Month: Jun 2019

S2 ep12 series finale*

image of snorlax the pokemon lying down

What did I realise this week?

That working in agile delivery has given me much greater facilitation skills than I used to have. This week I facilitated or helped facilitate several open conversations – ones where we’re exploring where our HackIT manifesto is driving our approach and behaviours, and ones where we’re not all in agreement about ‘what next’ and need to find a way to get to the next most important thing. The success of these conversations though, is as much about the willingness of colleagues to work openly, listen and debate.

workshop participants on the HackIT manifesto
mid workshop on HackIT manifesto

What did I deliver something on?

We looked at our procurement forward plan this week – we’re trying to think ahead across the teams so that we give ourselves the time and space to use how and when we buy things as a lever for change. That’s not always possible – sometimes we’re simply replacing one thing with another, but where there are opportunities we want to be in the best position possible to take advantage of them.

There was good feedback on how we present the data – what’s useful, what isn’t, and what we could improve.

What am I proud of this week?

I missed it but last week Matthew ran a session with the team on what we’ve achieved in the last quarter. It’s great to take time to do this before we set our sights on what’s next – it’s all too easy to do that, and not spend time together reflecting on what we’ve done.

On Wednesday I went to my sons’ graduation – I am so proud of how hard he’s worked, the energy and commitment he’s put into the work and his outside interests.

What did I get wrong this week?

I messed up this week – I promised to do something and then totally forgot about it. Luckily I was rescued by Steve who stepped in to deliver a last minute session on procurement, following user research we’ve taken part in with Cabinet Office**.

What am I thinking about this week?

How we can iterate our planning and delivery so that we have smoother, faster flow. It’s not easy, and as we grow we’re going to need more consistency in how we do things. Consistency not constraint – I really value the creativity and innovation that comes from trusting the team to deliver their work in a way that works for them.

We’ve just completed a short discovery into devops with Digi2al which has given us a series of testable hypotheses, greater insight and some key principles to start from – all of which will help us with smooth, fast delivery.

What I read this week:

This was useful from Gathercontent on content patterns and why they are important to help users navigate their way through a service successfully.

James Abley wrote a great piece about moving MOJ’s legacy tech.

The ICT Commissioning playbook – we’ve given the team some insight via user research, and I’m thinking about how we might use it as a standard by which we assess our success at buying things.

*holiday beckons so seems like a good time to end a series, six months into the year

**in return, as grateful thanks, I will provide cake

I’m disappearing on holiday!

User stories not requirements will give us better outcomes – discuss

I pitched a session at #procurementunconference19 boldly titled ā€˜User stories not requirements will give us better outcomesā€™

I wanted to find out if other people had experiences to share about how we move away from long lists of requirements, developed in silos, then given to suppliers – to a more collaborative, outcome focused way of doing things.Ā 

At HackIT we use the digital marketplace where we can, and make wide use of CCS frameworks. I used a recent example of a procurement for ā€˜printing as a serviceā€™ where weā€™ve tried hard to give the suppliers space to tell us what they think the solution might be for us, rather than specifying every detail in advance.Ā 

The discussion around the table was incredibly useful – a host of examples of where people are trying new things, facing challenges and being bold with their approaches.

Hereā€™s the top 5 things I wrote down during the discussion:

Too often weā€™re trying to buy something where weā€™ve got uncertainty – and instead of trying to make it more certain (by locking down requirements) we need a way of embracing the uncertainty and using it to get better outcomes overall. Otherwise we risk buying the wrong thing.

Procurement works best when you have the right people working together at the right time, who understand the problem youā€™re trying to solve. This means having product groups and multi-disciplinary teams in place, and break down professional silos where documents are passed from team to team.

Can we use experiments to understand the problem – and if so, how do we make experiments as small as possible? The smaller they are the less risk you have, which means you can fail faster. For example – weā€™ve added in a 6 month pilot of our new ā€˜printing as a serviceā€™ solution, but could we have made this smaller and more iterative? How can we involve suppliers and users during our experiments?

Can we use KPIs that measure delivery against culture and approach where we might usually only use outputs (eg availability), and if we could do this what would our measures be and would it drive innovation and engagement?

There was an example of teams using story points or dev points as an agreed deliverable in a statement of work – and of teams planning in advance to create iterative statements of work in collaboration with suppliers, rather than fixing an overall statement of work at the start.

