I hope you’re doing ok.
Five posts to go after this one and I will have achieved my goal of writing a weekly post for a whole year. I’m trying to get on the front foot this week and write my weeknote at the end of the week I’m writing about. I feel like reflection will be easier and it’ll set me up for the weekend. I also feel it might be helpful to read my own post on Monday morning when planning for the week.
The picture was taken at Lamorran House Garden during our late summer holiday in St. Mawes, Cornwall. It’s a beautiful garden to visit with various themes throughout and stunning views over Falmouth bay. We’ve visited many gardens like these over the years and I reckon they exemplify agility. They mostly have a strong sense of the user need which is often to relax and enjoy the creativity while gaining ideas for things to try at home (I admit that’s a broad generalisation). They seem to start out small and with an overarching vision rather than a detailed plan. They plant up just a small part of the plot around a smaller detailed design, testing what plants thrive and iterating on the idea. I imagine they invite people to see the garden and provide feedback. At some stage they reach a point where they can open to the public and start to get some return on investment. The income means they can spend more time developing the garden which makes it a more appealing place to visit. Visitor count becomes a key measure of performance. This relatively small garden took us over an hour to wander around and felt like an adventure as we wound our way through different zones, each feeling like a new experience. It was magical. I find gardens a fascinating blend of expertise and user requirements because it involves living things as part of the over all product. In one sense the plants are the users. Once planted, they need to be observed for feedback and attended to if they don’t thrive. Then there’s the expert gardeners that work there who I imagine get great joy from the creative process of curating beautfil living displays (another broad generalisation I know). And then there’s the visitors who willingly travel to and then pay for the privelage of experiencing the garden for a short time. They’re all part of a system of which the component parts couldn’t exist alone. I didn’t expect to end this passage in this way but imagine that’s your organisation. Are you taking care of all of your users?
Having presented the terms of reference to the delivery board last week I finished up the editorial process and submitted version 1.0 to the secretariat for distribution.
Every year we run our Spotlight Awards which is all about celebrating our brilliant people and their achievements. With categories from Most Tenacious Team to Unsung Hero, there’s a great range. Our Exec go out of their way to make the event fun. It’s a nice way to bring us all together (remotely these days of course) to celebrate our achievements. I’ve been considering and writing my nominations this week which is harder than it sounds, putting words to the general idea for a nomination in order to craft a quality submission. The last thing I did today was my submissions!
We’re running a recruitment campaign in our digital department and have a second wave of events in December where our Product Delivery team will be sharing what we do and talking about the roles on offer. Keep an eye on our LinkedIn posts for more details (or just message me). I got together with colleagues this week to begin preparations for those events.
Our brilliant Women’s network focussed on men at their November meeting in celebration of International Men’s Day. A colleague volunteered to chair the event and had to come up with a concept for a 30 min session that focussed on man-stuff. We discussed a bunch of ideas and then decided to take a risk based approach… and wing it (somewhat). We had a bunch of topics in the back of our minds and led an open conversation about what it means to be a man these days. The opener for the discussion was that it’s hard to define and that’s ok. A broad and deep discussion followed with great engagement and raised awareness. So I think we’ll call that a success. On reflection I think we can overthink things like this sometimes, and while it’s important to prepare and not waste people’s time, it’s also important to not burn ourselves out in over-over-engineeting stuff.
I had a great discussion with my team about their role as senior agile delivery managers in the context of service squads. Rather than simply refer back to a job description, I worked with them using the GROW model as a framework for our conversation. I tried sticking to open question to draw out their ideas. I think it’s important that people have a say in their focus of their role and how they go about it. The only problem with the session was that one team member’s broadband kept crashing. While I recognised this and made efforts to catch them up each time, I missed the overall frustration they were experiencing because of the lack of control over the broadband problem and the effect it had on their experience in the meeting. Don’t underestimate how infuriating and invisible connectivity issues can be for people working remotely. We’re going to finish the conversation next week using an old fashioned yet tried and tested approach… meeting in person.
I co-presented at our Mental Health Awareness campaign this week, leading a session on combatting stress and supporting colleagues in others. We got good feedback so and it feels like we’ve made a difference.
I met our interim Head of PMO. We’ve worked on a few things together but as part of a group so it was good to get to know each other better.
We did some work to refine our capacity plans after the squad workshops at the end of last week. On the topic of squads, I supported our Head of Product Management in leading our Filing Service Squad general meeting on Monday. This is some work we’re doing as part of bring our service squads to life. The introduction of a kanban style board has once again been transformational in engagement. We covered a range of topics from escalated impediments/blockers and actions to resolve to celebrating successful releases and other achievements. We also had a look at the backlog of work. Engagement levels were high and we finished the meeting early! Some members have started to do some work on defining what a good squad would look and feel like. Some have indicated that they like to be on the rotor to chair the meeting in future. This made for an excellent and fulfilling start to the week.
I finally finished my ACSM course and got my certification badge from Scrum Alliance. I’m so pleased as I’ve worked really hard since April on 26 assignments!
We’re off to Bike Park Wales this afternoon (Friday) and then visiting a friend in their new apartment in Cheltenham on Saturday. My body is hurting with DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) after the gym earlier this week! Still, it feels good to get some balance when work involves sitting in front of a screen for most of the day!
Be excellent to yourselves and each other,
Si
