Weeknotes E20
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
- researching challenge mapping exercise for Healthy Start how might we session that I’m running.
- forgot that yesterday I suggested to a colleague who is currently learning java he could check this out this bundle of books to help. I’ve bought loads from this site. Mainly interesting books and money goes to charity.
- Healthy Start Webinar hosted by Food Power
- show and tell about the future of supermarkets/retail (when I say future I really mean they are already happening but just not ubiquitous)
- deciding what facilitation techniques we are going to do on Friday. Fun to read through and mash-up different methods.
- access to GOV.UK analytics! Woo all the numbers.
- Health Product People! Fantastic event. Great speakers and really good discussion. Tip top. Dharmesh is a fantastic host.
Thursday
- email morning - flexible working on the back burner, still hunting down pre-paid card advice from colleagues around Gov (if you know anybody then let me know)
- Healthy Start chat
- show and tell from PHE colleagues
- more questions to Crown Commercial Service about pre-paid cards. Some useful info but thirsty for more guidance
- adding to Dharmesh’s blog post on Product People and adding pics
- we also committed to measuring the success of the events so I’ve started taking down attendance stats and we have a survey to score the events
- watching the second half of the Healthy Start webinar that I missed to do a show and tell yesterday.
- blog post about product people now live!
- went to a talk by Prof. Trish Greenhalgh about the spread of innovation
Friday
- Extravaganza #2. Trip to Leeds to spend time with the gang.
- I led the morning session. Which included:
- doing the ‘draw toast’ exercise!
- exploring how might we avoid low spend card transaction fees with small retailers - this was born out of research in alpha. Basically some retailers charge you for buying items for less than a £5. That means users could be paying for transaction fees instead of eligible items which would not be ideal.
- ran an exercise following from drawing toast of plotting out what would happen in the scenario of buying something with a transaction fee using small cards and as a group
- then discussed which ones are most frustrating and we have an opportunity to influence
- then we did crazy 8’s to come up with ideas of how to improve the scenario
- then paired up and cherry picked fave ideas and mashed them into 2 ideas per group
- was fun, everyone enjoyed crazy 8’s.
- I did a show and tell about the future of supermarkets again. Went down well.
- after lunch we met DWP team who might be running a full phase around Healthy Start/UC which is incredible
- discussed stuff around MI information, speaking with stakeholders, name edits, NHSBSA chats and procurement chats.
- i also saw a swimming pool inside a government building for the first time. Blown away.
Monday
- Healthy Start planning morning! More tasks in the backlog as we await our supplier joining us.
- following up on product people community leads. Exciting future speaker alert.
- chatting about better using medium to send updates about the community.
- creating template for documenting the needs of those consuming MI information and what sort of PQs/FOIs do we repeatedly get asked. Can proactively publish stuff so we don’t need to answer the same questions over and over again.
- Reading the being 18 in 21018 by ONS - which is great as usual. Healthy Start related bits and bobs in there such as the declining amount of teenage parents.
- organising the next Health Product People event > 7 November looks like the date!
Tuesday
- emails with Sustain/Food Power people. I smell an opportunity to do some research
- healthy start call - sounds like we might have a team!! Contract pending.
- it’s all go. Discussed - visiting stakeholders, getting links to Healthy Start on other services, collaborating with Scotland chats, teams, MI info, surveys and more transparency/open data! Progress, all progress. Love it.
- connecting the PHE measuring success team with Healthy Start team
- creating a survey. Smelled research, do research.
- got survey feedback, made edits. Scrutiny is good.
- sent survey to person that can help us reach relevant participants
- more emails between crown commercial service about pre-paid cards. More questions asked.
- plotting with colleague how to best run a session on worst case scenarios. Facilitation skillz being tested
- enquiring about where best we should be blogging for our future Healthy Start updates (sprintnotes maybe coming soon!)
- Nayeema catch-up
What I’ve been reading
- Former Skyscanner CTO joins NHS Scotland to build national digital platform. Really interested to see what Scottish colleagues get up to.
- Picture essay on the importance of libraries.
- In 1942 we had squalor, ignorance, want, idleness and disease and now the RSA reports we have “Inequality. Isolation. Intolerance. Disempowerment. Environment. The five giants facing 21st century Britain.”
- New cancer treatment coming to the NHS, personalised genetically modified cells to tackle cancer. Cool.
- AI hierarchy of needs. Nice explanation. People more senior than me should be reading this.
- Snapchat influenced plastic surgery. Sad that people feel inspired to do this… “With Snapchat filters, I felt I was beautiful. I just needed a push to get there.”
- A raft of schemes around civil society, charities, democracy and fighting inequality in the Civil Society Strategy. With my work hat on I’m interested in “using digital technology for good to improve the work charities can provide to support healthy ageing, bolster online safety and better connect people in an effort to tackle loneliness.”
- Interesting article about humans as “hackable animals”, the need for us to leave behind the myth of free will and what our scholars should be investigating.
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: