Digital and Agile Specialist

Category: Leadership

  • Delivering Digital Government 2019

    This week Claire Harrison (Head of Architecture from CQC) and I had the opportunity to attend the Delivering Digital Goverment event run by Worth Systems in The Hague. The event was focused on how digital has transformed governments across the world, sharing best practices and lessons learned. With speakers from the founding of GDS, like…

  • WomenInDigi19

    How we as leaders can keep supporting people As I sat listening to the conversations happening at the Women in Digital event on Wednesday, it occurred to me that although the point of the day was around creating more opportunities and continuing to support women working within digital, so many of the things that we…

  • What does good Leadership look like to me?

    Over the last 6 months or so I’ve been percolating on what good leadership looks like, at least to me, and how I can make sure I am acting like the good leader I would want to see. There’s been lots of good thought pieces and conversations happening about good leadership over the last year…

  • Scrum Master or Delivery Manager – what’s in a name?

    Are the roles of Scrum Master and Delivery manager the same? Continuing on my recent musings on the different roles within Agile multidisciplinary teams, today’s blog focuses on the role of the Delivery Manager, or the Scrum Master, and whether these roles are really the same thing. This is a conversation that came up a…

  • What is the value in a Head of Product?

    Our numbers are growing, but what is the role, and what value does it add? When I first took up the role of ‘Head of Product Management’ back in October 2016, I was one of the first in Government to have the title, and within a few months there was a very small band of…

  • Why focusing on productivity isn’t productive.

    One thing that comes up time and again from senior managers is “My focus or priority is improving Productivity”. Early on in my career I worked on a number of ‘productivity improvement inniatives’ and sometimes they would seem to make some improvments, sometimes they wouldn’t, but they never really solved the issues and there always…

  • Making a change or making progress.

    At a leadership conference recently there was an interesting debate about whether people perceived making a change or making progress to be more important. Everyone on my table voted for making a change, my vote initially was for making progress, and so we debated what the difference was. For me, change can be positive or…

  • My user manual:

    A user manual is a document that tells users how to use a particular system. More recently personal user manuals that help others work with you better have begun to spring up. I’ve seen a few great examples of personal user manuals recently, most recently from Dan Barrett, and I really like the idea; Unfortunately…

  • Changing perceptions of Women in Leadership

    Originally published at digileaders.com on November 3, 2017. Last month we delivered a breakout session at the Women into Leadership conference in Leeds. The conference is about managing the challenges of modern leadership, recognising and rewarding female leaders, and enhancing leadership opportunities for women so they can build skills to become the leader they aspire…

  • The strength of Product People in Government

    For those that don’t know me I’m Zoe, proud mum, avid geek and currently the Head of Product at the Department for Works and Pensions. At the start of this year, we in the DWP worked with the Goverment Digital Service to host the first ever cross-government Product Management conference. Why? Because we wanted to bring together all the Product Managers and Owners…