Week notes — w/c 31 July 2023
Well this has been a damp squib of a week… (Brief distraction: did you know that the etymology of the phase ‘damp squib’ refers to a firework that failed to go off due to becoming wet in storage and was therefore disappointing?) Lots of meetings, lots of discussion, but not a lot translating into tickets in the done column.
Web Estate Transformation
I had a really useful in-person planning session with one of the Delivery Managers I work with at the beginning of the week. We were looking at Phase 1 of the work — which won’t kick off until we have the team in place — and what we know about what needs to happen then. I have been trying to resist planning too much of Phase 1 without the team — particularly because I’m not an expert in all of the different areas that we need to cover — but it was becoming clear to me that I needed to set some expectations to both the new team members and to senior stakeholders what the ‘shape’ of phase 1 might be.
The outcome of that session was a virtual whiteboard which detailed some actions that needed to be taken now (JDI), some which needed to be taken before the full team is in place (ASAP), and then actions in Phase 1 proper which can be classified as research, design, test and report.
It’s not a very pretty diagram, but it does the job! Some of the JDI and ASAP actions have been added to our ProjectPlace board in the form of tickets, whilst the Phase 1 actions have been left on the whiteboard for now. My plan is to add the information to the team onboarding document as a starter for 10 / jumping off point for the new team, my way of saying “here’s what I think we need to do, but don’t take it as gospel”.
I also worked with my product owner (in the office, on a different day!) to really flesh out the understanding problems we’re trying to solve. We feel that we have a good understanding of the problem but because there are three, interrelated aspects to it, it felt important to understand which of our strategies and tactics are targeted at which parts of the problem. This will help when we’re talking to senior stakeholders about why we’re recommending the strategies we are, in the order we are. More on that next week.
Finally, I have spent a lot of this week grappling with governance. The draft terms of reference for a steering group identified that actually, we probably do need a Board — so the document is being amended accordingly. Thankfully we have a few examples of Board ToRs, and the more formal nature of the governance also means it’s easier for me to identify who I think the right Board members are. Whilst it will take some time to get a Board set up, we’re going to use our senior stakeholders (a group of six across 2 Directorates) as a decision-making steering group. The first meeting of this group should take place this month and ratify the rough plan for Phase 1, so once the team is in place, we can just get on with it.
There have been a bunch of other little things this week — a walkthrough of the draft SG domain model, updates to the monthly progress reports, recruitment chasing — but that’s the big stuff.
This week in numbers
- Offices I’ve been to: 2
- Entities on our domain map: 74
- Tasks ticked off the to-do list: 6
- Laptop restarts required this week: 10+
- Days until my birthday: 9
