Job Description

This role will work closely with a peer group of Deputy Directors who are responsible for leading functions within Cabinet Office Digital. These will be key relationships, deftly balancing potentially conflicting priorities within the department to ensure successful delivery against our commitments. The portfolio of the Cabinet Office Digital function is broad and complex, therefore senior stakeholder management is a key part of this role as well as the ability to manage executive level relationships with commercial partners.

This is a challenging and exciting time for both Cabinet Office Digital and the public sector, and the Deputy Director Portfolio Delivery will be crucial in our efforts to ensure we achieve our ambitions.

Responsibilities include:

• Establishing a highly effective portfolio delivery organization - ensuring appropriate governance, controls, tooling, and reporting are data led and user centered to enable coherence and clarity within the delivery landscape.
• Financial and Commercial Management - Managing all aspects of the budget for the portfolio delivery function including the recharging model to other Business Units. Responsible for commercial relationships with strategic partners engaged on portfolio delivery.
• Delivering complex digital, data and technology projects and programmes - Working collaboratively with peers (Product, Technology, Cyber, Service and Data) to ensure products and services we deliver meet user needs. This includes ensuring projects and people are strategically aligned with Cabinet Office Digital and wider government objectives.
• Prioritizing resource demands - from across the portfolio to optimize delivery supported by the Directorates portfolio office. They will understand the delivery priorities across the portfolio and where necessary agree which programme deliverables may be reprioritized in conjunction with the Portfolio Prioritization Group (PPG).
• Leadership of & Accountability for the Portfolio Delivery function – ensure that all team members are well managed and aligned with the programme of work on the portfolio. This includes building capability of our people, role modelling expected behaviors and values to improve engagement, trust and collaboration at the same time leading through a period of significant organizational change.
• Stakeholder Management - Communicate complex ideas and information simply and eloquently to a wide range of stakeholders with minimal steers and oversight. Ensure effective stakeholder management throughout the portfolio delivery function.
• Drive systemic changes across the organization - improving ways of working that slow or prevent delivery across the portfolio. They will help product and delivery managers unblock issues when escalated.
• Lead the delivery community of practice to optimize capability - supporting the effective development of delivery managers with individual’s career development. Provide senior leadership to the community of practice - sharing best practice, helping delivery managers understand their role, responsibilities and how their work supports the ‘bigger picture’ for the aims and objectives of Cabinet Office Digital Directorate and the Cabinet Office.

Required Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

It is essential that in your written application you give evidence of examples of experience in each of the essential criteria of the person specification. These responses will be developed and discussed with those candidates invited for an interview.

The successful candidate must be able to demonstrate their experience and skills against these essential criteria:

• Extensive understanding and experience of delivery using Agile and Waterfall delivery methodologies.
• Proven experience of delivering a portfolio of digital, data and technology orientated projects and programmes
• Organizational design, specifically establishment and optimization of portfolio delivery structures.
• Experience in matrix-managing multi-disciplinary teams.
• Excellent influencing and relationship management skills, operating at ministerial, senior official and/or executive levels.
• Highly effective dependency management, ensuring clarity of dependencies across a complex portfolio, enabling appropriate prioritization to be undertaken through accurate and up to date data.
• Demonstrate excellent leadership skills, with the ability to inspire and motivate people at all levels to deliver programmes through to a successful conclusion.
• Presenting to and working with stakeholders at every level of seniority with good interpersonal skills.
• Programme Management accreditation (e.g. Agile ProgM or Managing Successful Programmes).
• Graduate of the project leadership programme (PLP) or major projects leadership academy (MPLA).