Head of Department, Solutions Delivery at a Reputable Company

Purpose

• The purpose of this role is to own lead the Solutions Delivery Function; be a guide and coach for the agile teams to achieve the desired 
• The role is to ensure that solution delivery and support efforts are on track for the consistent delivery of high level of client services in an effective and cost-efficient  manner.

Job Objectives

• The role of the Head of Solutions Delivery is to explore and understand internal and external customer needs, deliver the best 
• solutions and implement them.
• The role provides teams with a clear direction when creating solutions.
• This role is technically proficient at designing and delivering technology-based solutions through standardized project delivery 
• practices, and supplementing skills with external providers when approved.
• Ensures committed portfolio of projects are delivered within agreed constraints.
• Ensures compliance with standard processes,  policies and procedures during solution developme

Job Responsibilities

• Management of designing, building and deployment of solutions  including new application developments and major enhancements  to existing applications and systems.
• Manage end-to-end the solution development lifecycle for new and existing services.
• Contribute to project scoping, planning, and management while being an agile champion.
• Deliver committed portfolio of projects within agreed constraints.
• Overseeing different stages of project execution by supervising staff while working in collaboration with the ACDS project managers and scrum masters.
• Serve as point of escalation, review and approval for key issues and  decisions for all solution delivery domains.
• Ensuring that the tools and environment required for solution development are available and accessible.
• Consistent review, updates and enforcement of established solution delivery processes, policies and standards and  ensuring that they are in alignment with current industry trends.
• Development of future-proofed solution delivery roadmap and adoption of emerging and evolving technologies such as AI,  application containerization and orchestration into solution delivery.
• Ensuring that the business analysis function supports the development of solutions by performing scoping assessments,  developing business cases and defining functional requirements.
• Ensuring that Quality Assurance function supports the development  of solutions by executing the quality assurance plan, which comprises the procedures, techniques, and tools that are employed to make sure that a product or service aligns with the requirements defined in the SRS software requirement specification).
• Ensuring that the Release and Deployment Management function  supports the development of solutions by executing the processes for scheduling and controlling the movement of releases to test and live environments.
• Ensure that all application security designs and implementations adhere to enterprise security standards.
• Provide high level validation to technical design documents.
• Contribute to company’s overall budgeting activities and managing department’s budgets and resources.
• Talent identification, hiring, training, coaching, mentoring and supervision of solution delivery team members.
• Responsible for the appraisal of direct reports and other team members as needed.
• Evaluating consumer feedback and instituting changes as necessary to manage expectations.
• Ensuring that solutions delivered are cost-effective and stay within  budget
• Acting as liaison officer among several teams to build partnerships and develop solutions.
• Building and managing relationships with clients, vendors, and businessunits
• Contribute to project scoping, planning, and management while being an agile champion.
• Hands-on programming and design as needed
• Monitor and review competitors’ programs as a basis for software upgrades.
• Delivery of an excellent experience to the customers and the teams.
• Responsible for the gross margin for the solutions delivery business unit.
• Performing dynamic and agile resource allocation and workload assignment according to delivery requirements
• Analyse customer’s requirement, set delivery priorities and make schedule adjustments to meet delivery goals.
• Building strong relationships with teams and stakeholders to enable effective dialogue exchange between departments.
• Responsible for implementing Goals/OKR’s for the business unit and  providing guidance  to help Agile teams achieve their respective Goals/OKRs.
• Ensuring that the solution delivery teams team maintain high level of competence and operational excellence.
• Contributing to negotiation of contracts, commercial delivery rates for new and existing customers

Key Performance Indicators

• Solutions delivery as per client and business needs
• Solutions delivery as per organisational standards i.e., policies, architectural standards, etc.
• Quality of business analysis
• Quality of solution design
• Cycle time
• Code stability
• Code simplicity
• Code churn
• Code Vulnerability - # of application security violations/incidents
• Timely release of products and product feature

Competence Requirements

• 10 years of, high-quality Solution Development and Delivery  experience.
• Experience with SDLC.
• Deep technical expertise in application development and a good understanding of underlying business processes and systems.
• High commitment to meet business needs as well as service and operational level requirements
• Excellent understanding of business and technology domains and how hey inter-relate.
• Excellent understanding of the technology stack and how the different pieces fit together.
• Solution design and architecting skills
• Experience of working with multiple third-party vendors
• Good analytical, problem-solving and conflict resolution  skills
• Good communication skills
• Understanding of design thinking, product management, SDLC, and release plan process
• Good technical understanding and experience in:
  • Cloud Concepts: IaaS, PaaS, SaaS and related offerings from GCP, AWS, and Azure
  • Development Concepts: Full-stack, UX and UI
  • DevOps Concepts: CI/CD, IaaC, Code Repository, Quality Gates, Docker, Containers, Kubernetes, and related topics
  • DevSecOps
  • Data Centre Concepts: Networking, Security, Application Hig Availability.
  • Virtualization, Recovery, Business Continuity Management
  • DBMS’s as well as database design and management.
  • Open source Concepts
• Understanding of agile methodology and frameworks -  scrum,  kanban, XP and other related project management frameworks and  techniques - Waterfall.
• Extensive background in managing and delivering complex projects  throughout the agile lifecycle.
• Experienced managing multiple projects simultaneously, facilitating  status meetings, and presenting to large groups.
• Estimating, Budgeting, forecasting, and cost management for various  software projects.
• Worked on tools such as Jira, Confluence, Miro, Mural, Google Sheets to manage the project deliveries
• Proficiency in leading both physical and virtual teams
• Experienced in the adoption third-party-provided solutions and services
• Experienced in providing accurate and regular reports to senior management on the performance of solution delivery.
• Experience of working with Small, Medium, and Large Corporate customers
• Experience of dynamically scaling technical teams as per business needs.
• Experience of process development ownership and enforcement is preferred.
• Understanding of ethical handling of Private Data and professional ethics as applied to software development.
• An understanding of information legislation, such as the GDPR and NDPR
• Understanding of agile methodology and frameworks -  scrum, kanban, XP and other related project management frameworks and techniques - Waterfall.
• Extensive background in managing and delivering complex projects throughout the agile lifecycle.
• Experienced managing multiple projects simultaneously, facilitating status meetings, and presenting to large groups.
• Estimating, Budgeting, forecasting, and cost management for various software projects.
• Worked on tools such as Jira, Confluence, Miro, Mural, Google Sheets to manage the project deliveries
• Proficiency in leading both physical and virtual teams
• Experienced in the adoption third-party-provided solutions and services
• Experienced in providing accurate and regular reports to senior management on the performance of solution delivery.
• Experience of working with Small, Medium, and Large Corporate customers
• Experience of dynamically scaling technical teams as per business needs.
• Experience of process development ownership and enforcement is preferred.
• Understanding of ethical handling of Private Data and professional  ethics as applied to software development.
• An understanding of information legislation, such as the GDPR and  NDPR

Requirement

• Educational Qualification Minimum of a Bachelor’s Degree  Computer Science, Computer Engineering or related areas
• Professional Qualification Possession of any of the following certifications is desired: CBAP, CSQA and CSM

Desired Experience

• 14 to 18 years of relevant and verifiable experience across software solution delivery functions.
• Minimum of 8 years of managing software development projects using Agile methodology and frameworks.
• Minimum of 7 years of team building , leadership and management experience.

Culture Fit

• Honesty and Integrity
• Confidentiality and Accountability
• Effective collaborator and team player