Notes from #procurement unconference19, Session 1 – Bear

S2 ep11 Easy tiger

sculpture of a tiger made from foil wrappers photo courtesy of @hughpearman, from the RA summer exhibition. Easy Tiger by sculptor David Mach
photo courtesy of @hughpearman, from the RA summer exhibition. Easy Tiger by sculptor David Mach, made from foil wrappers*

A full on week this week, it was London Tech Week, and we were hosting several fringe events. Huge thanks to the teams who delivered theseā€Šā€”ā€Šawesome work!

What did I do to challenge myself this week?

I spoke in public to possibly the biggest group of people so far. And on home turf in front of people I know (which somehow makes it harder). It went well – I got across what I wanted to say, relaxed enough to go off script and anecdotal, and had brilliant conversations with people afterwards as a result.

tweet from future gov with a photo of me

I also noticed this useful thread from some ace people with advice and reflections on public speaking:

What did I deliver something on this week?

We held the first LOTI (London Office of Technology and Innovation) event post the LOTI launch event on Monday . This was a workshop with other London boroughs from LOTI to discuss how we might extend digital apprentices amongst LOTI members to 100 by 2020. Hackney’s got an ambitious and successful apprenticeship programme, which HackIT’s digital apprenticeships are a part of, and it was great to be able to share our story of successes and challenges. Micah, Nana, Erdem and Darrell started us off by talking about how they’ve made their apprenticeships a success, and Mal focussed on a line managers’ perspective.

a photo of four of our apprentices presenting to a room of colleagues
Starting us off with their reflections on how they’re making their apprenticeships a success

The team ran a recruitment event on Wednesday evening with over 50 people who came along to meet us, and find out more about working at HackIT. Then on Thursday Matthew ran a supplier event, which was a really good conversation with SMEs who haven’t worked with us, or maybe once so far. It was useful to hear feedback on working with us, have a chat about service standard assessments and why we value them (and why suppliers should too).

Working in partnership with suppliers

And on Friday I was lucky enough to be a lead assessor on our prototype (alpha) phase project for Hackney Spacebank. The team had prepared really well, and it was brilliant to have two great external assessors, Guilia and Kate, involved to give us challenge and learn from their experience. They were both really impressed by what they heard and saw – and I know that meant a lot to the team. This is the second assessment in the past couple of weeks – we’ll publish them on the HackIT website later this month.

What did I learn this week?

I learnt loads from other speakers on Monday’s Futuregov event including Vim and Matt, Richard McLean wrote this ace blog post on work – why it doesn’t have to be (and shouldn’t be) crazy. There’s loads of good ideas in here, some of which I’d like to try, things I’m guilty of**, and some things that I’m already doing, and which I know are effective.

And lastly it was fab to see a new blog post from Dan, thoughtful and considered (as always). Data is fundamental to the services we create, and so often the ‘computer magic’ bit can’t be done easily because the data just isn’t good enough.

*I also have the foil flattening and object creating habit, but not on this scale.

**Yet another bright idea, when we (I) am already fully committed.

S2 Ep10 sunshine powered delivery

Pikachu eating lunch in the sunshine
Pikachu eating lunch in the sunshine

After a gloriously sunny weekend I’d recouped my energy and it lasted me through (all) the rainy days during the week. I’m sticking with this new format for now, but tweaking the headings a bit to see if they can make me reflect better.

What did I hear this week?

I had lunch with David in the sunshine at my favourite cafe, discussing all sorts of things, including his ideas for a short training session on retros, and thinking about how we approach our database layer.

Followed by coffee in the sunshine* with Roo, ahead of the DevOps discovery workshop on culture and ways of working. This was a chance to catch up and think about our overall approach, and hear some reflections on what it feels like working with HackIT as a new supplier.

And at the end of the week I caught up with Louise Cato for a rapid, wide ranging chat about weeknotes, running, delivery, culture, leadership and so much more in between. It was great to see her – and to hear that she’s coming along to #bureaucracyhack.

Where did my energy go this week?

Matthew and I delivered our agile training course to a new (4th cohort) this week. The slides are here if you want to look at/use them. I’m currently collating the material into one shared drive that we can make open to anyone who wants to use it.

It’s 3 very early starts and delivering useful training is always tiring – but it was so worth it.

