Thank you for joining this session, on delivery managers, enabling product managers to shift Stata software. So I'm super excited to be speaking to you guys.And, what we'll cover today so this is sort of an agenda. We'll be going through a little bit about me, give you a little bit of my background, how I got introduced to the delivery manager role, the value that deliver delivery managers bring, to product managers, common challenges that product managers and delivery managers can face in their collaboration and how, as product managers, you can work better with them, and we'll just do a quick wrap up.

So yeah. A little bit about me. I'm a product manager with over five years of work experience across both startups and MNCs. I'm currently a product manager at Upwork. It's the global talent platform where a lot of talent comes and needs and clients create jobs. So I work on the enterprise side of things, so it's more me to be, and I'm building solutions there. And, my startup experience is at a startup called VEGLI, based out of Mason, Ohio, and it got acquired by Workday about, about four years back. So, on the personal side, I'm a mom of two and, two lovely little girls, and I'm a lifelong immigrant as well. So, brought up in Singapore, and I moved to The States seven years ago. So that's a little bit about me. Alright.

Let's talk about the introduction to my introduction to the delivery manager role. So, before I do that, let's use chat to I wanna know how many of you guys are familiar with the DM role. So just just, you know Amber, you're a delivery manager. Amazing. So I would love to hear more about, like, you know, after the the session, like, do message me. Does not exist in your org. To be honest, it did not exist in my Venli startup times either. So as I mentioned, like, I started off at Venli. That was my first product role, and we did not have pretty much a lot of roles. We had only product and engineering. And then after that, we had some funding rounds. Later, we got introduced to the UX role.

And only when we got acquired by Workday was I actually introduced to, like, the whole delivery manager role. And, it was pretty fascinating because, like, I did not know anything about it. Like, when, it was introduced, I was really confused. I was not sure what, they did. And, and coming from that startup mentality, you're wearing, like, a lot of hats. And, honestly, you're you're doing the work of, like, say, the UX designer, and you will take on a lot of these other, responsibilities of, like, the customer implementation manager, release manager, the UX researcher and designer. So it's it's never easy, but that's my personal introduction to the delivery manager when we moved over and we got acquired by Workday. And they were like, let's put in some processes and make product managers be able to, like, really work on product and have experts do other activities, which are critical in shipping software but not necessarily done, by the product manager.

So let's take a look at what I learned. So when I got introduced to that, I wanted to know more about the role and how it differs. Because initially when I thought, like, delivery manager, I was like, is that, like, more like a project manager? And, it's it's not really that. So once we had that person, I met, with the delivery manager assigned to my team multiple times. I did a lot of research, and, you know, I spoke to the people in that role. And there is a really good, Silicon Valley product group article. I'll try to find the link, and I'll send it over shortly. But, it it really did summarize the differences between the delivery managers and project managers. And delivery managers are like project managers, but the classic project manager would often behave in a very top down manner, while a delivery manager is there to remove any impediments for the product team.

So it's it's very much in, like, a servient leadership manner. So they will act as the singular intake person for the team. So what the delivery manager did in my past team was, he would act like a shield for me from all the outside noise and ensure that I am listening to the most high priority critical enhancements, and these were already vetted and reviewed. So if I had to categorize their key responsibilities based on my experience, these would be the four main categories. Right? Process management. So they will ensure that the team's processes, like Agile, Scrum, Kanban, they are optimized for efficiency. Because there's a lot that goes into like, yes. Sure. You can set it up, but they need to be, run well. So this is where the delivery manager really helped, work with the team to find, like, the best processes. Resource optimization.

So they were there, to review and manage team capacity. They will balance the workloads across the product team, ensuring that resources are appropriately allocated to avoid bottlenecks. Because a lot of times I've seen product managers take on this role of resource optimization. And it really adds a lot to our plate because we are not only thinking about the features and the requirements and, you know, the road map and the strategy, but we're also thinking about, okay, I have, like, four devs on my team. How do I, like, make sure that all of them are working on appropriate epics and tickets? So this is something that the DBM has, in my experience, really helped in this aspect. And then stakeholder management. So they keep all the stakeholders updated and manage their expectations on timelines, progress, and risk. Yes.

