5 minutes with… Sam Sharpe
Sam is a Delivery Manager who is currently working at Hippo after spending 7 years in central Government and Citizens Advice. She loves getting the best out of people so they can feel they are doing a great job.
This article was originally posted on LinkedIn in May 2023 and Sam has kindly given permission for the content to be added here.
Why did you choose a career in delivery or project management?
I am a natural organiser and started as a project manager working with a Utility Company to upgrade their IT system. I seemed to be really good at working out how to get other people to do what I needed and felt I had found my way. I then came across GDS who were working in a new Agile way that blew my mind. Always keen to learn new things I relished the chance to bring their approach back to the organisation I was working in as I led a channel shift project. I had no idea what I wanted to do but always took roles that had elements of learning and qualifications attached.
What advice would you give someone starting out in the industry?
There are so many approaches and some will work and some won’t. There isn’t a one size fits all, there is no team that is the same.
The best delivery manager finds out what makes their people come to work, find out their purpose. You need to do this before you can fully harness the team.
Have you ever worked on a particularly difficult project? Why was it rubbish/tough/hard?
Many projects have a recurring difficulty in managing expectations. Senior leaders that don’t understand the processes, Funders that don’t understand the cost and time and Policy makers who expect miracles. There may be options to throw more money, take more time or to challenge decisions but ultimately I find it’s about setting the expectation. One project that comes to mind was a senior minister who wanted people to give feedback in a certain way 🙂. However, user testing proved this was definitely not something the user wanted.
By sticking to evidence based challenge, backed by data we successfully built something the user wanted, not the business.
What do you think are the most important skills for a delivery or project manager to have?
Some days I feel like a counsellor, some days I’m more of a taskmaster cracking the whip. No days are ever the same and whilst there are some trusted methods that become part of your toolkit there is a need to be adaptable in your approach. You will need to be able to listen to problems and highlight areas of risk but also be confident to challenge.
What do you think are the biggest challenges facing delivery and project managers today?
The main challenge that I am constantly facing is the ever changing team. Where we have short term contractors or just people moving on there is a shift in the dynamic every time one of the cogs is removed and that means a team reset and drop in productivity …. Every time. This is something senior leaders struggle to understand, the efficacy of the team as a whole is only as good as its component parts.
What projects would you have loved to have been involved in?
I would love to have been involved in the building the Great Wall of China. It absolutely fascinates me and I did a charity trek there in 2019. How they gathered the people, materials, and had the vision to create something so vast that has stood the test of time is amazing.
This post is part of a services called ‘5 minutes with’ series of articles from people in the delivery management and project management space.