May 3, 2019SLIs, SLOs and error budgets in practiceNotes from Scale Summit, March 2019 — Back in March, I facilitated a session at Scale Summit on the subject of “SLIs, SLOs and error budgets in practice”. Here are my notes on what we discussed and learned. Note: Scale Summit operates under the “Chatham House Rule”, so I’ve kept all quotes and examples anonymous, except my…Software Development7 min read
Oct 3, 2018Weeknote S1 E3: Liz Fong-JonesThis is a quick one to cover three of the highlights from last week: one of my most memorable at GDS to date. 1. Liz Fong-Jones from Google came to GDS Late last week, an exciting message popped up on Slack, from Hannah Roe, a user researcher at GDS. She’d heard that Liz Fong-Jones would be in London…Digital3 min read
Sep 24, 2018Weeknote S1 E3: Sketching and sunshineFor reasons of holiday, illness, writer’s block and perfectionism we need to skip a good few weeks since my last… and hit “publish” on this one, even though it contains no photos or grand awakenings. Quarterly planning draws to a close This week has been stormy yet invigorating. …Design3 min read
Aug 5, 2018Weeknote S1 E2: happiness is coaching colleaguesIt’s Sunday evening and I’ve typing this on the dining table of my new home, after moving in with my boyfriend! Hurray! As you can see, our ridiculous packing led me to navigate through London with three plants, dried flowers, two ceramic bowls and a packet of butter, all the…Dev Ops4 min read
Jul 29, 2018Weeknote E1, S1: enchantment beats burn-outSo this is my first real “weeknote”. (The first was a cheat, really: six months’ worth of insights in one.) And, wow: I began this week on Monday on a high, thanks to the unexpected response to that first post on the importance of trust. It was truly joyful to…Trust4 min read
Jul 22, 2018It’s all about trust. My first weeknote, six months in at the Government Digital ServiceThis week I found my tribe at OneTeamGov. A heartfelt, thoughtful, humorous and engaged bunch of doers. Yes, I’m writing a weeknote — and that’s also thanks to OneTeamGov and the example set by Sam Villis, whose spirited and interesting posts are here. I want to try expressing my weekly…Weeknotes4 min read
Nov 6, 2017The unexpected joys of enterprise product managementMaking working lives better is satisfying work. Here’s what I enjoy about the role after two years at an enterprise product company transforming the publishing industry from within. — 1. Users are more invested in your product Our end users may be in the hundreds rather than the millions, but they spend many hours per week using our software. For our clients, Bibliocloud is the hub of their business: the one place to find answers to business-critical questions, like ‘When are we publishing this book?’ …Product Management4 min read
May 6, 2016The story behind the redesigned BibliocloudHow our next-generation publishing system got less “Star Trek” and more usable — and what we learned — Bibliocloud is a beautiful, powerful system for publishers to manage the process of making books. This week we launched its redesign to our client-base of over 30 publishers, and there was happiness all round. But this project has also involved a lot of useful upheaval. Mid-way through the process, I…Publishing6 min read
