Weeknotes E07
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.
P. S. We have vacancies! Come join the gang as a Product Manager or User Researcher!
My current priority:
Talk to teams who have requested help & see which is the most valuable and viable to help first.
Wednesday
- To kick off the week Jeremy Hunt gave a speech about patient care. References to CQC, real people that had affected him, airline pilots and overall if you don’t measure it then things are harder to change.
- I prepped for a session I was running for the intranet team
- continued to set up more chats with teams requesting help
- listened into a call about a new commission website
- ran the intranet workshop and did some follow up emails asking for feedback and other resources. Slides here and will write up a blog eventually…
- team had a Quarter 2 review
- product people event admin
- Heard this quote for the first time… “Being President is like being the groundskeeper in a cemetery: there are a lot of people under you, but none of them are listening.”― Bill Clinton
Thursday
- met previous colleague Jamie for a catch up over flat whites.
- we held another Health Product People event! Great success. Met some new faces and a great show and tell. Follow up email was sent and blog to come…
- Prepped for reverse mentoring. Lots of my work life seems to be prep.
- Setting up more future chats
- noticed my blog got published - it’s about service assessments in DHSC
Friday
- I did a write up of the Product People findings (we asked the community to share 1 challenge and then did a retro at the end of the event) and shared with team
- chatting strategy and adult social care data with Alice. Also drew a rather funny looking map of the problem. Lots of lines.
- had lunch with excellent Japanese learning former colleague Iu - saw the channel 4 building!
- reverse mentoring prep
- then the reverse mentoring session which was great again. Lots about Trello and ways of working. Was a nice vibe and got an invite to a future away day.
Monday
- Show and tell from the measuring success of public health interventions crew. Really great piece of work.
- My first Healthy Start chat! I’m joining this team and really excited, jumping into private beta and seemed a really great thing to work on. Chatted about hopes and fears & how I can help the team.
- Prep for away day I was invited to (not the one from Friday - a different one!)
- NHS app announced
- Worked on nhs app review i’ve been doing
- Email follow ups and advice after the reverse mentoring session
- Chat with Nayeema
Tuesday
- nice view from health hq in the morning
- connecting the dots and sending out useful links I’ve read about over the weekend about how local government digital teams connect with central government
- team planning
- went to another directorates away day - walked into an ice breaker then stood at a market stall and offered advice to people. Hope I was some help
- wrote a blog post on the most recent Product People event - should be out soon
What I’ve been reading
- World cup special… well sort of… long-read about how the US missed out on the world cup and the years of rot that made them miss the big tournament. You’ve been eating insects for a long time. I can imagine we’ll need to eat more over the next few centuries.
- The data trail we leave every minute, every day. BIG NUMBERS!
- GDS trying to create service communities. Challenges to create but feels like a good idea.
- Should we have a role in our multidisciplinary teams that focuses on ethics that coordinates creating ethical products
- Why digital transformations fail. Good to see communities of practice getting a shout out as something positive - we have one in health! Get in touch to join!
- Some of the forgotten building blocks of the web and the state they are in now.
- 15 principles of a good service/service design. Will keep in mind for future work.
- Evolution of the gun emoji
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: