The Treading Water: Weeknotes S15E05

The Treading Water

Good holiday sailing around the southeastern Spanish coast last week. It wasn’t as windy as we’d hoped but we managed to do a few trips out of Cartagena. One highlight was sailing from Cabo de Palos to La Manga, just in time to enter the marina as they raised the bridge for the final time that day. We anchored off of an island in the Mar Menor, a coastal lagoon, for a restful night in nature.

And I need to talk about Restaurante Salzillo in Murcia. It’s an absolute dream. Chefs work behind a bar, which you can dine at (a bit like Barrafina), and there’s a large, glass-fronted refrigerator stocked with some of the sweetest prawns and seafood you’ve ever had. Plenty of good Spanish food and wine. I was in heaven. We had clams, octopus, artichokes, John Dory, tuna, and a lovely Albariño. My postres was unique: paparajote, a battered lemon leaf dipped in sugar and cinnamon. Very delicate flavours.

This week I was back to work, and amongst many other things I haven’t noted down, I

caught up on a bunch of emails and Slack messages
joined an asynchronous research analysis session (super well organised)
chatted about the rollout of the new crown
joined the usual team ceremonies (show & tell, retro, planning)
added expiry dates to our team playbook, so that we keep it up-to-date
joined a retro on the recent programme-wide roadmapping process
planned some follow-up actions from our recent coaching session
collaborated on a presentation for the GDS Get Together next week
sought guidance from our designers on what work would be suitable for a new joiner
caught up on the planning of Design System Day 2023 (tickets available on Monday!)
shared thoughts on what our next coaching session might contain
met our new associate delivery manager
caught up with our deputy director
thought a lot about our future strategy, which needs adding to my notes
had a check-in with our senior management team
prepared a new system for tracking goals and tasks
caught up on the WCAG 2.2 epic and discussed how we might mitigate a bottleneck
had a career chat with a product manager from NHS England
started refining the thesis of our presentation for the GDS Get Together

Treading water

A couple of times this week I said ‘I feel like I’m treading water’, which means I feel like I’m just about managing to keep on top of things. Weeknoting is helping by giving me time to reflect on the week, but if I’m still feeling like too much is going on, something else is amiss. My current theory is that it’s because I’m not setting goals and tracking my tasks well enough.

That’s silly because each morning I have time to set my daily goals, I just don’t do it. Sure, I block out my calendar for certain tasks and I stash things in Slack reminders for later, but I don’t know whether all that busyness is laddering up to achieving my main objectives.

So I’m going to try Roger’s system for tracking work and keeping focus, it looks like it’ll be a big help.

I don’t think it’s anything to do with being the only product person on a team of 17 people (with two squads). Other teams of a similar size in our programme have more product managers, but I see our lead frontend developer, our community designer and our accessibility specialist as playing a product role too. My job is to tie it all together into a coherent strategy.

Asking for estimates

Asking for estimations of when a project might be complete feels grubby. It shouldn‘t have to, but no one likes it. Heck, when someone asks me for estimations, I know it could be useful but it still feels…off.

My approach usually is to explain how it‘s a useful exercise and how the estimation will be used, but I didn‘t do that a couple of weeks ago. I got uncomfortable and skipped over it, just saying I needed an estimate of when the project might finish, and it irked a colleague. Calling that out as a mistake I made, because there is value in estimation.

I’ve written up some light rules for estimation off the back of this.

Retros as an attack vector

We start each retrospective with the Agile Prime Directive: everyone did their best under the circumstances. That‘s supposed to set the tone, so that people can discuss issues openly, with empathy, to find a solution together. But some times this doesn‘t happen and it can feel like someone‘s complaining about you, right in front of you, without saying explicitly that you‘re the problem.

Sure, you‘re not supposed to make it personal or take it personally. But it‘s hard not to be human.

One guideline I find useful for making feedback constructive instead of critical is to suggest remedial actions or solutions whenever I raise a problem or issue. This thing could have been better, and here‘s a suggestion for how.

There is a time and a place for critical feedback, and it‘s usually in a one-to-one meeting, not in a group setting.

Maybe agreeing some norms around retro hygiene would be good, rather than continuing to rely on the Agile Prime Directive. Its intent is right but when you‘re too familiar with a phrase, it‘s easy to ignore.

First marathon

Tomorrow I‘m running my first marathon. 42km across the Shropshire hills with 1,000m of elevation. My race strategy is quite simple.

Goal: to finish. No time-based goal, but the course limit is 7 hours.

Easy-pace the first half
Fast-walk the hills
Fun-pace the last 10k (plus caffeine)
Drink enough
200 cals every 30 mins
Most of all, enjoy the landscape!

EDIT: Strategy worked a dream. I could have done with more water, given it was 28-degrees Celsius, but I finished in just over 5 hours and came second place for my first marathon. Chuffed.

Harsh Browns