Seeing the light — My Product Owner colleague and I both realised this week that we’re nudging the six months mark in terms of how long we’ve been in our roles. Where did that time go? …

There And Back Again — This week was dominated by a customer visit to Far Far Away. When you live in rural Dorset, most places are far far away — even the nearest shop (or phone signal). But this was 4 1/2 hours by train each way. Actually the journey There And Back Again was…

Tell me more — I realised some years ago that I thrive on feedback. Well, actually, it’s more like I desperately crave feedback, like a vampire craves blood to survive. Getting out my cod psychology playbook, this is probably about searching for validation where I lack confidence and need someone to say “good boy”…

Taking shape — I’m often surprised at how a week can feel oppressive or hard to cope with, but then lifts at the end to see you into the weekend, leaving me with only positive thoughts about it. Having said that, I do remember ending work on Tuesday feeling so bruised that I…

Be generous — It’s come around to UKGovCamp time again, this year in person, but I can’t make it due to my father’s bad timing in turning 101 the next day (I swear he planned it that way) So instead…

Listening more — Getting more Agile Smoke testing, grooming, refinement, candidates, epics, stories, blockers, bugs, spikes, release cadence…Six months ago I thought that knowing the term ‘sprint’ gave me an insight into agile software development. Not so much. We’re starting to rebuild the (pre-major upgrade) agile methodology that existed before, which is a nice way for…

Turning the corner — The past two weeks have felt like there’s a change in the air/water/whatever so I’m feeling like we’re starting to move away from a reactive way of working and looking more to the future. This has probably come about for a number of reasons: discussions and input from colleagues on…

Seeing the big picture — Hello world. It’s been 17 months since I last published a weeknote. Since then I’ve made the jump from local government to the private sector, but haven’t written about it. As it’s nearly 3 months since I made the change it felt like it was time to catch up. Getting started It’s…

Creating a collaboration manifesto together — LocalGov Camp returned in person this year — what a glorious thing! This year I facilitated a workshop about collaboration, and wasn’t sure if anyone would be interested. But they were, and it seemed to go pretty well. Collaboration was one of the key themes at LocalGov Camp 22, with…