5 minutes with… Simon Houghton
Simon has been involved in Software Delivery for over 20 years. Most of that time he has been an advocate and specialist in applying Agile mindsets to help individuals and teams be the best they can. Simon, although living in Yorkshire with his wife Carla, has his roots in Lancashire.
This article was originally posted on LinkedIn in May 2023 and Simon has kindly given permission for the content to be added here.
Why did you choose a career in delivery or project management?
I may be wrong, but in my experience, nobody leaves school with aspirations to be a project manager. I, like many, fell into it through work I was doing ‘in IT’. After a time building PC’s, installing eCommerce ordering systems and supporting customers we decided to develop a CD catalogue. We needed someone who understood the business requirements, had a logical approach to planning and who understood the technology. That was me and hey presto, I got a copy of MS Project and I was a project manager.
What advice would you give someone starting out in the industry?
Get to understand your chosen methodology or framework in-depth. I have a bias towards Scrum but the same applies regardless of approach. When you know your stuff you can apply it in a pragmatic way. I would much prefer to use a copy of the Scrum Guide to chock up a wonky desk that is frustrating a team member, than refer to it to make sure we’re using the correct (and current) terminology for our Stand-up.
If you get a qualification, treat that as the first steps in understanding your craft and not the end goal of learning.
Have you ever worked on a particularly difficult project? Why was it rubbish/tough/hard?
I have and I think anyone who can claim ‘experience’ in delivery has to have some battle scars. Moving deadlines, creeping scope, technical challenges…. These are all expected challenges that you’re going to face. The hard projects are where you haven’t got the delivery team on your side. The worst projects for me at least, are those where you have in-fighting in the teams or between teams and blame is being thrown around like a hand-grenade. They’re the worst and also one of the reasons I work so hard to obtain a team culture where the deliverable is owned collectively by the team.
What do you think are the most important skills for a delivery or project manager to have?
The hard skills can be taught and learned. The soft skills will come only with time and experience. When you have both, then you can be a success. If I had to put my finger on a couple that are vital, it would be:
1) Know enough about the technology being developed and the tools the teams use to be able to challenge. It’s not your job to know how to build something but it is your job to know if it’s being built right.
2) Get to know your team. The more you can build relationships with your team the easier it will be for you to spot when they’re under pressure or facing a tough challenge. An experienced delivery lead will know there’s a challenge coming way before it hits the issue log.
What do you think are the biggest challenges facing delivery and project managers today?
I’m old-school. I like people and I like to be around people. The new default model of distributed teams makes it hard to build the relationships and be an effective delivery leader. The tools are available to replicate the in-office experience but they are a poor substitute. There are clear benefits to team members being able to get quality focus time on their work when working remotely but from a Project manager/delivery lead point of view, our job is harder when working remotely and I miss the times I could spot an issue just by overhearing the development team having a chat.
What projects would you have loved to have been involved in?
Tough question. I’ve been involved in projects across many different clients, industries and sectors. The output of each has provided a measure of success in different ways. I still say that the biggest ‘buzz’ is when a team comes together to overcome a difficult problem. As for projects I’d have loved to be involved in, they’re the ones where the ‘problem’ to be overcome has some sort of social outcome. I had the pleasure of talking to the team that delivered the COVID-19 track and trace app. Love it or hate it, the speed at which that was developed and deployed on a huge scale was impressive and from speaking to the team, it was clear that they had all galvanised behind the common goal.
This post is part of a services called ‘5 minutes with’ series of articles from people in the delivery management and project management space.