Weeknotes E12
Hi, I’m Colin a product manager working at the Department of Health and Social Care. Each week I’m going to keep a running update of the work I’ve done & things I’ve learned along the way.
My current priority:
Helping to procure a team capable of delivering the Healthy Start private beta.
Wednesday
- got the list of suppliers for Health Start beta!! Next up to sift them…
- Went to product people event.
- added to our list of health tech companies
- began write up of an email to send to head honchos about service register stuff. Basically asking them to tell me what services we actually own in the department.
Thursday
- did a first stab at measures of success for our Product People events
- Health procurement chats. Acronym-tastic!
- lunch and learn about briefings, submissions and went back into the world of Parliamentary Questions.
- Fleming Fund assessment report seems to have been agreed. To be published…
- Job panel-related tasks and scoring. Always fun to see the ever-brilliant Lisa for a chat.
- booked the room and sorted out the date for the next Product People event
Friday
- created a healthy start stakeholder map using the agile team onion. Very much influenced by Emily Webber.
- we prioritised who to target next and sent out emails to lawyers and colleagues in other departments
- we have a rough plan to blog and show and tell for other stakeholders
- Sadiq Kahn promotes Healthy Start! Thanks Sadiq. I’m free for a chat anytime.
- Blog published! Some nifty updates about working with suppliers! Thanks to all the speakers.
- chat about flexible working being set up.
- Talking about our list of health tech companies with interested parties
Monday
- Annual leave. Enjoying the sunny British coast and a few hours in Exeter.
- Fleming Fund report published!
Tuesday
- getting access to systems for recruitment purposes. Got a feeling this might be more complicated then applying for jobs.
- sifting prospective suppliers for Healthy Start beta. My eyes hurt. I did them all. In one day. Brain melting.
- chasing various HR people. Repeatedly. This recruitment admin is as hard as I suspected it would be.
What I’ve been reading
This list is now quite a few weeks old! Sorry, I have a list of intersting things I’ve read and I’m going to do a bumper edition next week to clear house!
- Citizens Advice go beyond branding things digital want to make the experience of using Citizens Advice as seamless, easy, and effective as possible.
- Australian Gov suggesting it needs more in-house digital expertise and to out-source less.
- Re-read this about when to do research and the questions you should ask yourself by excellent ex-colleague.
- What makes good digital leadership. Like the advice to embrace the chaos.
- A way to calculate risk on dicey projects.
- How Facebook makes its money. Nice infographic.
- Great post on the importance of building peoples technical intuition and not just try to teach them code.
- 1 year at NHS Digital. Good set of commitments.
Shout out to others doing great stuff
Former colleagues in Parliament write updates on the work they are doing. They are fantastic and if you are interested in anything democracy related then check them out: