The Stream

It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve written a weeknote, so a quick one to cover off what’s been happening over the last couple of weeks.

Service handbook

As I wind down my time on planning.data.gov.uk, I’ve been adding things to the service handbook so that things are written down. To help the incoming lead who I’ll be handing over to, I wrote about KPIs we track, KPIs each team should start tracking better (for example, the KPIs for data operations), and I iterated the vision statement by testing it against some principles.

Also updated the design so it’s consistent with the latest GOV.‌UK rebrand, which is necessary before pulling in the technical documentation.

Playbooks for how we do stuff

It was really nice to come across the playbook for Somerset Council’s digital team, which looks like it has tons of stuff in it a digital person might need! It’s lovely to see organisations caring about the people who work for them in this way.

You should be able to turn up to work and understand how to do your job, within the organisation’s guardrails, relatively easily. If you’re not working on something brand new or very complicated, how to do things should be clearly spelled out. Spending time trying to figure out how to do stuff slows things down and saps morale.

That’s why play/handbooks are so important.

Mapping how we do stuff

On a related note, last Wednesday I ran a workshop in Manchester to map the value stream for planning.data.gov.uk. It’s fairly high-level but shows the broad stages data goes through, from an idea all the way through to being supported. It shows the joins between teams, provides a way to talk about roles and responsibilities, and acts as a map for how we do things.

We were able to tease out the necessary inputs and talk about what’s outputted at each stage, as well as map the necessary activities and who needs to be involved. We marked up questions we had or noted which processes could be improved. We made muddy waters clearer and worked out the stepping stones across the river. It was cathartic.

Doing that in a room with real people was a joy too. We had focus, not being distracted by notifications popping up alongside a digital whiteboard – and we finished the whole thing in one day.

Now I’m turning our Post-it notes into a clear spreadsheet with narrative, so others can understand how we do stuff. A key bit of synthesis to make the outputs re-usable and reliable.

New client!

Super happy to have started working with a new client part-time (for 4 weeks) today. I’m doing some discovery and prototyping in Sport England’s Data & AI Lab, aiming to solve operational bottlenecks rapidly with digital ways of working. There’s a slant on better use of data and exploring where to make use of AI, using co-design methods to involve staff in the feedback loop.

Today was all about gathering context and getting up to speed with the rest of the team. We’re in discovery mode this week and have had a couple of fruitful conversations already.

Feels good to be on something new and with tight turnaround times, it’s invigorating!

New office

Feeling the need to switch up the energies, so I’m going to try out a co-working space for a month. I used it for a day earlier this year and it’s a fantastic space.

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· Weeknotes

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