What is Delivery Management?

Tony (Management Consultant) posted 7/6/2006 | Comments (15) Delivery Management is a much broader scale of project management. It is the organization, administration, and supervision of the people, processes, and technologies, which when combined into a comprehensive plan, provides the business and technical functions needed to successfully achieve what a client expects to receive. The person responsible for this type of work is referred to as the delivery manager, delivery director, delivery vice president, or account manager depending on the organization. For purposes of this blog, the term delivery director will be used.

There are many likenesses between a project manager and delivery director. Whereas the project manager will get into more of the details, the delivery director oversees what is going on at a higher level and across more areas of responsibility. The delivery director is typically a more experienced individual that gets assigned to the larger, more visible projects. This individual also has more direct involvement with management at a higher level such as with the client, third party vendors, executive steering committees, board of directors, etc. The delivery director anticipates the actions, thoughts, and directions of the client, and manages the client without them really knowing it.

Let's begin by understanding what delivery is all about. There are many stages in the business cycle such as getting a lead, turning the lead into a prospect, working towards the sale, closing the sale, and then making the magic happen - delivering what was promised. Now some of the readers may say they do not have to worry about this cycle because they work in a company where they get a request to do the work and their management tells them what to do. In some cases it may be that simple, for example, very small projects such as those under a work-month. However, if you look a little closer, you will see there is a lot of internal selling going on at various levels.

Below is an example of a scenario of what may occur behind the scenes. As you will see, there is a great deal of work that has to be done before it gets to the delivery stage.

- Don, the VP of Finance for Southwest Vending was having lunch with an old friend (Lori) who heads up a Finance department in another company.
- Lori explained to Don that they just implemented a new application that allows the customers to review their records via the web, which has saved Lori's company thousands of dollars.
- Don believed that his company would benefit from a similar application. After lunch, Don called in his department heads to tell them that he wants the same type of application that Lori has, but better.
- To get the project started, Don assigned Randy to serve as the Project Sponsor. In this role, Randy has to figure out what is needed to make this happen so he calls his friend Mark, the Chief Information Officer (CIO) in the Information Technology (IT) department.
- Randy and Mark discuss the situation so that Mark can get a better understanding of what Randy and his boss are looking for from a business perspective and also determine how much of an impact it would be to the IT area. Mark tells Randy that this is something his department can handle but to get this officially started, Randy will have to fill out a request for services so that the project can be estimated and approved by upper management.
- Randy is not familiar with this process so Mark has him work with Kristin, his Application Manager in charge of financial computer systems.

Whether it is a third party or internal organization, many of the same steps occur in advance of the development. Depending on the actual need for the application, the funds available, and the degree of politics that take place in the company, it could take a year before the development actually starts.

So What's My Point?

Getting to the delivery stage for a large-scale project requires a great deal of up-front work. By the time it gets to the point where a delivery team comes into play, a company could have spent one million dollars over the course of a year. Whether it is a consulting company or an internal organization, the effects of what the delivery organization produces will determine if the project was successful. This could be a highly technical software project or a business process development project. If you do not deliver what was agreed to in the timeframe expected, the chances for additional business is remote. That is why the delivery organization has to be in sync with the sales group or internal organization requesting the work on the front end and the support team on the back end. If the support team has difficulty maintaining the product, costs will increase, personnel will get frustrated and leave, and the client will be quite upset.

So what does the profile look like for a delivery director? Look for it in my next blog entry.