The participants end with a show and tell: what they’ve done, what they’ve learnt and what they’ll do next:

my tweet during the show and tell by the agile training participants

Some of my nervous energy went on worrying about both boys taking exams this week, one had a week of finals, and one has A-levels. Stressful for them both, and I was aware all week that it was on my mind.

What did I deliver this week?

I finally made time to finish or progress some things that have been on ‘the list’ for a while.

I wrote a brief for next week’s London Office of Technology and Innovation digital apprenticeship event that we’re hosting, and planned out how we’ll run it in more detail.

I worked on a paper for our senior leadership team about the future of mobile telephony at Hackney – and how we might do things differently.

Our printer tender went out – this has been a lot of work by the contracts team and our procurement colleagues, so it’s really nice to see that it’s gone live.

I finished off some slides for a lightening talk at Monday’s FutureGov event which they’re running in Hackney – Matthew gave me valuable help and advice, including asking twitter to help with the title:

My personal fave didn’t win, but I like option 1 too

What have I thought about this week?

my Hackney rainbow lanyard

I’ve been thinking about the importance of inclusive and diverse teams – and how it benefits everybody to have diversity of voice, opinion and experience.

We’ve got an event running next week which Nic and the team are doing a fab job of organising. We’re hosting a recruitment evening for people interested in coming to work with us.

I saw this from Snook, aimed at the design sector initially – I liked the bit about asking all candidates for feedback on the process and learning from it: http://inclusivedesignrecruitment.co.uk/5/

I’ve also been thinking about innovation – and the differing views on what’s needed to be innovative, deliver innovation, build a culture of innovation. This via Rachel Murphy, was a great video about about situational awareness being key:

What have I read this week?

I really liked this via Jennifer Pahlka:

top tips for leading (IT) change, possibly any change really
Two ways to stand out in the public service ā€” Martha Lane-Fox’s tips for success

and not so much reading but watching from afar** I was so pleased to see the success of the @oneteamgov wellbeing camp in Leeds.

great 30 sec video!

*there’s a theme here, things in the sunshine. Including a swim on Monday morning. Summer is definitely my season.

**slightly jealously, I couldn’t go because of the agile training, but colleagues went so I loved vicariously through them and twitter.

S2 Ep9 what have I. . .?

a picture of a box of Violet Crumbles, Australian crunchies
A package of violet crumbles*

. . .tried this week?

I’m trying a new weeknotes style to see if it inspires me/works well (and because change is good. )

. . . noticed this week?

It’s been a very short week for me this week, just 3 days. Two of them were days on the move, with meetings in various places. But the meetings days felt manageable because on Friday I knew I had the space to think and do.

We’ve had some really good conversations this week about things we’re trying to improve – open, engaged and useful.

been proud of this week?

HackIT has been listed in apolitical’s new government learning directory, as a team teaching others the skills needed for the future. It’s a great recognition of how, by working in the open, we’re sharing our knowledge and learning with others.

I’m really proud of the manage arrears beta team – they’ve now used Gov.notify to send their first 1000 letters, saving us both time and money.

We’ve got three people going to the @OneTeamGov #wellbeing camp next week – it’s great to see people from our teams engaging across government.

It’s also been brilliant watching all the project weeknotes being published on our HackIT blog over the past few weeks – working in the open

. . . learnt this week?

My map of the year, drawn out in conversation with my coach

I had a great coaching session this week, where I mapped out what I was proud of in my first year in Hackney*, what skills I’ve used and developed, and what the overarching themes might be. It was a really useful exercise – guided by Sarah who is very very good at not letting me off the hook. As a result I’ve got something I can use to frame my thinking about the coming year.

Jane Fallon from the West Mids combined authority spent the day with us this week – we learnt loads from her on how OPG have built a product management community and developed people into the role. Having visitors from other orgs is always a brilliant way to learn more about how other people are thinking about similar problems.

Steve and Karim came up with a good solution to our procurement challenge – one that gets us the outcome we’re looking for but simplifies things for us. They’ve worked really hard to finalise the documentation and we’re all hopeful we can publish the tender next week.

. . . read this week?

Rose wrote a great blog post about hiring – framing another problem for #bureaucracyhack to tackle.

Nour signposted to this great Harvard Business Review article on the importance of teams

*my brother sent over some treats in a little care package. Somebody on twitter suggested that they were ‘just’ crunchies. They are not. Nor do they taste of violets.

**towards the end of June I’ll have been at Hackney a year. A year! It’s been the most brilliant year.