The Journal Gap

The new habit of daily journalling fell apart this week. Several busy days and leaving the office late meant I preferred not to type thoughts up after work. These notes will take longer to write as a result, but let’s see what spills forth from the waterfall of thoughts.

Dead busy week in which I

  • used feedback from the team to better explain what we do in our service handbook
  • used other feedback from the team to write a list of key concepts you’ll need to understand to work on the service
  • presented an explainer on generative AI to the planning directorate, sharing thoughts on how and how not to use it
  • kicked off work to improve how our squads communicate with each other
  • hosted a cross-programme workshop to align a few of our OKRs with one from another team
  • established and iterated a new team design with psd
  • got dates in the diary for a discovery kick-off, and prepared the workshop for it
  • worked through the steps for a data quality check to ensure it was aligned with the outcomes our service needs to deliver
  • chatted to the Deputy Prime Minister’s Data Unit
  • tried to find out if there’s a community of practice for data managers in government (there isn’t)
  • wrote up tips on doing show & tell well

New team design

I’ve been ruminating on a new team structure for a couple of weeks, so I workshopped it with psd on Monday morning. We made some of the joins between teams clearer, and stacked UCD/product on development, all laid on top of operations.

Then I found some similar work Emily and Jamie started. Helpfully it was going down the same path as I was, using team taxonomies but adding in a framework for understanding services from Kate Tarling’s work.

The main elements psd and I discussed were the joins and feedback loops. The value stream is clear but the feedback loops are what makes it work. And ultimately each squad will want to know what processes they own (and which they can rely on another squad to do), which was how we framed the joins.

Next week I’ll share it with the team leads and see what they think, pull out all the questions. I need their help in better defining the joins too.

Reminds me of figuring out the flow of the kitchen, from ticket to pass, in my cheffing days.

Key concepts

At the start of the year, a couple of squads said they wanted to learn more of the ‘nuance’ of the space we’re working in. The little details about local government and open data that you won’t know unless you’ve worked in it before.

The service handbook provided the perfect place to start sharing more, but instead of writing up all the minor details, I started by sharing key concepts. Stuff like what devolution is, what open data is, and what a planning consideration or decision is. This was thanks to feedback from two of our designers who’d stumbled into these phrases when first starting on our team. One had even created their own glossary.

I thought there was an opportunity to expand on that though. Data is complicated and it’s not like everyone has studied IT at school or computer science at university. Civil service training is OK but not great, and it all sits behind a login. So I linked to GCSE Bitesize modules on data and database applications, to give people a grounding – from a trustworthy public service.

Burns Night

What a great night. I loved all the ceremony. It was delightful to hear and recite poetry again, not sure I’ve done that since I was studying creative writing.

Next week

Looking forward to catching up with i.AI folks, going along to State of Open conference, and kicking off the discovery.

I’m not looking forward to trying to fit five days’ work into three – and I’ll only be paid for three too.

Bookmarks

· Weeknotes

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