This might be a bit of a jumble of thoughts in no particular chronological order. And that’s partially because my weeknotes are late again!
I need to have a think about re-arranging my schedule toward the end of the week to give myself a better chance of weeknoting whilst the memory of the last five days is fresh in my brain.
Anyway.. what are some of the things I did last week? (I ask myself)
I had a go at creating a requirement on the GOV.UK Digital Marketplace. Round of applause to those who worked on it. It’s well designed and makes what could so easily be ‘death by a thousand fields about procurement’ a relative breeze. It’ll be interesting to see how the rest of this process goes, what we can learn from it and how we might use it again in the future.
I’ve been refreshing my memory of Objectives and Key Results. I really like the concept, particularly that it creates the space for people to figure out for themselves how to best contribute toward the broader overarching strategy.
From previous experience, I’ve found it’s an easy concept to understand but takes time to master the art of creating good OKR’s that are both challenging, meaningful and measurable. Thinking back to some of my earlier attempts, they were mostly goals + to-do lists which is *so* not the point.
I should perhaps use the power of Twitter to find good practical guidance about writing decent OKRs. (+1 to mental notes)
I ended the week with a really enjoyable first attempt at Wardley Mapping with Polly Thompson. (And thanks to Polly for suggesting we have a go at it! 👏). All the really cool tech people Wardley Map with blutack, string and index cards. 😉
It was an interesting exercise that I’d like to co-write up in a separate post before the finer points get fuzzy.
But to briefly summarise, I thought the process of making the map was at least as useful as having the map itself. Figuring out where to place things (visible/invisible + genesis/custom built/product/commodity) sparked a discussion about where it actually sits VS where it probably should sit. We could do a whole other map about the ideal ‘future state’ of things.
It poses questions like..
- How come <team/user> isn’t dependent on <system>?
- Is there value in building/customising this thing?
- Is this an area to innovate/differentiate?
- Are we doing this intentionally?
- Has this evolved (or matured?) to a point where it no longer makes sense to do it ourselves?
In a broader sense of thinking about strategy, I’d begun to intuit some of this in my own meandering manner, but Wardley Maps help surface it in a ‘Duh! Of course!’ kind of way.
Quite excited to attempt to map other things!
I’ve been consuming…
- Freakonomics Podcast — How to change your mind.
https://pca.st/BT9d - A people map of the UK. (Who’s the most wikipedia’d resident in your locale?)
https://pudding.cool/2019/06/people-map-uk/ - BBC Analysis — Why better maintenance is one of the most urgent and creative challenges we face.
https://pca.st/48Rw - What do we mean by service design at Barnardo’s?
https://blog.barnar.do/what-do-we-mean-by-service-design-at-barnardos-c4b3db3caf5c - Guest post: Adapting the GOV.UK Design System for the NHS.
https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2019/06/04/guest-post-adapting-the-gov-uk-design-system-for-the-nhs/ - Autonomy and the problem of efficient living.
https://medium.com/@acuity_design/autonomy-and-the-problem-of-efficient-living-b75117b3fe9e - Be more firefighter.
https://mmitii.mattballantine.com/2019/06/05/be-more-firefighter/ - The power of hidden teams.
https://hbr.org/cover-story/2019/05/the-power-of-hidden-teams - Citizens Advice Blog: How we built a tool to check our style guide.
https://wearecitizensadvice.org.uk/how-we-built-a-tool-to-check-our-style-guide-74ab6df1ab1