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Programme delivery manager

Find out what a programme delivery manager in government does and the skills you need to do the role at each level.

Last updated 28 February 2025 — See all updates

Contents

What a programme delivery manager does

A programme delivery manager is accountable for the delivery of complex products and services that are being delivered by multiple teams or have high technical or political risk.

Programme delivery manager role levels

There is one programme delivery manager role level.

The typical responsibilities and skills for this role level are described below. You can use this to identify the skills you need to progress in your career, or simply to learn more about each role in the Government Digital and Data profession

1. Programme delivery manager

A programme delivery manager is accountable for the delivery of complex products and services that are delivered by multiple teams or have high technical or political risk.

At this role level, you will:

  • manage dependencies of varying complexity, potentially planning and feeding into larger programmes and portfolios
  • remove blockers and manage risks, commercials, budgets and people
  • balance objectives and redeploy people and resources as priorities change
  • have an in-depth knowledge of Agile and other methodologies
  • be responsible for understanding, managing and communicating to complex stakeholder groups, balancing priorities
  • be the initial escalation point for the programme
  • have an awareness of the bigger picture
  • support the programme director by overseeing the delivery of their vision for the programme
  • support and coach delivery managers

This role level is often performed at the Civil Service job grade of:

  • G7 (Grade 7)
  • G6 (Grade 6)
Skill Description

Agile and Lean practices

Level: expert

Expert is the fourth of 4 ascending skill levels

You can:

  • coach and lead teams in Agile and Lean good practices
  • create and tailor the right approach for a team, challenging, evaluating and iterating the approach through the life cycle
  • experiment with new and innovative ways of working to improve delivery across the organisation
  • act as a recognised expert and advocate for Agile and Lean approaches

Commercial management

Level: expert

Expert is the fourth of 4 ascending skill levels

You can:

  • act as the escalation point and resolve large or high risk commercial management issues
  • coach others in appropriate commercial management

Communicating between the technical and non-technical

Level: expert

Expert is the fourth of 4 ascending skill levels

You can:

  • mediate between people and strengthen relationships, adopting the appropriate communication method with stakeholders at all levels
  • manage stakeholder expectations and moderate difficult discussions about high risk and complex topics, even within constrained timescales
  • speak on behalf of, and represent the community to, large audiences inside and outside the organisation

Community collaboration

Level: expert

Expert is the fourth of 4 ascending skill levels

You can:

  • solve and unblock issues between teams or departments at the highest level
  • coach the organisation on team dynamics and conflict resolution, while also building and growing the community

Financial management

Level: expert

Expert is the fourth of 4 ascending skill levels

You can:

  • influence or create complex budgets across an organisation, programme or product view
  • manage the budget you are given and make it work

Life cycle management

Level: expert

Expert is the fourth of 4 ascending skill levels

You can:

  • lead and coach teams through different phases of the life cycle
  • ensure effective support for the product or service and its users
  • predict, prevent, mitigate and manage potential risks at different phases of the life cycle
  • contribute to the assessment of other teams, providing guidance and support

Maintaining delivery momentum

Level: expert

Expert is the fourth of 4 ascending skill levels

You can:

  • optimise the delivery flow of teams
  • actively address the most complicated risks, issues and dependencies including where ownership exists outside the team or no clear ownership exists
  • identify innovative ways to unblock issues

Making a process work

Level: expert

Expert is the fourth of 4 ascending skill levels

You can:

  • identify and challenge organisational processes of increasing complexity and those processes that are unnecessarily complicated
  • add value and can coach the organisation to inspect and adapt processes
  • guide teams through the implementation of a new process

Planning

Level: expert

Expert is the fourth of 4 ascending skill levels

You can:

  • lead a continual planning process in a very complex environment
  • plan beyond product delivery
  • identify dependencies in plans across services and co-ordinate delivery
  • coach other teams as the central point of expertise
Role Shared skills
Delivery manager

Commercial management

Financial management

Maintaining delivery momentum

Making a process work

Planning

Agile and Lean practices

Life cycle management

Communicating between the technical and non-technical
Product manager

Agile and Lean practices

Life cycle management
Analytics engineer

Communicating between the technical and non-technical
Command and control centre manager

Community collaboration
Data analyst

Communicating between the technical and non-technical

Updates

Published 7 January 2020

Last updated 28 February 2025

28 February 2025

The skill 'life cycle perspective' has been renamed 'life cycle management'. This is to better reflect the requirements of the skill and for consistency across the framework.

The skill 'communicating between the technical and non-technical' has been updated. The level descriptions were edited to improve clarity and to better meet the definitions for each level.

The skill 'Agile and Lean practices' has been updated. The level descriptions were edited to improve clarity and to better meet the definitions for each level.

30 November 2024

In the 'expert' level description of the 'community collaboration' skill, the second requirement referring to 'understand the pychology of the team and have strong mediation skills' was removed as it is duplicated meaning of other requirements and does not meet framework guidelines for technical skills. This ensures consistency with the rest of the framework and allows for the skill to be shared with roles previously using the 'community collaboration (frontend developer)' skill.

30 August 2022

The ‘communication skills’ skill has been renamed ‘communicating between the technical and non-technical’ to ensure consistency across the DDaT Profession Capability Framework.

7 January 2020

First published.