Senior Delivery Manager

Job description

**JOB PURPOSE:** The role is a senior business partner to the organisation, connecting business strategy, product priorities and technology execution. It is accountable for leading complex cross-functional delivery, establishing and maturing enterprise PMO capability, and embedding pragmatic agile and enterprise delivery frameworks that improve transparency, prioritisation and business outcomes. The role is structured around four essential outcomes: Business partnership: How do we turn business priorities into a coherent, outcome-led portfolio and provide leaders with clear choices, evidence and confidence? Enterprise PMO and governance: How do we create proportionate standards, controls and portfolio insight without slowing delivery? Delivery leadership: How do we remove impediments, manage dependencies and deliver complex change predictably across teams, platforms and events? Agile and product capability: How do we coach Product Owners and teams to apply agile and lean practices, strengthen product thinking and continuously improve? **KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES** What we expect of you, day to day: **Strategic business partnering** • Act as a trusted delivery partner to senior business and technology leaders, building a deep understanding of strategic priorities, commercial drivers, operational pressures and customer outcomes. • Translate strategy and business needs into prioritised roadmaps, clear delivery outcomes and executable plans across functions, platforms, brands and events. • Provide constructive challenge, evidence-based recommendations and transparent trade-offs to support executive decisions on scope, sequencing, investment and risk. • Build strong relationships across business units and create shared accountability for delivery outcomes, benefits and adoption. **Enterprise PMO and portfolio governance** • Design, establish and continuously mature an enterprise PMO operating model, including demand intake, prioritisation, business cases, stage gates, portfolio planning, assurance, reporting and benefits tracking. • Introduce proportionate enterprise delivery standards, governance, templates and controls that work across agile, predictive and hybrid delivery environments. • Create a reliable enterprise portfolio view covering outcomes, milestones, investment, capacity, dependencies, risks, issues and decisions. • Establish effective governance cadences and decision forums, ensuring actions, ownership and escalation routes are clear and timely. • Partner with Finance, Product, Technology and business leaders on investment planning, resource forecasting, portfolio scenarios and value realisation. **Delivery leadership** • Lead complex, business-critical programmes and cross-functional initiatives from discovery through implementation, adoption and benefits realisation. • Own integrated delivery plans and proactively manage scope, schedules, budgets, quality, risks, issues, assumptions, decisions and cross-team dependencies. • Remove organisational and technology impediments, resolving ambiguity and creating the conditions for teams to deliver efficiently and consistently. • Hold teams and partners accountable for commitments while creating a safe, collaborative environment for early escalation and problem solving. • Manage third-party suppliers and consultants where required, ensuring delivery, commercial and quality expectations are met. **Agile, lean and product coaching** • Coach Product Owners on product vision, outcome-based roadmaps, value prioritisation, backlog health, user stories, acceptance criteria and effective stakeholder engagement. • Coach delivery teams and leaders in Scrum, Kanban, Lean and scaled enterprise practices, adapting the approach pragmatically to the nature and risk of the work. • Facilitate high-value workshops, planning sessions, reviews and retrospectives that create alignment, resolve decisions and maintain momentum. • Build delivery capability through mentoring, communities of practice, playbooks, maturity assessments and targeted learning interventions. • Promote continuous improvement using flow, predictability, quality, customer and value metrics rather than activity measures alone. **Performance, communication and organisational leadership** • Produce concise, decision-oriented portfolio reporting for senior stakeholders, with clear narrative on progress, forecast, value, risk and required action. • Maintain exceptional organisation across multiple priorities, balancing strategic planning with hands-on intervention where delivery needs support. • Use data to identify systemic delivery constraints and lead improvements in ways of working, governance, capability and organisational design. • Role-model calm, inclusive and accountable leadership, especially when priorities are changing or delivery is under pressure. **QUALIFICATIONS, EXPERIENCE, & SKILLS** **Key requirements for the role:** • Substantial experience leading complex technology-enabled business change, programmes or portfolios in a senior delivery, programme, transformation or PMO leadership role. • Demonstrable experience establishing, transforming or materially maturing an enterprise PMO or portfolio governance capability. • Strong working knowledge of agile and lean delivery, together with enterprise-scale and hybrid frameworks; able to select and tailor the right approach rather than apply a single methodology rigidly. • Proven ability to coach Product Owners and senior stakeholders in product thinking, prioritisation, roadmaps, backlogs, outcome definition and value realisation. • Exceptional stakeholder management, influencing and negotiation skills, with the confidence to operate as a credible business partner at executive and senior leadership level. • Excellent organisational skills and the ability to create clarity, structure and momentum across a large portfolio with competing priorities and dependencies. • Strong commercial acumen, including experience of investment cases, budgets, resource planning, suppliers and benefits management. • Evidence-led approach to portfolio and delivery reporting, including the use of flow, predictability, quality, risk and outcome measures. • Excellent written and verbal communication, with the ability to simplify complex information for technical and non-technical audiences. • Experience of delivery tooling such as Jira and Confluence, together with portfolio reporting and collaboration platforms. • A degree or equivalent professional experience. Relevant qualifications such as MSP, PgMP, PMP, PRINCE2, SAFe, Scrum or ICAgile are desirable, but practical application is more important than certification alone. • Experience in a multi-brand, international, events, media or similarly fast-paced organisation is advantageous. **dmg events is an equal opportunity employer. If you have not had feedback from us within 14 days, please consider your application as unsuccessful for this round.**