The Iteration

It is absolutely sloshing it down outside, the rain falling heavily, and I’m supposed to be going to Rally festival today. So that’ll be interesting. But it’s been 2 weeks since I’ve written any weeknotes so let’s pass the time with those.

It’s been a good couple of weeks for making progress on the mission. The team that’s been iterating on what we designed and tested in the design sprint in May has released the iterations to the beta service.

Evidence from usability testing sessions tells us this should help speed up the provision of planning data from local planning authorities, and they’re moving on to helping LPAs spot and fix issues with their datasets, which will improve the quality and usability of the data. It’s a really interesting product challenge, not least because some datasets – like brownfield land – are quite wide and have many problems to address. Displaying all those issues in an interface isn’t sensible, so there’s likely to be categories of task to work through, much like how one would clean and repair a large spreadsheet.

Aside from that, some platform work that’ll allow us to get all land ownership boundaries on the platform is improving the scalability of the infrastructure. We’ve added a very experienced Python lead developer to the team with a background in large data pipelines, so we’re expecting this will advance relatively quickly.

Working in the open

I’ve been doing a chunk of work to encourage more working in the open on the team, which we’ll also share and seek to support across the programme.

Emily and I worked on a doc that explains why working in the open and agile communications is good, plus short guidelines on how to do it well. I also iterated the presentation I’ve given over the years and shared this with our team, which Coco came along to and shared her experience and enthusiasm. There were some great questions at the end, even “Are we doing enough to work in the open?”

I mean, we’re pretty good but we can always do better. The team published three blog posts the other week, my favourite being the one that explains our entity-field-value data model and its benefits. We’ve an open roadmap, two open backlogs for data design and data providers, our data design methodology is open too, plus there’s a service performance dashboard to show how well we’re doing on meeting our mission. We’re going to start putting our team playbook in the open too, much like I pushed along when publishing the GOV.‌UK Design System team playbook last year.

Like Matt says, we recognise that no single individual, team, or organisation – whether private or public – can solve the systemic challenges in the sector alone. So the more we talk about our work, the easier it’ll be for those who come after us.

Oh, I’m going to do some working in the open stickers too. Let me know which ones you like best.

Team topology

Our teams are modelled on concepts from Team Topologies, but I’ve always felt they weren’t implemented ideally. Also, the handover points between teams are getting a little gummed up, and there’s an opportunity to improve things. Given that Team Topologies is all about creating more flow and speed through the system, I started mapping the relationships between teams to see where we might iterate the model.

It’s early days but there’s an opportunity to create sub-teams in the one team, which should create more focus and flow. I need to play around with the model a bit more first and see where the real fracture plans are.

Leadership

Had another coaching session with Stefan who helped me spot where I’d been less facilitative in recent weeks, instead being more directive, and we chatted through a framework to help me encourage the team to forge their own path but also create space for me to tweak and nudge where needed.

The framework is best used when catching up with people, but I spotted an opportunity to bring it into how we do quarterly planning. After looking at how I’ve done that with my own teams in the past, I devised a worksop that’ll empower teams to think about their OKRs and lay out their loose plans at the start of a quarter. Since I’m thinking about my toolbox as a product leader, I wrote about using quarters as a checkpoint on the Boring Magic blog.

Golden thread

The other thing I’m thinking about a lot is the golden thread of the what, why and how of the Planning Data platform. There is one, and most of the team get it, but there are opportunities to be less implicit and more explicit in some areas. I took the opportunity to present to the team the deck we shared with our steering board, which will help make the golden thread a lot clearer – especially given we’ve had so many people join the team recently.

This means I’m having to put aside some of the more strategic aspects of my role. Having said that, providing a structure that empowers and enables others to proceed is strategic too. I’m just a little more focused on internal rather than external factors.

Still keeping an eye on things though. It’s not uncommon for multisided platforms working through the supply-side problem to need to build up trust amongst suppliers, and that’s the main strategic issue I’m putting my focus in to.

Other stuff that happened

  • Had a really enjoyable ride from Coulsdon to Lancing which tuckered me out. Spent most of the following day napping on the sofa, also a win!
  • Went for food and drinks with Kelvin in Crystal Palace. We happened upon a pub with a beer garden overlooking the city, which was incredible. The bar lady was playing lots of UK garage on the system, so lots of tableslapping along to the beat happened!
  • We finally watched Aftersun which wasn’t as sad as it could have been, but still tender and an excellent film.
  • The following day we watched Stepbrothers for some light relief. I wish they made more silly comedies like that now.
  • Went to see Blink Twice at the cinema, which was OK. Glass Onion meets a dark storyline in that one.
  • Chanced upon a map showing Croydon’s land ownership in 1800, showing our house was built on land backing on to some owned by a Richard Messenger. They also owned The Gun tavern, which is a Romanian restaurant now. Food looks good!
  • Wrote about deadlines in product delivery.

Running

This has absolutely fallen off a cliff. I missed the two marathons I’d intended to run this year, but probably for the best considering the hip injury.

That’s feeling better now but I feel compelled to get out and run again. It’s going to be a lot harder to do in the mornings, now that a wet autumn is approaching and daylight hours are getting shorter. It might be fun to train up for the Mount Fuji marathon though! A good way to end our stay in Japan.

Bookmarks

· Weeknotes

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