5 minutes with… Darrell Larkin
Darrell is an Senior Delivery Lead working for Valtech, a global digital transformation consultancy. He started his career around 5 years ago and considers empowering teams to deliver greatness key to his role. He is based in Manchester.
This article was originally posted on LinkedIn in May 2023 and Darrell has kindly given permission for the content to be added here.
Why did you choose a career in delivery or project management?
About 5 years ago, I hit a wall with my career and I thought long and hard about where I wanted to take my next steps. I noted down the things that were really important to me. Firstly, working with people and empowering them to do their best work. Secondly, utilising my organisation, communication and leadership skills in the best way I could. Lastly, a job that can really keep me on my toes, where no day is really the same.
Delivery seemed like a good path to go down, so I self-funded an online delivery course, and began the search for my new role. 5 years on, I’m now a Senior Delivery Lead for Valtech (was Kin + Carta Europe), and really for the first time ever I can say I truly love my job and feel fulfilled in the role that I do. I’m passionate about delivering value, helping teams collaborate, and removing whatever is in their way that is stopping them from delivering greatness. My job in Delivery allows me to do all of these things.
What advice would you give someone starting out in the industry?
Books and online courses are gold. They gave me the base knowledge I needed to get started. Look into wider Agile, then hone in on Scrum, Kanban, Lean, SAFe, etc, and even PRINCE2 too - they’re all good to know about as you get started. Follow delivery professionals on LinkedIn and keep up to date with their posts. A lot of them share insights and opinions daily which can be really helpful.
Second bit of advice is while learning all of this gives you good theoretical knowledge, try and learn as much as you can from others in your organisation or in the wider industry on how to apply and execute this theory. I always reached out to others to try and soak up as much knowledge and how to apply certain things, and I still do.
Last bit of advice is, don’t be afraid to get things wrong or fail. I got countless things wrong when I first started, and I’m so glad I did, because I failed fast and learned quickly. If things are going wrong, be open about them with your team and decide as a team how you’re going to tackle them to continuously improve.
Have you ever worked on a particularly difficult project? Why was it rubbish/tough/hard?
I would say my first year of delivery and finding my feet was made up of many tough projects. The reason was I thought GANTT charts and traditional project management were the one size fits all, and while this may suit certain projects or industries, it didn’t suit the projects I was working on or how I wanted to work.
There was a lack of collaboration between teams, no flexibility to change, too fixed a scope and deliverables, lots of waste, no focus on continuous improvement, and a lack of transparency amongst the team - this was all blocking the maximum value being delivered. After my first year I started to delve more into Agile and this completely changed everything for me and the teams I worked with. I’ve never looked back.
What do you think are the most important skills for a delivery or project manager to have?
I think first and foremost you have to know how to work with people. I’ve often seen delivery leads that put stakeholders and deliverables above their teams, which usually always leads to an unhappy team, which then destroys productivity and motivation.
If you can be vulnerable, open and honest with your team, you’ll likely get the same back and will even create a psychologically safe environment for them. This is something that shouldn’t be overlooked.
I also think communication skills are super important - there are always busy lanes of information travelling in different directions on a busy project, but ensuring everyone is on the same page and the information is visible to all is massively beneficial.
What do you think are the biggest challenges facing delivery and project managers today?
There is clearly a demand for Agile in the industry right now and there has been for quite some time, but I fear companies don’t fully understand or truly value what Agile is. This often leads to job specs asking for Agile practitioners but in reality when they’re hired and they begin to influence the shift in culture and implement change, they end up blocked or pushed into a box by senior stakeholders.
A journey to adopting Agile is not an overnight task or even a task, it’s a change in mindset and culture before anything else. In my opinion, the bigger the organisation, the harder it is to scale. There needs to be an open-mindedness to change and willingness to experiment, and to get things wrong early on.
What projects would you have loved to have been involved in?
I would have loved to have been involved in some interior design projects somewhere throughout my career in Delivery. Although I mainly work on tech projects, I always thought this would be something different and out of the ordinary for me that could offer something fresh. Either this or I’d love to collaborate with a fashion house such as Prada or Dior and support them with something techy/digital.
This post is part of a services called ‘5 minutes with’ series of articles from people in the delivery management and project management space.