Week notes 27th Feb-10th March

A bit of a bumper edition due to last week being a 3-day working week as many of us took a trip to Chamonix.

The start of last week was intense, a short week, combined with underlying anxiety about the trip to Chamonix, despite everyone being lovely, the thought of spending a prolonged period with a lot of new people — particularly for an introvert like me was a little overwhelming but I’m so glad I pushed myself out of my comfort zone. As soon as I arrived at the Charlbury office at 5 am on Thursday morning, the nerves quickly dissipated and I relaxed into enjoying getting to know the team better in such beautiful surroundings.

A highlight of the trip for me. Having a delicious hot chocolate on our way back down from Mont Blanc

1. At the start of last week, it was all hands on deck for another discovery playback session. After missing the playback on my other project due to being on leave, it felt great to be involved in this milestone and to see everyone’s work come together and get such positive feedback from the client.
2. I spent a good few hours with Annie (Head of User Research) reflecting on the last session we had on progressing the work on the delivery framework. It was really great to have that space to chew the fat on some of the perceived opportunities and blockers and to come up with a framework for the framework! We’re going to take some inspiration from the GDS service manual and co-create some guidelines for each phase — this will include things we want teams to be able to demonstrate, expected outcomes/outputs of the phase, and some high levels accountabilities. I’m sure other artifacts will follow but it feels like a sensible place to start in aligning ourselves internally in terms of what good looks like
3. Last Wednesday I was invited to present to the Product design and build leadership team on building a culture of autonomy and ownership. This is an area I feel particularly passionate about and having joined from a company where this was built into the DNA of how we worked it was good to share some learnings to see what we could take on board. It was very well received and my manager has booked a follow up session to discuss some quick wins we could try!
4. I’m really enjoying working with Christopher harris our QA Lead. He’s been really supportive and it feels like we’re making good progress on documenting and refining processes — we’re documenting our learnings in a shared diary and using a project we’re both on to implement some of the changes we’d like to see adopted at an organization level long term.

5. I was pleased to see the e-book ‘Confessions of a Project Manager’ has been released. I’ve contributed a chapter ‘when complacency kicks in’ to this excellent and honest resource. We all mess up but it’s how we work with our teams to take ownership and accountability for the issues that count.

After a short hiatus with week notes, I was half wondering if to continue and then I got some feedback from someone in a different team at work which motivated me to carry on. Having come to the end of this one, I’m reminded of how many great things have happened and yet my day-to-day reality often doesn’t feel so shiny.

There’s a natural tension when you publish weekly notes to balance being authentic, professional, and positive. I’ve definitely found the last few weeks challenging — I’m sure it’s just a combination of being in a new job, joining remotely, and finding a balance between strategic and fulfilling a hands-on delivery role on projects but I’ve very much still finding my feet.