Weeknotes S02 E13
Blog post hoc, ergo propter hoc
Trying out Daily Notes
My reflections recently on how my weeknotes are often influenced by the most recent events (what I like to call the ‘Oscars Awards Syndrome’) has led me to trying out Daily Notes this week as a way of better recording events throughout a week. Private ones though.
This was influenced by Dave Briggs’ daily posts and his use of Obsidian, which I’d not heard of before. Fair to say I got hooked on both pretty quickly (Obsidian and Daily Notes, that is. My affections for Mr Briggs are long-standing…).
There has been some immediate benefits:
- Getting into a daily routine on reflecting means I’m forcing myself to identify both the positives and negatives in a day for a more balanced view of how things are going
- I’m also recording other daily activities, like what I’m reading, any exercise, progress on learning new tech and sleep patterns
So what’s the fuss? Isn’t this just what people used to call ‘a diary’ in those heady days before Web 2.0? Well, that’s where the tech angle kicks in:
- having a blank daily note generated every morning from a template I set means I can be sure I am prompted to cover what’s important
- using backlinks within the daily notes I can cross-reference thoughts to other subject matter notes. This concept is known as Second Brain, and there’s a scary amount of stuff on this
- using inline fields means I can auto-generate tables of data, like reading lists, a record of my daily exercise etc
- I can access my notes securely on different devices
There’s a danger all this self-reflection could become a bit narcissistic, but also the opportunity to boost my memory and recollection.
Blog formats
One of the other things I read this week was Giles Turnbull’s excellent Blog Post Formats for Teams. How is this guy so prolific and brilliant?
I love the idea of describing format types as a way to help others find their groove. Maybe these could become a de facto standard? Trying this out in my Medium profile (with a bit of attribution).
I realised that these weeknotes are a Format #2, in that they are personal (about my reflections and learning), but my approach to daily notes is more a Format #3 (using a template to answer the same questions), as are some aspects of these weeknotes, such as…
Chat GPT and me
After more efforts to use this for practical day-to-day stuff I’m becoming really disillusioned. Advice on how to format a Dataview code block for Obsidian was hugely incorrect — just plain wrong. I found far better advice in getting some thoughts from real people via Reddit and also on the Obsidian forum. May have taken a bit longer, but was worth it.
The personal touch worked both ways here. Their suggestions were polite, to the point and helpful, and I was able to thank them for helping me out. Apparently people thank ChatGPT too. Weird flex, but OK.
What have I learned about Agile this week?
Becoming more convinced we need to find a better way to refine issues ahead of a sprint. My process of documenting our backlog planning sessions does mean we can track the history of any one ticket pretty quickly, which reveals that some spend a long time in a discussion state, or waiting for tech refinement, before they come onto the board.
We did manage to push out another minor release this week with a surprising number of bug fixes at the same time as working on The Project On The Side.
Using Testrail is really great for us Product Owners as the mysterious process of QA is now revealed in all its glory, with stats and charts. I’ve been setting up update reports being emailed out so we have a daily reminder of how we are progressing with regression testing.
Our Definition of Ready/Done started to get used this week, which soon showed it needed tweaking (hey, iteration is the name of the game!). It does give some better structure to the refinement process to make sure pre and post dev work are properly considered.
Steve Messer posed an interesting challenge about Delivery Patterns, and if Scrum is always the way.
On the road…
The Product Posse are gearing up to hit the road from next week to attend all four LocalGovCamp regional events. We’re splitting the work a bit so I’m at Glasgow and London. Really pleased I was supported in not flying to Glasgow — gotta watch those carbon emissions — and instead am heading up via the Caledonian Sleeper. It may sound like a luxury, but it means no hotel stays are needed, and I get in a full day of work before and after the event.
We’ve been kicking around some ideas for the workshop we’ll be running. As we like to think of ourselves as a different sort of supplier we’ll be testing out thoughts about what good and bad behaviours look like to see how stronger relationships can be forged. It was great to work as a team, getting our creative juices flowing, but tricky to pack in all the things we’d like to cover in the time available. Killer idea is to include a Room 101 element for voting out the worst behaviours!
..and on the web
It was great to see the bookings start to come in for our first Lunch and Learn session with customers. This is our stab at getting informal networking working, and we’re hoping to hand over to customers in the future for them to share their learning and developments.
Loving this development as there’s so much good stuff going on out there (not all about the tech either) and sharing it could help more joint working or spark those synoptic links.
Quick thoughts
- doing an over-50s bowel cancer screening test was a way to come face-to-faeces with your waste products. Not recommended
- A disappointing crawl back for digital with the demise of the Digital Marketplace and a push by the Cabinet Office to have councils use MS tools rather than Google
- my Macbook for work arrived. Got the chance to trial a Zero Touch approach to remote setup, as I’m “someone that knows one end of the keyboard from another” apparently
- The dilemma of home ownership; had an inspection for installing a wood burner AND viewed a house in Poundbury. Which way will it go, dear reader?
- I’m insanely pleased with the expression ‘face-to-faeces’. Go read it again
Spot of the week
Back in the bathroom. It’s a firm (fur-m?) favourite
