Shwmae! Happy Friday!
It’s been a good week filled with positive vibes.
I encountered age=age+1. Or age++ if you prefer. I also felt really tired. I thought there might be a correlation, but then I went to bed earlier and felt instantly better. Try sleep. It’s good!
This week I went to have a look at a modern ‘Housing Management System as a Service’ (HMaaS?). Lots of really promising things about it.. open documented API, a willingness to plug it into other SaaS’s (Software as a Service), recognition that the Internet is a thing that we can all use. Downsides.. minimal evidence of user centred design and the web app itself isn’t responsive… which in 2019 is a bit of a clanger. I wonder whether that comes from a belief that ‘people want apps’, which I’m not totally sure holds true (*needs further research). Having said all that — still light years ahead of most of the competition in some important ways. And more competition in this space is a good thing that should be actively encouraged.
The remainder of the week has been mostly given over to systems integration work. I’m still having some facepalm inducing discussions with technology suppliers, but I can see light at the end of the tunnel. I feel there is a constant tension between “Dear supplier, please own this problem and fix your mess” versus “FINE! We’ll write our own code to work around your frustrating inflexibility” versus “I would really like to reduce complexity for the benefit of future me and those that follow”.
Hmm… what else?
We’ve got some new people coming into the organisation who would benefit from getting a handle on all of our various services and connected systems. I invested a bit of work in a sort of Venn diagram + systems map mashup to show how everything inter-relates to each other and what teams/services they’re connected to. I can’t post the real thing, but maybe I’ll share a fictional one if this particularly interests anyone.
And.. that’s about it. Nice and early weeknotes this week! I am disconnecting for the weekend to nervously watch Wales attempt a Grandslam win!!!
I’ve been reading…
- Home maintenance coach: Starting to uncover what we learned.
http://www.bromfordlab.com/lab-diary/2019/3/14/home-maintenance-coach-starting-to-uncover-what-we-have-learned - Google Docs, the hottest chat app for teens.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/03/hottest-chat-app-teens-google-docs/584857/ - Hierarchy is not the problem. It’s power dynamics.
https://medium.com/the-tuning-fork/hierarchy-is-not-the-problem-892610f5d9c0 - The intuitive and the unlearnable.
https://medium.com/@cwodtke/the-intuitive-and-the-unlearnable-cccffd9a762 - Is this the age of the four day week?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/13/age-of-four-day-week-workers-productivity - Waterfall VS agile VS building homes.
https://blog.wearefuturegov.com/waterfall-vs-agile-vs-building-homes-60ddaab9a1fc - Monzo’s Banking for all campaign.
https://monzo.com/campaign/banking-for-all/