Weeknotes s01 ep04

My week started in prison. Well, not strictly true, I did some work from home in advance, but then I had an all day team meeting in HMP Kirkham. The visitors’ lounge was commandeered for the meeting: a great space, but one which is constrained by having to lock away your phones and keys in a tiny locker. Clearly us civil servants are dangerous beings and can’t be trusted!
Interesting discussions about the move to Product Development Unit structures. DWP are bringing together delivery of legacy systems and agile teams, and trying to corral them by themes (I will be in Support for Care). This is a bigger hurdle for some than for others, in terms of cultural change. Agile is still seen in some circles as “the shiny, front end thing”, and that it wouldn’t work for the “proper” development. These discussions have left me feeling a bit disheartened in the past, but to be honest, I just want to bring people along with me now.
However we do it, the most important thing is to design in a user-centred way, and really make that our guiding principle.
Tuesday we were back “Discovery-ing” in Preston. Mel, the PO, was back at the helm after a couple of days off, and we had a lot of colleagues in the room: policy, ops and digital. It is a shame we haven’t had a consistent team for the whole of discovery, so we keep having to recap….but taking the time to do this does get everyone on the same page.
The focus of Tuesday’s session was to frame the problem. We revisited the “As Is” journey, reviewing what we know so far and trying to get all the problems white-boarded. At lunch, Mel and I grouped these, so that we could run an exercise to determine potential short and long term solutions. Some interesting discussions were generated, and we’ve got some really good suggestions. We then did a good old dotting exercise to get the view from the room on what should take priority. Looks like we are on the way to determining our MVP!
Wednesday dawned, and saw us back in the room in Preston (after I did a guest appearance at Product Board just to keep them up to date). Today we went through the myriad of small systems that the Unit use, so we could understand (a) what they are; (b) why they’re there and (c) whether they will be required in the long term. Some of those systems blew my mind! I’m hoping they will be later on in the backlog!!
After the workshop, Mel, Dave (new DM) and I had a chat about governance and the looming deadlines we seem to have, as well as a chat about some new legislative change that we’re being pushed to prioritise. Hoping tomorrow’s technical discussions will help us to see the wood for the trees!!
Thursday started with a really useful call with Julie Byrne regarding gender parity in Tech/Digital roles: thanks again for the thoughts. The power of #weeknotes is strong!
We then workshopped technical things. I’m amazed by the technological brains that some colleagues have. It was a really valuable day, with the team really coming together to define a way forwards. Epic.
At 4, and slightly exhausted from the technical world, we had a call with the RTi project in Newcastle, to share the pain CA feel, and bump ourselves up the priority list. Looking forward to catching up with them in August to learn more about what they’ve been doing.
Stopped late late at work so that I could finish brain dumping everything in advance of 2 weeks leave. Thankfully I did feel that a weight had been lifted once it was all down on paper.
Friday morning I had a catch up with my mentee. I really like these chats because she is so authentic, and I find it really rewarding to be able to offer that help and be a sounding board. She’s been having a tough time but we seemed to find a path through it, and I’m looking forward to hearing what she puts in to practice.
Then tried to download to Ali (our BA) all that had been in my head. She’s completed on a new house today, so there’s an understandable distraction!!
Collated thoughts from my fellow Associate POs on a meet-up, and hopefully set some balls rolling for a get together. Looking forward to getting started as a community and learning from each other.
And a final catch up with Mel so that we’re all on the same page for when I go on leave. I. Am. Not. A. Control. Freak. At all.
In all seriousness, Mel is being really supportive with my development in the PO role, and I’ve learned a lot about how to “do” discovery. Team work makes the dream work :)

Finished Friday with an early dart (lucky me!).
I’m now on leave for a fortnight, so there will be a small hiatus in my weeknoting. But I will see you soon :)
