Weeknotes E25
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
- doing Trello admin and chasing people so we can get our contract signed with our supplier
- setting my out of office for my future holiday before I forget
- retro
- contract chase
- planning
- applying for cambridge half while doing a retro. My finger hurt from trying to refresh constantly
- getting access to dig health blog
- going through tech vision comments
- reading GOV.UK blogging hints and rules
- health product people organisation. 1 week to go!
- testing equipment
- sharing what is private beta after a bit of an update to it with snippets from the new service manual
- got a flu jab from a friendly person from Sunderland
Thursday
- getting access to jira, confluence and realtimeboard. It’s beginning…
- suggested this set of java resources for colleague - some ££ goes to charity.
- so much healthy start planning for next week. Slack invites, timings, sessions, Trello access, jira and confluence sign up, blogging and sprint notes, team structures, vitamins chats, inviting people to things, realtime board sign up, room bookings… all the things
- co-learning session with healthy start colleague on how to post on GOV.UK blog platform and publishing this post
- vitamins chat
- helping go through more tech vision feedback
- more planning and organising for next week
- on jira & realtime. We have spaces.
Friday
- supplier signs the contract! Welcome on board Equal Experts.
- spent the day updating slides and creating new ones for next week
- a lot of that was digging into most recent management information stats. New stat of the day: 82.8% of beneficiaries of the scheme are in England
- helped colleague organise her slides and plans for coffee chats so I can best support people
- agreed to be video taped so new team members (not yet in the team) can watch it when they arrive
- came up with a skills workshop intro activity with new team and made all the resources
- updated mid-year reviews. I’m not good at saying why i’m doing a good job. I just do and will reflect when I’m stuck in a cave with many minutes to reflect
Monday
- DAY 1 of BETA!
- Met some new team members over tea and coffee. Everyone seemed very nice
- I ran a version of the market stall skills task as an intro. Was fun and learned some things about people I didn’t know previously.
- adding to new team members to our slack instance. Team! Team! Team!
- session on Users, vision, KPI’s (health and service ones) and personas by colleague
- I presented things on all the management stats of the service and recommendations from the first steps nutrition trust report
- then on the recent secret shopper/fraud experiment done in Cardiff
- then on research the team has already done so we don’t need to duplicate
- then on research that is in progress
- then on bits of research we need to do (amongst many others) that is still to be done.
- all video’d. I was probably talking for about 4 hours.
Tuesday
- 4 presentations today.
- first one on my recent research with local authorities et al on what resources they need to deliver healthy start
- then on the research I did about the web analytics of the current service with bits and bobs about internet use of those from lower socio-economic groups
- a hodge podge session on some of the other activites we’ve done while i’ve been part of the team including how might we sessions, changing the name of the service and pre-mortems
- team getting signed up for GOV.UK PaaS and our new github repo
- another session on the future of retail/supermarkets. Nice conversations. People buying stuff at self-checkouts still something we need more thought about.
- passing on how our team have planned our “inception” phase with a colleague who is about to do the same task
- health product people prep - surveys setup, slides sent out for those dialling in, help being organised, agenda set, other event shout outs scheduled, dial in details sent
- 1 to 1 with Nayeema
- stuck myself on a talent grid. Was curious & picked apart some of the definitions. I’m very lucky, work in a great team and feel supported to do my job. Also often inspired by smart people around me who make me better so I think things are going well and i’m doing well. I find it hard to compliment myself.
Wednesday - special edition
- final presentation. I count 10 in the space of 2 and a half working days. All different topics. My brain feels like it has been on a very long voyage
- this time about pre-paid cards, requirements, suggestions on how to prioritise them and a brilliant chat with colleague from Crown Commercial Service (CCS) who is tip top. Extremely impressed with CCS colleague
- found out who the suppliers for the pre-paid card could be and had a quick peek at what they offer
- forwarding data protection advice within the department
- posting my most recent blog post
- helping colleagues with green paper advice
- check-in with Sam about recent healthy eating event
- Health Product people event!
- I am now on holiday for 3 weeks… no weeknotes while away!
What I’ve been reading
- Primary care in China. Great read and having experienced a Chinese hospital first-hand with a broken finger I can vividly imagine each scenario.
- Why we should embrace the new Apple watch and its ECG feature.
- Interesting insight into the wellbeing of NHS staff and a critique on current policies and need to learn from the past.
- Tom Loosemore describes what Government could look like if we are bold enough. An old talk from 2015 and some baby steps made but more to do.
- Why healthtech companies fail and perhaps we should get companies to focus on problems with criteria for success to better mobilise teams wanting to do something innovative in the health and wellbeing space. Also, great read on start-ups and random control trials!
- How open data and new rules and regs will make bus services in the UK better.
- Way to test copy by bulb.
- Facebook head of health research wants doctors more access to data on their patients social life.
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: