Payments, Adding Value and Waterfagile
Happy Friday! Here’s a quick summary of my week!
I’ve been working on…
- I’ve been talking with colleagues about the different ways the organisation can take payments (framed through the lense of digital transformation). This is where I’d really love to be operating from a well researched set of user needs & personas. Basically, we just want to make it really easy for people to give us money via whatever method is most convenient & trustworthy for them. I think understanding the broader picture of how people pay, when and where would be hugely informative to this work.
- I’ve been reflecting on how we’ve been communicating our digital transformation work to date and what we can do to improve that. We’re very much in ‘discovery’ mode at the moment, collecting data to try and understand the current landscape of services (that alone has been challenging). From the outside I gather there’s confusion as to what that actually means and what it’s for. Although this has been explained previously — it’s not entirely landed. More transparency needed on our part and perhaps some different ways to reach out to people to start a conversation about this topic and what this process looks like.
- Being a team member down I’ve been back on the tools a fair bit which has meant more time doing reactive work for others. It’s had me thinking about how to best expend the 37 hour working week. (Not just this week.. any week!) Where am I adding the most value? Is this the best use of my time? At what point do I stop perpetuating the current system so I can start improving it?
- I’ve been wrestling with [insert vendor here] to deliver a project for [insert department]. We hit a snag where our 90% installed test system wasn’t working as expected. That required time with [insert vendor]’s development team. Their development team has been struggling with a massive backlog since early January. They’re now working in sprints to clear it. So we’re stuck in this weird mish-mash of waterfall project VS development team sprints. Our project manager has minimal direct control over when our system will be delivered for testing because scheduling is now dependent on monthly sprints controlled by the dev team. *sigh*
I’ve been reading…
- How can we enable staff to make better use of data? By Dyfrig Williams.
https://goodpracticeexchange.wales/2017/05/30/enabling-staff-to-make-better-use-of-data/ - “Public governors of the world unite!” by Dave Mckenna.
https://medium.com/how-to-be-a-public-servant/public-governors-of-the-world-unite-8fbbc3932c48 - Why givers get lucky? by Do Lectures.
https://medium.com/@dolectures/why-givers-get-lucky-c61ac8b91cdc - Do we really need to work a 40 hour work week?
https://thenewstack.io/really-need-40-hour-work-week/?utm_content=buffer1e063 - How to make progress when no one agrees. By Stowe Boyd.
https://thinkgrowth.org/how-to-make-progress-when-no-one-agrees-c4081818e924#—0-426 - I bloody love this post on Delegation from CEO Kate Davies of Notting Hill Housing Trust. Don’t just delegate work, delegate authority too.
https://www.nhhg.org.uk/news/news/kate-davies-chief-exec/delegation/ - Contactless donation points raise cash for rough sleepers in Bristol.
http://swns.com/news/contactless-donation-points-raise-cash-for-rough-sleepers-84875/ - Being Human by Maneesh Juneja. A reminder that there’s some parts of the human experience that technology can’t replace or augment.
http://maneeshjuneja.com/blog/2017/5/23/being-human - Busy to Death! Over optimising for executing work is dangerous.
By Barry O’Reilly.
https://barryoreilly.com/2017/05/31/busy-to-death/ - Fighting for a fairer society. By Cassie Robinson.
https://medium.com/doteveryone/fighting-for-a-fairer-society-a7a89cdfb9c - “Our Digital Strategy. It’s yours too.” by David Clubb.
https://medium.com/@davidoclubb/our-digital-strategy-its-yours-too-de4dcc06ad53 - The rules of digital transformation by Paul Taylor.
https://medium.com/@PaulBromford/the-rules-of-digital-transformation-b09d46ce6b4d - Where is the Apple and Tesla of housing?
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-apple-tesla-housing-yet-bruce-thompson - Ending the Internal war for attention. By Simon Terry.
https://simonterry.com/2017/05/29/ending-the-internal-war-for-attention/