Weeknotes — Week Ending 21/01/22
“Can you tell me a bit about yourself?”
Published in
2 min readJan 26, 2022
Good things
- I did quite a bit of interviewing. As ever, I enjoy listening to people talk about their work and getting a glimpse into other organisations and their challenges and how those multiply with scale.
- We successfully migrated our repairs system into Azure. We had a few minor unforseen snags to resolve post-migration, but I think that speaks to the excellent work the team did in planning and preparation that things went so smoothly, especially given the inherent complexity. Brill service & support from our supplier as well (Total Mobile) who really did act like an extension of our team.
- I’ve been using reclaim.ai to automatically schedule tasks and habits (hat tip to Polly Thompson who mentioned it to me). It’s been quite useful to reflect on what I can relastically achieve within a working week and where best laid plans collide with reality. I should probably write this up.
Difficulties
- Recruitment remains challenging. I know this is a bit of a running theme for everyone at the moment.
- Beccause we’re a relatively small team with a lots of potential work, I need to be mindful in the coming weeks to avoid diffusing our effort across too many things.
- The problems are at the boundaries. I’ve written this before but it’s worth saying out loud at regular intervals.
Learned things
- I think I need to redouble my efforts to share more of what we’re doing in the open. It’ll help with recruitment in terms radiating our intent about what we’re working on and our ethos for going about it. These things really matter to me when I’m looking at prospective places to work. I presume they matter to other people too.
- When things are inherently fuzzy or complex, it helps to have a process to trust in to find the answers. Both in terms of my own sanity and to be able to give assurance to those that need it.
Interesting things from the week
- I’ve been eyeballing this ‘Technology Code of Practice’ and wondered what one might look like for Housing Associations. Useful in establishing a standard for HA’s and suppliers alike? : https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-technology-code-of-practice
- “Every tool needs a team”. Interesting thoughts here on what product ownership looks like for systems that are supplied ‘off the shelf’. https://public.digital/2020/11/18/every-tool-needs-a-team
- This blog post introduced me to the concept of the three horizons model. https://cassierobinson.medium.com/funding-the-third-horizon-ef76a60be9bb
