Weeknotes E06

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:

Talk to teams who have requested help & see which is the most valuable and viable to help first.

Wednesday

• retrospective time
• sprint planning to prep for the week
• joyous stottie lunch. Every team needs more stotties in their lives.
• I met with a colleague about the review I am doing. We shared notes and I promised to help answer any questions about all things digital
• a great thing about the department is that our perm sec runs a series of chats with civil servants in the department. They are completely open and you can ask him anything. There was a great chat and hope I get the chance to turn up at another one soon.

Thursday

• More reviewing. Finished off going through the new version of the document. Jotted down all my preliminary questions and comments.
• Joined the call for the nhs online show and tell. Good stuff about accessibility & inclusion in there, among other things.
• popped out the office for a quick product catch up. Chatted with former product colleagues about challenges and constructive steps forward.

Friday

• Annual leave. Off to the wonderful Norway!

Monday

• re-worded my comments and questions and shared them with the wider team for input
• had a show and tell from Lloyds banking about service design & bits about system thinking
• it is time for writing objectives. So bashed out a first draft.
• read up and shared a great intranet alpha report from ex-colleague Dia.

Tuesday

• got brilliant comments from team about my comments and questions and did once last re-write and submitted them to the team.
• had a chat about adult social care data work. Plans forming and tried to share my knowledge of what other teams are doing
• tried to sum it up and send to snr colleagues
• support/assurance planning. Lots of requests for work!
• catch-up and chat about how to improve the objectives I wrote down the day before

What I’ve been reading

1. Interesting deep dive into automation and how it affects work and the need for unconditional basic income.
2. Making the case for digital understanding
3. Updated advice on how to measure the benefits of your service from the service manual crew.
4. Great post that is health relevant on going beyond user needs and thinking about people and their communities
5. 10 charts on how under 30’s use the NHS.
6. How the instagram feed works.
7. The story of Internet.org
8. Council kills of app that nobody needed, it didn’t work and was unnecessarily expensive

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:

• The People team
• The Outputs team
• The Data and Search team