Weeknotes
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The Alpha
It’s been a busy couple of weeks. We kicked off the quarter, onboarded new team members, and started talking about what we’ll do in the alpha phase following on from last quarter’s discovery.
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The Decision
After 8 weeks, we’ve concluded our discovery into which payment options to support next.
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The Sense-making
The discovery is drawing near to its close, and we had some thoughts about what we’d do in offices when those open again.
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The Deeper Analysis
We dived more deeply into our research with services to pull out user needs, pain points and behaviours around two payment options: telephone payments and recurring payments through Direct Debit.
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The Analysis
This week in the payment options discovery, we analysed our research with 16 services and organisations using GOV.UK Pay. We also launched an MVP.
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The Interviews 2
Slide decks, synchronicity in discoveries, and chats with great people.
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The Interviews
Late getting these notes out so I'll be brief! Covers 22–28 February.
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The Liminal Space Again
Most of the week was spent continuing our discovery into new payment types and channels. I also had some news following my interview last week.
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The Disco
This week we kicked off the discovery into new payment types and channels, ending the week on a shared view and a plan for the next 8 weeks.
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The Water
We've reached the end of series 10 with the closure of one mission, the beginning of a discovery starting next week. Thoughts on communities of practice, Zoom fatigue and collaboration.
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The Third Birthday
Yesterday was my GDS 3rd birthday 🥳 and I still feel quite lucky to work there. Pushing through to clear the to-do list is tough right now though, eh?
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The Creamy Rips
Coming back to writing weeknotes, so I'm here to properly close off series 10. Wrapping up a mission, chats with stakeholders, getting ready for discovery.
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The Liminal Space
I'm in a liminal space with work at the moment. It's why I haven't spent time weeknoting recently.
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The Stormy Seas
Nothing much to report work-wise, but I went along to a couple of online talks this week.
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The Sunset over Ynys Enlli
Meetings that could have been emails, the value of synchronicity and collaboration, and signals for strategy.
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The Glaw
Spreadsheets, frustration, low spoons and a lightbulb moment.
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The Hell's Mouth
Direct Debit, and how we save government money, was the theme of the week.
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The Relocation
So that’s it, I’m no longer living in London. Now I live in Wales.
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The Pigeons in the Station
It’s Q3 2020/21 and much of my week was spent kicking off our latest piece of work.
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The Week Between
Thoughts on autonomy and empowerment for product teams.
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The Bushy Park
Accessibility, digital exclusion and barriers, plus some thoughts on distributing areas of responsibility amongst a team.
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The Nonsuch Palace
Brief notes on our strategy work, meeting accessibility regulations, and shifting the organisational Duplo blocks.
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The Beach Below Sea Level
Culture and cohesion, the Comprehensive Spending Review and the Square of Despair.
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The Ridgeway
Professional development objectives (yawn), outline business cases (double yawn) and the story of a successful alert.
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The Coal-Tax Post
Mainly a week of working on bigger-picture strategy things. Contracts, opportunities, and building consensus.
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The Success
Open and honest conversations, building trust, purposeful retros and designing strategy. Belter of a week, to be fair.
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The Surprise Entry
A week of ups and downs at work, but the road ahead feels clear. Oh, and we started organising the Product People unconference!
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The Asynchronous Communication
We avoided meetings face-to-face meetings and emails for a week. It was both heaven and purgatory.
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The Untiring Advocate of Summer Time
Busy but short week in which we ran a user group session and chatted to Open Banking.
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The Productivity Hack
Managed to get heaps done this week, all thanks to one weird trick...
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The Shock of London
We started Q2 2020–21 this week, so I was mostly doing kick-off things and writing OKRs.
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The Commute Must Die
It’s firebreak week! Haven’t had a firebreak since January 2019, if you can believe it.
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The Emancipation
Took a week off work, so here’s some notes of joy from my week off. Mostly about food, to be honest.
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The Isolation 11
Roadmaps and strategy and metrics and a North Star.
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The Isolation 10
There was an all-team retro this week in which we talked about remote working, team dynamics and how often we’d like to be in the office when we return.
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The Isolation 9
The decision on how to continue with Direct Debit was taken, and I chatted to some students in innovation.
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The Isolation 8
Much more work on Direct Debit this week, breaking a big strategic decision down into chunks.
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The Isolation 7
A lot of my focus this week was spent on looking into Direct Debit.
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The Isolation 6
You know what, I even started to enjoy my job again this week.
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The Isolation 5
My first week on GOV.UK Pay, settling into life as a product manager on Government-as-a-Platform.
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The Isolation 4
These notes cover a few weeks, rather than one week like usual. Writing weeknotes in the pandemic just didn’t feel necessary, but there’s a few things worth noting from the last five weeks of lockdown.
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The Isolation 3
Public servants are doing great things, and I'm really lucky to work with them.
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The Isolation 2
Uncommon times we're living in, but extraordinary efforts are being undertaken. Shout-out to all the public service heroes working on coronavirus.
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The Isolation
Again, these are personal weeknotes. I know most of you come here for the work tidbits, so sorry about that.
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The Renovation
Still not writing about work, but I've been reading good things, listening to excellent music and seeing some terrific films.
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The Black Dog and the Storm
Stopping the work weeknotes for a while, which means more blabbing about other things!
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The Public Service Velodrome
Light on time with the team this week, so these notes are light on detail.
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The Innovation Dogtrack
A decent week! I feel like I'm crawling out of the mire of the past few months with renewed optimism.
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The Building Cohesion
It's ramping up a bit more, but blockers on collecting research do stall things.
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The Edging Forward
We're making progress and things feel a bit more normal. Trust in the process.
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The Request for Help
Right now, I'm feeling a need for mentorship. How does one find a mentor?
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The Festive Break
Things what I did between that there Christmas and going back to work.
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The Helping Hand
Notes about work again, now there's a new government in town.
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The Niksen
Two weeks away in Cuba really sorted me out, giving me time and space to switch off fully.
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The Quiet
These are meditations on user-centred design practice, not my usual weeknotes.
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The Timebox 3–5
We got to the end of the timebox. But we didn't quite meet expectations.
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The Timebox 2
Felt absolutely shagged this week, fully knackered. Tiredness aside, we've achieved what we needed to and can plough into next week with gusto.
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The Timebox
This week was a little different; the days blended into each other, there was much thinking done, and the new team are ready to jump into next week.
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The Team Things
Highlight of the week was the mini design sprint for autocomplete suggestions, to think about how we reduce interaction cost with GOV.UK's site search.
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The Love
A really good week. I missed working on the Search team over the past few weeks, it's such an interesting problem space.
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The Times and the Customs
It has been a heck of a week in the news, a week in which we were part of the news. O temporas! O mores!
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The Big Stuff
Brief notes from a big week when big stuff happened around Brexit.
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The Transience of Earthly Pursuits
It has been a very tough week, working at pace on a complex problem, the single biggest task for the UK’s civil service since the second world war.
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The Very Important Visitors
Headlines only for last week because it's a busy time and things are moving fast.
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The Eagle
Was really grateful to spend time with good people this week, and to have chance encounters. Moments like that will make the coming weeks bearable.
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The Buzz
Bit of a buzz this week. There's lots going on, almost too much, but it's all good stuff going in the right direction.
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The Oops!
These notes come to you earlier than usual. It's my birthday and I've got a few days off. Initiate Maximum Chill.
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The Milestone
This week, it felt like we achieved something by reaching a milestone. Here's to gradual, iterative progress!
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The Birthday
It's my weeknotes first birthday! 🎉 And we launched the new quarter working on GOV.UK's site search.
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The High
Back on the wagon! Writing weeknotes last week did wonders for my brain, it'd be silly not to carry on this week.
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The Fatigue
Having not written weeknotes for 10 weeks, here's a bunch of things I've done that should remind me I've done a lot.
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The Fishing Smacks
The first week of quarter one, 2019/20, was fairly decent overall. A stormy week with calm moments, a veritable feast of ups and downs. Goods. Bads. In-betweens.
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The Relief
We launched a thing and saved taxpayers money, found out the missions for next quarter, and I've prepped a presentation on blogging and working in the open.
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The Road Ahead
It's the end of quarter 4, 2018/19. We've done a heck of a lot and there's palpable excitement at what's to come next quarter.
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The Workshop
Light-bulb moments, chats with good people, reading research. All part of this week in my life as a civil servant. Tell you what, I could do with a reset.
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The Key Findings
For the first time, I started to see the end of the tunnel for one mission.
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The Threads
Chatting to three international governments made this a bumper week.
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The Reflection
An impromptu beer with Trilly on Monday set me up for a reflective week. Here's to the next 12 months.
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The Syndication
A decent week but it's not possible to explore ideas fully within a deadline; it'll end when it ends.
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The Shock to the System
Time for a rest. A short set of weeknotes after a busy week which left me ill.
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The Birthday
This week I celebrated my first anniversary at Government Digital Service.
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The Reminder
A mammoth set of weeknotes, but ending with a note to enthuse everyone working in civic technology.
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The Navigation
Quarter four, 2018–19, is launched. Work scoped, backlogs filled, sprints begun. We pace ahead on GOV.UK.
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The New Cross
Firebreak week, a time to make things better and get ready for next quarter.
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The Limbo Continues
We're still in the fallow period, but it has been a boon: loose ends tied, histories written, new ships prepared for departure.
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The Fallow Period
A short week at work during the Gooch Period between Xmas and NYE. Spent most of it either wrapping up the quarter or walking in the West Midlands and Wales.
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The Winter Solstice
Not a bad week to round off 2018, and Winter Solstice is the perfect day to look ahead to 2019. This series hasn't ended yet.
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The Gift
Another sterling week working at pace on important problems. Turning up to work is fun now, it's not just a job. I am incredibly lucky to be able to say that.
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The Spin Up
The most fun I've had at work in a week on record. We're doing work which sings to the vision of GOV.UK, making information about government and services simple, clearer and faster.
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The Wind Down
A four-day week spent closing open loops. Took yesterday off to pack for my holiday which I’m really, *really* looking forward to – especially because it’s supposed to drop to 1°C next week!
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The Staying of the Course
We’re reaching the mid-point of the quarter, so there’s a flurry of things going on. The team is chugging through work at a good pace, but there’s still so much to do if we’re to achieve the objective for our mission.
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The Comfort of Company
People were the best this week. Chats about life and around work, conversations on what we’re doing, and generally making and seeing friends.
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The Delivery
There’s less busyness now that the unconference is out of the way, fewer things flying around my head.
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The Unconference
I’ve pulled out the main lessons from the week, but everything was overshadowed by the unconference – which was a real success.
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The Launch of Quarter 3
A new quarter, a new series. My weeknotes have been an excellent learning aid so far, so I’m carrying on with them.
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The Finale
Lots of time spent in meetings or at events this week, but I did manage to hold one worthwhile team session, at least.
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The Successful Experiment
I’m giving myself a breather. The practice is valuable but isn’t without cost, so this is a little mid-series rest.
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The Cusp
We’re in a liminal zone, a headspace between two periods but only present physically in one. It’s a headtrip to operate that way.
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The Snorlax
This week was mostly planning a convoluted journey in a short space of time, and we’ve still got to fight the beast.
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The Unity
An overarching feeling on oneness this week. A good team lunch, some get-togethers with good folk, and nice vibes all round really.