Weeknote 12: open working

Week ending 03/03/23

What went well?

• We held a retro for our product/delivery/senior content colleagues in our relatively newly-formed Health Advice & Guidance teams. It was good to make time to reflect on what had gone well and not so well since we formed in November.
• We had our first sprint review with colleagues in DHSC working with us on the development of a women’s health landing page. It was nice to share work in progress. We’d literally only just finished analysing the results of our card sort research activity so it was a little nerve-wracking exposing the reality of live work, rather than presenting something polished. But I think it was received in the spirit in which it was shared and overall it feels good to keep everyone close to the work.
• We shared some work with stakeholders on some new content we’re developing to help children and young people understand how to access services for their mental health. This was a really positive meeting and i’m feeling confident we’re getting close to publishing now.
• James shared a blog post I wrote a couple of years ago about 10 things i’ve learned about being a product manager which was a nice boost. It made me realise that a whole two years have nearly passed and I’ve learned more things! Debating a follow up.
• My colleague Mark has written a brilliant blog post about the work we’re doing to develop content types across the NHS website. This is almost finished now and i’m looking forward to seeing it live.

What could have gone better?

• Our consultation period continues for our proposed re-structure in the new NHS England and I had some conversations this week about the impact all the meetings may have on our ability to deliver all the things we’ve committed to. I feel like we’re taking on the pressure ourselves to keep the show on the road, but at some point soon i’m sure we’ll start to notice the impact it is having, both on people and our ability to deliver.
• I’m struggling a bit to define some OKRs for a thing we’re working on. A really helpful chat with a colleague helped me realise I need to try and zoom in a bit and set some smaller, more tangible objectives that our team would have more influence over and might be easier to measure. I’ll have a go at doing this next week.

Next week:

• Off to the office, as long as the landslide which foiled my plans last week has been cleared away.
• Welcoming a new user researcher to the team.
• Need to set goals for upcoming sprint which help us stay on track for the various tight delivery deadlines we’re hurtling towards at the end of March.