Resources for anyone interested in delivery and project management

This page has been created as supporting material for a project management guest lecture that myself and Beth Evans are giving to The University of Sheffield on 27 October 2025.

If you find this useful, please share it - thanks.

Articles you might find interesting

• Thinking about becoming a delivery manager, an article I wrote exploring the characteristics found in most delivery people I’ve worked with

• What is an agile delivery manager by Emily Webber, a great article for describing what a delivery managers does first published in 2016 and still one of my go-to writing pieces

• Becoming a delivery manager, a lovely article from Beth and her take on becoming a delivery manager

• So you’re thinking of becoming a delivery manager by Ian Ames

• The GOV.UK Service Manual is well written throughout and has everything you need to know about setting up teams and delivering projects in the public sector. This page details the different roles in a traditional multidisciplinary team

• I really enjoy Will Myddleton’s writing style and I enjoy all his posts. This is just one of them about setting up a discovery project.

• A good article about the word ‘agile' from James Plunkett

• I think I worked with Dharmesh at the Department for Education. Anyway, this is a great article on scope.

• A series of 45 five minute interviews with people working in the project and delivery management space

• Beth wrote up her first design sprint, and reflected on her first 18 months at Paper

• Sprint Stories on Medium

Tools

• The Design Sprint by Google Ventures

• Running a design sprint: Weeknotes by Chris Taylor

• Let me smell your stinky 🐟 by Dan Nessler

• Manual of Me - An online place where you can create your own manual of me (or user guide). Or use a slide deck or write them out or draw them - whatever works for you

• A spreadsheet I use to track time and sums on any project - simple but effective

• If you’d like access to the delivery management capability framework, drop me an email

Books

• Delivery Management: Enabling Teams to Deliver Value by Jonny Williams

• Resilient Management by Lara Hogan

• Good Services by Lou Downe

• Surrounded by Idiots by Thomas Erikson

• Content Design by Sarah Winters

• Product in Service: A Manifesto for Pragmatic Product Management by Scott Colfer

• Team Onion by Emily Webber

• The Quiet Achiever by Tim Yeo

• Careers in Tech, Data and Digital by Christina Lovelock

• How to do presentations by Russell Davies

•  Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days by Jake Knapp with John Zeratsky & Braden Kowitz

Events

• Deliver Sessions - Frequent Manchester-based project, delivery meet-up.

• Deliver Con - A meet up for delivery people working in or with public sector. Held annually, sometimes more frequently.

• Agile on the beach - it’s a trek and I’ve been, but one to keep in mind. 

• Agile Cambridge - Practical, hands-on agile and lean conference, held annually.

Jargon Buster

• Agile - An iterative approach to doing things. It’s about making incremental changes that aim to constantly improve. Agile is more of an approach or mindset than a set framework to follow. It’s an umbrella term for a range of methodologies that share similar values.

• Project phases - Discovery, Alpha, Beta and Live. You’ll hear and use these in public sector organisations, but increasingly in private sector too.

• Discovery - The first phase of a project where you work out what your user needs are, what services already exist to meet those needs, and how they are currently performing.

• Alpha - Alpha follows discovery. The team takes the findings from the discovery work and begins to experiment with solutions. Alpha is about rapidly designing and testing different ideas to see what works best.

• Beta -Once alpha has shown you the most viable idea, in beta you begin to develop this into a working service and start rolling it out to real users (this is often done in a controlled way where a defined set of users are given access to a ‘private beta’). You continue to test and incorporate feedback into the service until you’re confident that it can be sustained as a live service (ie. it’s meeting the needs of all users, the service team is able to manage it, etc…)

• Live - The product, service or thing is now live and available to all users. Now the focus is on continuing to refine it as you constantly gather and analyse feedback.

• Inception - The first stage of every project where the team get to know each other, you set the scope and goal for your project, and identify the biggest risks.

• Sprint - Sprints are work timelines usually referring to two-week blocks of time, where you can plan, do and review a chunk of work.

• Sprint Planning - Sprint planning is held at the beginning of each ‘sprint’ of work to define what can be delivered during that time and how that work will be achieved.

• Standup - A standup is a short (usually 15 mins), daily team meeting (the term standup comes from the idea that the team would be standing as a way to ensure the meeting didn’t drag on) . Each team member summarises what they did yesterday, what they’re working on today and anything that’s blocking them. It keeps everyone informed and connected and gives early sight of problems, so they can be addressed.

• Show & Tell - Updates for the stakeholders - to show them what we've been up to, what we plan to do next and to ask them for help with and feedback on our work.

• Retrospectives - Or “retros” are held towards the end of each sprint so the team can reflect on what went well, what didn’t go so well, and how they can improve things in the next sprint. These changes can then be planned into the following sprint.

• COTS - Commercial off-the-shelf software

• SaaS - Software as a Service, on-demand web-based software licensing model where the software is centrally hosted rather than needing to download and installed on your servers. Google Drive is a good example. SaaS apps typically have suitable integration endpoints with APIs (Application Programming Interface). The API allows businesses to build their UI using the SaaS features, logic, and databases. A good example is surfacing Google Maps on a website whilst changing the colours and graphics to suit the brand. Then create a bespoke form that interacts with the map depending upon input.