weeknotes 2 4 Feb: preparing for beta, learning from others, working from home

or, my second attempt at weeknotes, feedback welcome!

#weeknotes 2

For the team this week has mainly been about getting ready to start sprint 0 next week, and meeting the new team from @digi2al who are going to work with us . . .

Monday

Our newest team member Cheryl joined us today — she’s training to be a product manager. We are all VERY excited that she’s joined the team and so there was cake . . .

Today was all about content design — planning out what our approach will be to retiring existing content on acas.org.uk and transitioning over during 2018 to the new site. We haven’t built the new site yet (that’s what we’ll do in beta) but I’m trying to plan ahead as much as possible.

I also had to make it in time to Woodhouse College for a meeting about the ski trip my youngest is going on next week. But it’s always great to meet (and massively thank!) the committed and enthusiastic teachers prepared to spend 23hrs on a coach to Italy with 27 17yr olds . . .

https://media.giphy.com/media/GghJ32T5oPR8Q/giphy.gif

Tuesday

Loads of meetings today — including business planning for next year, our monthly Transformation Board chaired by our ace Kate Nowicki and in the afternoon a beta kick off with Roo and Aleks from digi2al. Really busy day but a great sense of change happening across the organisation. Crashed into a class at @rebelstudioyoga with not a lot of headspace left, but as usual left feeling much calmer.

Wednesday

The highlight of the day for me was meeting Christina and Diane at Food Standards Agency . The FSA digital team are about a year ahead of us in their digital transformation — and there’s so much we can learn from them and the great stuff they‘ve done. I think we all came away feeling inspired and enthusiastic and looking forward to collaborating with them in the future.

Thursday

We met up with the digi2al beta team that Roo Reynolds has put together, to get to know each other better before we start properly on Tuesday. They all seem awesome people — and there’s a palpable sense of excitement in the team about getting started next week. This is the first beta phase we’re doing so it’s a real mix of exciting and scary for us . . . I was incredibly impressed at the amazing job Jess and Philippa have done of planning out our first few days so that everyone gets up to speed on what we learnt in discovery and alpha, why we’re doing this, and how we will all work together.

Friday

I managed to work from home on Friday morning — which meant I smashed it on the paperwork I’d been avoiding all week AND gave myself some space to think ahead. Curtis and I caught up on skype — he’s based in Nottingham much of the week at the moment so it’s good to catch up on how their project is going. Then off to City Hall to meet Mina and Martyn — again, really good learning and sharing of experiences, which will lead to more opportunities to collaborate in the future. I’d never been inside City Hall before either so Mina gave me a quick tour — it’s an inspiring building to work in.

What I’m reading this week (thought this might be useful but let me know?):

Grit by Angela Duckworth. Hard work and perseverance vs talent. How often do we put success down to luck or talent when it isn’t . . .

London Rules — Mick Herron. No 4 in a series, v funny, v acutely observed novel.

So that . . . — very useful blog post by Sarah Prag