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.
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
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