Jane Kenny | Lead Delivery and IT Service Manager | DWP

 

I am a qualified Practitioner in Programme, Agile and Portfolio Delivery (MSP, PRINCE2, APMP, SCRUM, Management of Portfolios) and Service Management (ITIL Expert), with many years’ experience in delivering and transforming services in public and private sector.

My first role was as an admin assistant. Following several operational roles and a couple of promotions, I saw a job advertised in IT. I thought I had some of the skills required so I applied, and I was successful. That was in 1998 and I have mostly worked in IT ever since. So my career in IT, it was a total accident!

So in my first IT role, I was responsible for managing IT changes and working on some large projects. This included a £3billion national project which was the biggest in Europe at the time to provide an IT refresh of new desktops and infrastructure platforms for 100k staff. This enabled us to radically change and revolutionise our way of operating, moving away from clerical processes. I then managed the outsourcing of the IT change work to suppliers.

After making myself surplus as a result, I decided to take the plunge and find a new role in a different organisation, continuing to lead on similar IT transformation work that I had previously had success with.

From there I went into a totally different industry, delivering some global IT projects. After having a baby and the need for a better work-life balance and flexibility, I successfully secured a role as an IT Portfolio Manager, before moving into my current role where I’m responsible for the development, implementation and management of IT services.

I lead delivery teams, who develop and deploy new and enhanced digital products and services, using a mixture of agile and waterfall methodology.

I am also service owner for 36 services, supporting 10k users. My live support teams provide 24/7 expertise to manage and restore services whenever issues occur, ensuring that incidents are resolved with the minimum of service downtime.

The third part of my role is IT business partner. I build and maintain trusted collaborative relationships with key stakeholders, both internally and externally. I support business strategies and objectives through digital enablement, acting as a Digital ambassador and providing a single point of focus for senior business colleagues to raise issues or concerns.