members are working on. Help improve team co-ordination, apply your coaching skills to support the team to autonomously organise their own work

Facilitate the collaborative, dynamic planning process, helping to prioritise work against user needs and the capacity and capability of the team.

Enable the team to deliver at pace, building and iterating robust, secure, inclusive products and services, which meet user needs.

Lead on risk and issue management. Remove any obstacles or ‘blockers’ to progress, including timely escalation of issues when necessary.

Maintain accurate records and create performance metrics to demonstrate progress against goals, performance indicators and delivery commitments. Establish the feedback loop for teams. Translate and measure value and relate this to practical objectives and user needs.

Build and support the team’s reflective practice, creating a safe space for reflection, learning from what has worked well, identifying improvements and progressively improving the team’s practice. Guide the implementation of any new processes and demonstrate flexibility, adaptability and positivity.

Work with the Product Owner and user feedback to refresh, iterate and refine product requirements and shape the product roadmap. Translate this into a backlog of prioritised user stories.

Take a leading role in the Delivery Manager community at The National Archives and more widely in government and beyond, sharing and skills and knowledge and bringing and applying best practice.

Person Specification

• •A proactive, passionate, positive and delivery focused expert and strong advocate of Agile product delivery practices. You will have practical experience in a range of Agile methods, frameworks, methodologies and tools, and understand which best to apply in a given situation
• •User-focused, with proven experience of delivering robust, secure and inclusive digital products that meet user needs, technical requirements, legal or policy constraints and the quality expectations of the business.
• •Comfortable working in a continuous learning environment, dealing with ambiguity and change and balancing multiple priorities.
• •Skilled at building trust, reflecting, motivating and challenging the team, and innovating to create or tailor new ways of working.
• •Strong diplomacy and negotiation skills, allowing you to engage with team members, colleagues and senior stakeholders, build effective relationships and achieve buy-in collaboratively.
• •Experience of managing multi-disciplinary teams who may work across one or more projects, with a proven ability to build a positive team culture
• •Support teams in becoming self-organising and coaching and mentoring team members who are new to Agile ways of working. We expect team members to come and go as their skills are needed.
• •Experience of developing product roadmaps, structuring and tracking work, managing spend and communicating and forecasting progress and velocity.

Desirable:

• •Knowledge of Jira, Confluence or other work tracking tools.
• •Experience of coaching and motivating and empowering your team who are managed by others.
• •Understanding of the digital l