5 minutes with… Nina Dunwoody
Nina is Lead Data Delivery Manager at Co-op. She is a certified scrum master, MoP Practitioner and currently working on the APMG Change Management certification. She is based in Cheshire and comes from a motivated sporting background as a qualified triathlon coach.
This article was originally posted on LinkedIn in June 2023 and Nina has kindly given permission for the content to be added here.
Why did you choose a career in delivery or project management?
Short answer…I wouldn’t say I chose it, it sort of found me! I started off in banking and moved into digital marketing as comms and planning was always my strong point. I began to recognise my skills in delivery through marketing campaigns and then website content management and audits. At that time, agile was a growing trend and I started to explore the concept. I got qualified as a scrum master then applied agile ways of working to teams not necessarily in the software development space. I recognised more skills in myself that propelled natural growth and recommendation to the next step of delivery lead and then senior; collaboration, time management, organisation, problem solving and stakeholder management.
What advice would you give someone starting out in the industry?
I think it’s key to recognise what your strengths are, what you enjoy and figure out how you want to grow - that helps you find your career path.
So for delivery management, don’t assume that if it’s in a Tech landscape, that you have to be too technical yourself! I never started my career thinking I’d work in IT or even digital – but explored different avenues and came across something I felt passionate about and enjoyed..
Another tip would be to build strong relationships with both your immediate and wider business teams. Delivery is all about collaboration, visibility and a clear understanding of the business value wanting to be achieved. Don’t lose sight of that and get lost in the weeds - “focus on the first fence” is a piece of advice I was given. Take it fence by fence with the MVP/product goal always front and centre.
Learn from the experience around you, be curious, ask questions and grab opportunities to grow with both hands.
Have you ever worked on a particularly difficult project? Why was it rubbish/tough/hard?
I think moving into my current role managing delivery for a data and analytics team rather than software engineering was quite tough - not rubbish at all, an incredible experience - but hard because I was learning about the basics of sourcing data, cleansing it, moving it, modelling it and visualising/predicting future behaviour with it. As well as building a delivery framework around multiple data teams, projects, BAU work, incidents and enablement programmes, I had to get to grips with how to visualise, balance and prioritise a portfolio in transition out of a large scale programme to get data into the cloud. Working with teams who needed different things, understanding perspective, trial and error, meeting wider business needs at the same time - a big ask, and with improvements/innovation still in progress to this day. But I stand by challenges that help us grow. Things will always get easier if you focus on what matters to your business and engage your people.
What do you think are the most important skills for a delivery or project manager to have?
Digital transformation programmes, like those happening at my company at the moment, often look for the problem solvers, the champions of collaboration, the change makers and the innovative thinkers. These skills, which fall naturally into the delivery lead role profile, can make you an incredibly valuable addition to a Tech team. As mentioned above, delivery management requires to have an understanding of the value being created from the project or programme, know who needs to be involved, adapt to changing environments or newly identified risks/dependencies, collaborate, regulate, motivate and be organised. Knowing there is no ‘i’ in team is so important.
What do you think are the biggest challenges facing delivery and project managers today?
The constant evolution of agile delivery practices and trends can pose a difficulty when it’s assumed one way of working is right for all contexts or the latest trend is a talking point. Every business is different as to the Portfolio practice methods they require and projects can differ as to whether waterfall, agile or a hybrid can work. Prescriptivism can be a hindrance.
However I love to be in a challenging delivery role - if you’re not feeling challenged, it’s likely you’re not learning as much as you could be. Failure is success when we learn from it; it’s how we overcome challenges that define us the most.
What projects would you have loved to have been involved in?
Once I’ve learnt from past experiences, I try to be a forward looker and thinker. Thinking ahead, I think the AI related projects of the future will be really interesting to be involved in. I’ve touched data science projects but not really AI forming part of the business process beyond the predictive analysis for decision making. I think ethics will come into play, risk management, tech reliability and business outputs off the back of them. Equally, ESG and the sustainability theme is a big one I want to be part of - ways we can manage/understand our carbon footprint or be more responsible around energy consumption. Businesses will always need value delivering in an effective and efficient way - I look forward to seeing more of that in portfolios and change to come.
This post is part of a services called ‘5 minutes with’ series of articles from people in the delivery management and project management space.