Weeknote: S2, Ep17: Mini heatwave edition featuring new team members, figuring out stuff together and values-shaped governance
Patchwork week
It’s been a week of lots of bits and bobs. Monday started with a really valuable conversation about how we are governing our work and how we could mature this to better support teams and maintain a focus on the change we want to achieve. What worked in our first year of digital transformation needs some iteration. I’m focusing this on:
- Starting from values, rather than processes
- Activities that support and build the momentum towards change
- Conversations that enable good decisions and increase visibility
- Timely governance with a flexible cadence
Melanie, our new delivery manager, started with us. She brings a lot of transferable skills to the role and I’m looking forward to working with her. It’s also a reminder of how generous the delivery manager community is within the public sector — Ian from Hackney and Yvonne from the BBC are offering some shadowing and sounding board conversations.
Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday played out in a regular cadence of meetings and a great show and tell from the intranet team. I’m beavering away with the project managers to work out how we might better navigate uncertainty in the life cycle of their projects. It’s great to see the cloud migration project starting to work in sprints, honing their focus and efforts on an agreed goal.
On Friday I caught up with Kit and Paul about the shape of this year’s budget and our procurements. Kit and I then caught up with Sukh and Timo to review the work we’re doing to reduce the footprint of our on-premise infrastructure. It’s now abundantly clear that we need additional project management support. It’s an ambitious and exciting suite of work — game changing in how we will manage our infrastructure over the next few years.
What I am looking forward to next week
Every now and again, life throws up an interesting opportunity. On Wednesday I’m accompanying a Cameroonian judge on a tour of the Royal Courts of Justice and the Old Bailey. On the work front, we have our digital board on Thursday and on Friday, I’m hanging out with the lovely folk over at LOTI. There’s a bit of a training theme to week, I’ll be catching up with digital trainers Karolina and Jay, and Teresa from the workforce development team.