From a roadmap perspective, that needs to come from the product manager, but a very operational level. Delivery managers will really be my, you know, the first line of defense. If you can say, like, if somebody's, like, pinging me on Slack, hey. When will this ticket be done? Like, a lot of times, the DM will be like, hey. Why don't you talk to me? Because I know when exactly it's operational accountability. It's not saying that me as a product manager, I would not know. But, just from a very operational timeline perspective, this is something especially if it's like a smaller ticket, that's where they come in. And finally, alignment with product strategy. So they really do support the product manager to ensure that the team's work aligns with the organization's long term goals. So this is what I see. Alright. And I'm taking a look at, the chat as well. So, yeah, we don't have that role either. We only have engineering managers.

That's kind of like the case that we have at Upwork as well right now. We do not have delivery managers. So a lot of this work is actually split across, product managers and engineering managers. So yeah. So it's very interesting. But I definitely felt that having a delivery manager really helped, like, the overall collaboration across, like, the different product teams. Because right now with the engineering managers, unless they are, like, working very closely with the other EMs, it's sometimes really hard to see what work is being done and what overlaps are there. So that's my personal take so far without a DM. So let's talk about I I did talk about, like, the four key responsibilities, but, how does this translate into the value that they can bring to product managers and the product team?

So based on my experience working without a product delivery manager on a product, like, in my start up days and then now at Upwork, These are the six more, but, sorry, not six, five most important ways that they bring value to product managers. So cross functional visibility, we have spoken about this a little bit. Key stakeholders informed. The high priority items being addressed before SLAs, labs, and foster team collaboration and efficiency risk management. So we'll talk about each of these in detail. So providing crucial cross functional visibility into the product organization. So, what I've seen, in my five years of product management is, product teams often fall into the trap of working in silos and have minimal interaction with teams operating in different areas of the application. So, especially as the organization gets bigger, you know, you may not have that level of visibility like, say, a small start up where you have, like, 20 people.

Like, you can just go up to them or just Slack the other product managers, and you are, like, really lock in step. But in a bigger organization, if you're talking about FAANG, any of those big companies, that cross functional divide becomes very apparent. So, like, an example would be, like, a team responsible for the main sign up and login page, while the other team is responsible for providing the reporting capabilities to login to users. So it's not common for the product managers and product teams operating in this space to interact very frequently because one is, like, very reporting back in heavy versus login and signing page is very front end and, much more top of the funnel for the whole product. So this is where, like, a delivery manager can provide exceptional cross functional visibility as they walk across the product teams. Usually, delivery managers will have multiple teams under them, and, they will be aware of the different features currently worked on.

So, with their input, they can tell product managers, hey. Why don't you deprioritize this work? Because the other team is going to be working on a feature that, is gonna really help or, like, you know, probably remove this issue altogether. So this is a huge help that I've seen. Keeping stakeholders informed of the product delivery dates and upcoming features. So, as I mentioned earlier, like, the dreaded Slack message search, when will this feature be shipped? Like, you know, this is the first layer of defense that I have seen for product managers that, then delivery managers will then go in and say, like, hold on a second. Like, this will be the word in x, y, and z.

And the delivery managers and I'm sure, like, since we have quite a few of them, on the chat, like, they can confirm, but they will also have their own set of meetings and communication channels to ensure that all stakeholders are kept abreast of all the moving priorities and delivery date changes.

So, this does require a little bit of expectation setting that, you know, if you have if you need updates, go to the delivery manager instead of coming to the product manager so that product managers can then focus on product and delivery managers can handle these questions and make sure that, everybody is aware and the product manager is also kept aware of, like, if anything is, like, really bubbling up, which kind of goes to this third point that I have where we wanna say that we ensure that high priority items are addressed before any SLAs lapse.

We know that product managers have a lot on their plate. They have competing business priorities, customer commitments, and then we also have high severity escalation bug, escalations and bugs. So what I have seen delivery managers do is they would take the lead in interacting with the support teams and the customer success teams to understand the needs that need to be worked on in the short term to help elevate the problems, faced by users. So and a lot of times, during the backlog grooming or, cycle, like, we would have a meeting together and discuss, like, okay. These are the five items that need to be addressed in this particular, sprint because, we need to ensure that this bug is resolved before the time, the SLA laps. So it it does create, like, a a great collaborative environment between the PM and DMs when they do this. So Fostering team collaboration. So delivery managers I mean, everybody on the team is kind of responsible for doing so.

