Every Azendo service agreement names one service delivery manager. Not a rotating point of contact, not a shared account manager across a portfolio of clients — one person, named in the agreement, who answers for how the assigned team performs, develops and delivers.
What the role actually covers
The service delivery manager does not do the engineering. Your product owner still sets priorities, reviews the work and makes the calls that matter to the roadmap. What the service delivery manager owns is everything on our side of that line: who is assigned, whether they are performing, how they are developing, and what happens when something needs to change.
In practice that means weekly check-ins with the assigned specialists that have nothing to do with your backlog — performance, workload, anything getting in the way. It means a monthly delivery report that goes to you, summarising capacity used, quality metrics and anything worth flagging before it becomes a problem. And it means being the first call if a specialist is out, underperforming, or the scope needs to flex.
“The client should never have to manage a person to get software delivered. That is the whole point of the role.”
How it plays out week to week
A typical week starts with the service delivery manager checking in with each specialist assigned to your project — five minutes, sometimes less, mostly about anything outside the sprint that might affect their work. Mid-week, they sit in on your stand-up as an observer, not to direct the work but to catch anything that needs attention on our side before it surfaces as a delivery problem. At the end of the month, the report goes out: hours delivered against the committed capacity, quality gate results, and cover arrangements if anyone was out.
If a specialist leaves, is out for an extended period, or simply is not the right fit for your codebase, the service delivery manager owns finding and onboarding the replacement — at no cost to your committed capacity. That continuity is the reason the role exists.
What you can expect from it
You get one name to call, a monthly report you did not have to ask for, and a team that keeps performing whether or not you are watching closely that month. It is the difference between buying hours and buying accountability — and it is why the rate includes it rather than pricing it separately.