- This is week I’m trying to write my Weeknotes on the train home. That provides a useful time bound aspect to stop me procrastinating. (Which I did mange to do — although the ‘I’ve been reading..’ section of weeknotes is tricky to compile via my phone so slipped over to Saturday morning.)
- Had a really useful session on how to better include continuous improvement in the teams workflow. That lead to some interesting discussion about the definitions of an improvement vs a change and where they might originate. This linked to some of my own broader thoughts about how we might better define a pipeline of work in order to improve flow. There are constraints within the team, but some are
- Recent reading of The Phoenix Project also got me thinking about the criteria for pulling work and how I might help better define that. 🤔 How do we know there’s enough capacity to do the work inside/outside the team? How do we know it’s the most important work to do? We’ve assigned some time next week for backlog refinement, which I’m hopeful will help develop some principles on which to operate going forward.
- I’ve noticed an uptick in things being labelled as Software As A Service that really only amount to.. ‘It’s a server in our data centre, instead of yours’. I presume this is because the underlying technical architecture still hasn’t meaningfully changed. Which then makes me wonder about what sort of conditions are perpetuating this.
- Last week I was thinking about a social housing digital network/community to encourage dot joining. This week I’m wondering how we might make it open enough to also include people working on the supplier side so we can reach a better shared understanding of the challenges and opportunities of building people centred products and services.. or perhaps as a starter, why you’d undertake the effort to do that.
- More thought this week about how to appropriately scale people centred service design to fit our size of organisation. What is the minimum viable team/governance to make it happen? I’m on the hunt for examples bigger than a startup but smaller than a council. Thoughts/views extremely welcome! Polly Thompson is at UKGovCamp today pitching on this very topic, so I’m sure there’ll be some useful learning gleaned from all the clever people in attendence.
I’ve been reading…
- Alberta Service Design & Delivery Principles (Working Draft)
https://medium.com/alberta-digital/alberta-service-design-delivery-principles-working-draft-ce19892fcdc4 - Everyone should know a little bit about user-centred service design.
https://medium.com/@teropsv/everyone-should-know-a-little-bit-about-user-centred-service-design-9f35673b9c92 - Overcoming barriers to code sharing between councils.
https://www.croydon.digital/2019/12/20/overcoming-the-barriers-to-code-sharing-between-councils/ - How we’re working to tranform the way we work with data.
https://wearecitizensadvice.org.uk/how-were-working-to-transform-the-way-we-work-with-data-52a2de4def99 - Hackney’s new change support team.
https://blogs.hackney.gov.uk/hackit/hackney-council-change-support-team - Metaphores we sticker by.
https://medium.com/gov-design/metaphors-we-sticker-by-4e4ecdbf8d64 - Content debt: Where is it, where to find it, and how to prevent it in the first place.
https://18f.gsa.gov/2016/05/19/content-debt-what-it-is-where-to-find-it-and-how-to-prevent-it-in-the-first-place/ - How ‘WhatsApp group admin’ became one of the most powerful jobs in politics.
https://theconversation.com/how-whatsapp-group-admin-became-one-of-the-most-powerful-jobs-in-politics-126041
Have a great weekend. See you next week.