But delivery managers, specifically, I've seen are very well positioned and play a vital role in fostering team collaboration. So I've seen them do this by promoting a culture of trust, encouraging feedback, and ensuring psychological safety so that the field so that the team feels comfortable, sharing concerns and ideas. And they do this by organizing regular retrospectives. And, you know, sometimes they even do, like, facilitate, hey. Why don't x, y, and z why don't you, like, pair program together or have cross training between team members across, like, either, product teams, engineering teams so that, developers are able to share their expertise and learn from one another. So they do create a sense of shared ownership, which is honestly very, very pleasant to see. And lastly, and this is a very important aspect of delivery managers that I've seen, is efficient release management.

So they do support the product managers by ensuring, efficient release management. They will coordinate all the moving parts, involved in delivering features to production deployment. So, they are already mitigating the risk as we mentioned earlier, right, by identifying potential delays or technical challenges early. So, this whole streamlined release process makes ensures that, again, product managers can focus on prioritizing the features and maintaining maintaining the product vision, while you're knowing that the release process is well maintained, like, Google managers are overseeing it, making sure everything is going through, the testing process.

K. So, I'm gonna move on and then we'll get to the questions. Or let's take a look. So some common challenges that I have experienced in PM and DM collaboration, like, things are not always rosy because it's such a vague role. Like, the product management role is also vague, and it's so different across every organization. So if you think about, like, program managers or delivery managers, like, it's also pretty vague and differs across, companies. So, like, these are some of the challenges, like, that I've seen, like, misaligned priorities. Product managers sometimes overfocus on, like, long term term vision and strategy of the product. So, pushing for features that align with customer needs and business goals, but then delivery managers might want to, like, think about from the operational perspective, like, how we're gonna meet the deadline.

We do we have enough team capacity? Are we insured with delivery? So it's it's, it's interesting. So we come from both, different perspectives. And lack of clear communication. So, this is again, this, I think, is happens because of the vagueness of each other's roles and how we might have, like, assumptions of, like, what each role is, like, and without the clear communication, road roadblocks are flagged and expectations can diverge. So that conflicting timelines and expectations. Again, we from a product, we will always want more, great functionality enhancement request versus, like, from a delivery perspective, we might wanna, like, reduce technical debt. And, it it we might the PM and DM might not be aligned completely. So and the trade offs, again, speaking to speed versus quality, this is also something that product managers and delivery managers can have conversations over.

So let's talk about how we can mitigate that. Like, over the time where I got introduced to the role and I got learning how to, like, really leverage and, work with a delivery manager, like, these were the top three things. They might sound really basic, but they really helped me a lot. Like, number one is letting go. Like, as a product manager, we are always in con like, want to be in control of so much, but there's honestly a lot of uncertainty. The product roadmap always keeps changing. Like, we need to, like, really adapt quickly to change and ambiguity. So we need to let go for the need for control of all the things that we used to do.

And especially when you're coming in from an environment where there was no delivery manager to an environment that there is a delivery manager. We need to learn to trust that the processes and everything that the delivery manager is going to be doing, like driving these conversations with the stakeholders. And all of that is going to happen, successfully. And that team can focus on the product related things and let the delivery manager shine in their role. And then secondly, like, regular syncs. And this was a game changer for me because, initially, I was, like, so confused as to, like, what the delivery manager does. And after that, like, I was like, okay. Hold on. Let me have weekly meetings. We will discuss all the operational things. And it was honestly amazing because, you know, keeping them in the loop of what you're thinking, how the product group member is going to, looking, like, panning out and what's being worked on, what's coming up next, answering any questions.

It it it was really good. We would talk about high severity bugs, frequency, and, it was a very good useful piece of time. And then third, celebrate successes together. So celebrating wins both big and small is essential, but it's often overlooked as aspect of team dynamics. So, recognizing the accomplishments accomplishments between the DM and PM can really build a collaborative culture and, create a sense of partnership. So, as a product manager, you can, recognize wins publicly in key meetings and send, like, I always used to put, like, a kudos board in retrospectives. So it's, yeah. These are just some of the three things that worked really well for me, when I was working with, delivery management. So, eventually, like, if if I could say something, like how a DM and PM can work together really well is, as a product manager, think about why is this product team working on this product, what are we building?

And who is gonna be impacted by this feature versus delivery manager. Let them handle when it's, going to get delivered and how the team can actually deliver it in time, scope, and the quality expected without impacting the team health. So these are the things that I felt, if we think about it this way, we can really define the roles really well and work successfully to, yeah, create ship really good great product. So I think that's all that I had. So we can take some questions.