Ian Ames.

I help multidisciplinary teams deliver services in a user centred way.

Profile

I have over 20 years experience delivering projects to a range of Government organisations and companies, including the Ministry of Justice, Cabinet Office, DEFRA, Dept for Culture Media and Sport, NHS Digital and BT.

I have experience of a number of agile practices such as Scrum, Kanban, Cynefin, Lean and DevOps. In recent years I have tended to specialise in the early phases of a service lifecycle. I enjoy working in small teams; being at the intersection of product, tech, and UX; and taking the seed of an idea and shaping it to achievable outcomes.

I have experience of leading co-located, distributed and fully remote teams. Clear communication and a shared understanding of goals is key, regardless of where your team is. I work hard to ensure teams are pulling in the same direction and are focused on the project outcomes.

I have spoken at meetups for Agile Southwest, Product Makers, Citizens Advice and Co-Op digital communities, and have presented at a number of conferences including Service Design in Government and Agile on the Beach. I was one of the founding members of DeliverCon, an unconference for delivery managers in the public sector, I have also helped facilitate the excellent Agile in the Ether and Product in the (A)ether meetups and conference.

Career

BT (via Public.Digital)

Role: Contract Delivery Manager and Coach. August 2024 to present.

Project: Building Products Together

Supporting BT implementing a new Product Operating Model aimed at bringing digital and business people closer together aligned around products and services. A large complex transformation involving multiple stakeholders and delivery partners.

My role is frontrunner lead, supporting and coaching the first tribe established in this model. I lead a team defining, testing, and documenting ways of working. I created and taught a series of masterclasses focused on modern product management and delivery practices, focused on the mindset changes needed to make the transformation a success. I objectively feedback what is working and what could be improved as the Operating Model is implemented.

DEFRA

Role: Contract Senior Delivery Manager, December 2023 to June 2024.

Project: Benchmark system for Flood Hydrology

I led a delivery team in the flood digital programme. Doing a discovery into how to introduce more methods for flood hydrology into working practice. Advocating for user centred design practices in a team new to agile practices. Constructively challenging scope to ensure we consider the whole end to end service. Mapping service journeys based on user research.

It required me to advocate for user centred practices and to frame discovery as due-diligence, providing assurance that a benchmark system is what is needed. Through a combination of research, service mapping and coaching; I was able to reframe the objectives to 3 much clearer opportunities to explore in alpha.

Ministry of Justice (via dxw)

Role: Delivery Lead, December 2022 to October 2023.

Project: Refer and Monitor Accredited Programmes

Led a multidisciplinary team through discovery to beta. Exploring how to improve referrals and decision making to accredited programmes. Behavioural programmes offered to prisoners in custody and on probation designed to help with reintegration into society.

I helped the team archive a ‘met’ in the alpha assessment for the first time, using my experience of previous assessments to guide the team to success. I have navigated internal MOJ processes to understand how to get things done, which processes are absolute ‘must haves’ to be done, and what can be challenged to help us move at pace.

I was responsible for communicating to a large stakeholder group about project progress and supporting the product manager to ensure we’re clear about what our priorities are, what will get delivered, and importantly, what won’t get delivered immediately and why.

NHS Digital

Role: Contract Product Manager, June 2022 to November 2022

Service: Directory of Services

The Directory of services is the list of all emergency care settings where healthcare professionals can refer patients. It is imperative the information is kept up to date and accurate to ensure that patients get to the right care setting before their condition worsens.

I worked with stakeholders and commissioners to understand strategy intent and goals. Understanding user needs to ensure our product meets them. Setting team priorities and ensuring value is delivered. Being the ‘voice of the product’ to the wider organisation.The main focus was on how to improve the quality of emergency dental referral information in the DoS.

Contract Delivery Manager, April 2021 - June 2022

Project: Patient Encounter History

Led the development of a product to enable clinicians from different parts of Urgent and Emergency Care to view information about patient encounters in other care settings in order to help diagnose complex cases, reassure patients, build rapport, and to identify worsening conditions. This was developed in a user centred way using Discovery to understand patient and clinical needs and Alpha to iteratively prototype and explore technical options.

Delt Shared Services

Role: Innovation Specialist, September 2020 to April 2021.

Project: GPintheCloud

Responsible for developing innovation at Delt, understanding our customers issues and challenges and exploring emerging technology and products to present and test solutions in a user centred and iterative way. I led the development of a product to enable GP Locums to access clinical systems for multiple surgeries from one device securely. The service was developed based on user feedback and enabled Locums to support GP surgeries from anywhere in the country, crucial during the coronavirus pandemic, but a solution to the challenge of GP distribution across the country.

Surevine

Role: Technical Team Lead, May 2019 to August 2020.

Responsible for developing a high performing remote team of software developers and testers, delivering customer projects and developing our working practices for efficient and effective agile software delivery.

Project: Cyber Exchange

Project Lead for the delivery of Cyber-Exchange, a platform for UK Cyber Security businesses to connect, find funding opportunities and events. Sponsored by DCMS and Tech UK.

Project: Future Vetting Service

Project lead for the delivery of serverless future vetting website on AWS, with cross domain aspects on Docker Swarm, working closely with the NCSC and the Cabinet Office, leading a multi-disciplinary team of User Researchers, Designers, Developers, and Testers and supporting and coaching the teams Product Managers in Agile ways of working.

HM Land Registry

Delivery Lead, 2014 - 2019.

I led multidisciplinary teams to develop services in a user-centric way using agile techniques based on the Government Service Design Manual.

Project: Protect Alpha

A service to allow citizens to easily protect their property interests. Keep their information on the register up to date, and to raise awareness of what the Land Registry is and how we protect most people’s largest asset, their home. I Led the team through the alpha phase, experimenting with different ideas and solutions focusing on solving our riskiest assumptions first.

Service: Find Property Information.

A citizen focused service aimed at presenting basic land information for a number of user needs. Built on an entirely new infrastructure stack, including accounts, payment, audit, and address API’s. Migrated 24 million titles of land ownership data to a new database platform. I developed our emerging agile practices and increased our deployment frequency from once a month to on-demand, completing 76 production deploys in 2017. My team successfully passed the beta assessment of the Government Digital Service Standard. I advocated and acted as the voice of agile practice to the rest of the organisation.

Education and Training

Certified Scrum Master. Scrum Alliance 2015. BSc (Hons) Marine Navigation. University of Plymouth, 1998 - 2001. ITIL Practitioner in:

  • Foundation
  • Service Design
  • Service Transition
  • Service Desk and Incident Management
  • Service Level Management I have previously been SC cleared I have BPSS clearance

Contact Details

ian@discover-deliver.co.uk, 07944876831 https://ames.world, LinkedIn, 75 Outland Road, Plymouth, PL2 3DA Here is my CV in a document