Digital is shaping the future of project delivery leadership

This article is just one in a series of insights from the pilot of the Digital Excellence Programme. You can read more at the DEP Insights Hub.

Key takeaways:

• Good collaboration between colleagues in digital and project delivery is increasingly important
• Confidence is an essential ingredient for good collaboration

The Digital Excellence Programme (DEP) is designed for leaders who don’t have a digital, data or technology background. This reflects the UK government’s strategy for improving digital and data capability across the Civil Service, not just specialists.

It means that learners on the programme each come with their own unique professional perspective. The implications of agile working or user-centred design will be different for leaders in the policy profession, compared with finance, legal or operational delivery. Through the cohort-based, social learning mode of delivery, DEP learners can engage with all of these different perspectives throughout their course, which leads to a much richer learning experience.

At the time of enrolling, Chris Hider was a senior project delivery leader within the Home Office. We spoke to him about his motivations for enrolling on the Building a Digital Culture in Government course, and what he was able to take away.

Interview

Apolitical__:__ Hi Chris, can you start by telling us a bit about your role at the Home Office?

Chris Hider: I recently moved roles, but earlier this year, when I started the digital course I was Deputy Head of Profession for project delivery.

Apolitical: Why did you sign up for the digital course, what were you hoping to get out of it?

Chris: I would say the answer is two-fold. As you might expect, we work closely with the DDaT profession in project delivery. So on the one hand, I wanted to learn about the latest approaches to delivering digital transformation. But I also wanted to understand how we — as the project delivery profession — could collaborate more effectively with our DDaT colleagues to improve outcomes.

Apolitical: That’s interesting, because cross-functional collaboration is one of the big themes in the course. Would you say that there is a lack of collaboration between project delivery and DDaT?

Chris: There’s definitely room for improvement but it often depends on the professional backgrounds of colleagues within the project delivery profession, the career paths they’ve taken to join the profession. Let’s say you’d previously had a role as a business analyst or user researcher, you’d probably be a lot more confident in digital methodologies than if, say, you’d come through a policy route or working in a private office. So the degree of collaboration varies because of people’s previous experience — it all comes down to confidence.

But I constantly tell my team that life has changed. It’s almost never going to be the case that you’re delivering something significant without working with a digital supplier or digital colleagues in government. We can’t afford to be purists anymore, we’ve got to get better at collaboration.

It’s almost never going to be the case that you’re delivering something significant without working with a digital supplier or digital colleagues in government.

Apolitical: Were you able to share any of the course materials with your team, to help develop their thinking and capabilities in this area?

Chris: Yes! I actually stole one of the activities from the course to help structure some of our virtual team meetings. I organise my team into smaller breakout groups and give each of them pre-set questions related to some of the challenges we’re facing in the project delivery profession. It helps us generate more ideas by discussing things in smaller groups and bringing them back to each other.

Apolitical: That’s great to hear! Were you also able to use the discussion guide at the end of the course?

Chris: Yes, we explored some of the questions with my team. Those discussions helped surface a bigger challenge we’re facing when it comes integrating project delivery roles with the existing structure of digital delivery teams.

We also talked about user-centred design and the potential dangers of assumptions we can make. We had a really rich conversation on making sure that we don't apply bias — to avoid assuming that we know how things are going to be used by the end user. As well as the value of going through prototyping and user research, to really understand what that process looks like. We’ve been applying some of that when we've been thinking about enabling people to access legal aid.

Apolitical: That’s so encouraging to hear. Any final reflections on your experience with the course?

Chris: I enjoyed it overall. I like the clarity of the descriptions; the inclusion of examples and then a distillation of the key points. I’ve pointed a few people to this course who have said ‘I’ve done other types of delivery, but now I’d like to do something that is a bit more digital rich’. It’s an accessible course for colleagues who don’t have a lot of digital exposure — I think it will appeal to a lot of people who want to learn more about digital delivery.

Apolitical: We’re glad to hear it, thanks for your time, Chris!

Photo credit: ThisIsEngineering: