Kimberley Luke is a Delivery Lead in the Digital Channels Agile Tribe in Admiral Tech, read her story below.
What do you do in Admiral and how long have you been working here?
I’ve been at Admiral for 10 years, the whole time in our Tech area in various roles and teams. I started in Tech Architecture as the Team Manager, then moved into Tech Delivery in an assortment of System Area teams, and now I’m in Digital Channels! In most of these roles I had responsibility for developing people, understanding, and delivering system functionality and communication.
My current role is Delivery Lead in the Digital Channels Tribe, which is a full stack autonomous team in agile delivery. It’s quite a newly formed Tribe and I’m responsible for developing our agile techniques, ensure quality and challenge our trio of leadership (myself, Tech Lead and Product Lead) to ensure the best and most valuable outcomes for our business.
How did you get into your role? What’s your background?
My career path is quite a simple one really! I went to university to study pure maths, and towards the end of my final year I was accepted onto an IT Graduate scheme with a large financial services company and learned programming languages. I went on to mentor and lead a team within that company, and then I moved to a large retail company as an IT Analyst, but quickly moved into project and systems leadership. I created and developed a systems testing function, and was then invited to lead the systems development function for half of the core systems.
When I decided to move to Cardiff, I applied for one role (at Admiral) and was offered the Architecture Manager role. The rest, as they say, is history.
Can you tell me a bit about your area?
Of the current 10 Tribes in Tech Delivery at Admiral, Digital Channels is one of the newest. We have responsibility for developing the digital conversational and messaging functions across many of our product areas, such as chat bots. We then capture, analyse and use all of our new data. We’re often trailblazers in our Digital Channels Tribe due to the tech we use and are usually among the first to require technical decisions or designs.
Do you think there are opportunities to grow and develop here?
Admiral has lots of opportunities for training, mentoring and professional qualifications. I’ve achieved CMI level 5 in Management and Leadership and am a Certified Scrum Master. I hope to find further suitable leadership courses in the near future to support my further development. However, active agile delivery brings learning opportunities continually as we’re all looking for opportunities for Tribe progression.
What makes Admiral a great place to work?
The flexibility and support given to all colleagues, opportunities to grow and develop and to mature into professional people who fully understand our core business and future opportunities.
Do you have any advice for someone looking to join your area?
Be pragmatic and organised, build and work with your network. Have a few chats with people already in the area, understand the work we do and why. Bring fresh ideas!
We envelope several skills depending on the role; product, technical, management and organisational skills are all very important.
