Weeknote 19: the problem

Week ending 09/06/23

I returned from a week on holiday in Sicily to find that a couple of big things I’d been trying hard to un-block had miraculously been un-blocked without me. Who needs the product manager anyway? It turned out there were plenty more problems to get stuck into almost immediately upon my return, so don’t think I’m out of a job just yet.

What went well?

• The aforementioned un-blocking means that we’re edging closer to being able to publish our new children and young people’s mental health content. Just need to finish up our reviews and clinical approvals and we should be live by early next month. This is great news as it’s work that pre-dates our team and has been a little complex to say the least so it will be great to finally share these improvements with our users.
• We’re also in the final stages of sign off for three new vaccinations topics and are really close to completing our vaccinations content type work. This will then allow us to transform the remaining vaccinations topics next quarter (from July onwards) and publish a new and improved hub of vaccinations content.
• Our contraception content type work is also coming to a close, meaning the team can move on to transforming all remaining contraception topics too, retire multiple pages no longer needed and move off some old CMS templates. This is the most rewarding kind of work for the team as we can all get enthusiastic about publishing more accessible and user-centred content.
• We received the sign off we needed to go ahead with our women’s health hub and are now in the final stages of this work which has been a key focus for one of our teams this year.
• Myself and my colleague Camille presented our roadmap for the next quarter to other product colleagues in our product and platforms directorate this week. I think it went down ok. We didn’t uncover any major gaps in expectations or dependencies that we weren’t already aware of which is good.

What went less well?

I’ve been trying to solve some difficult problems and navigate some sensitive debates this week which are hard for me to talk about in any great detail. I’ll try and summarise here:

• Problem 1: trying to navigate some very senior demands for very specific amends to our content which circumvents our usual content production process
• Problem 2: trying to bridge the divide between stakeholder needs and challenge from content colleagues to find a middle ground that works for everyone without compromising too hard or setting dangerous precedents
• Problem 3: trying to be pragmatic and realistic about what’s acheivable with a high profile piece of work in relation to something the team feel (quite reasonably) very strongly about. This is a really difficult place to be and fear I may be coming off as the bad guy.

Coming up next week

• All the above conversations will continue next week no doubt
• We’re giving a Show & Tell on the final stages of our women’s health work to colleagues in NHS UK
• Planning our kick off for the long term conditions content type
• We’re all expecting a personal letter from NHSE next week to tell us the outcome of the consultation and what that means for us.