Weeknotes S02 E19 — Reflections on a year (almost)
Due to a recent family issue and some other personal stuff I’ve felt a bit distant from weeknotes for a while. So haven’t felt the desire (or need actually) to write anything lately.
But I’m coming up on nearly a year in this role, and a bit of self reflection as part of my 1:1 made me think it might be worth capturing some thoughts. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to write again.
What have I learned about Agile this year?
I’m too focused on pushing out things at present. The desire to get something ‘done’ and move onto the next thing is too burndown-centric and can lead to poorer product decisions. In some cases I’ve looked to move extra things out of scope so there won’t be so much still to do, rather than do the extra things to make a product really great.
Raising Jira tickets feels like ‘doing’ but it can lead to a monstrous pile of stuff that completely suffocates the ability to focus on what is important. I missed out on the team heading to Agile on the Beach this year, but they brought back some great learning that we’ve started to put into practice. Our first run at ‘nuking the backlog’ reduced it by a third. And no one got hurt!
I’m guilty of being too quick to accept the first thing I see demonstrated in a PO Review. I think this is in part my reverence for developers being able to work magic, and not wanting to disrespect their work. But this can lead to follow-up work or tasks, which wastes everyone’s time. It’s OK to say ‘not quite — we need this bit too’ and spend a bit more time on it.
I’m writing better user stories than I did, and had some nice feedback at a retro from a dev saying that they contained everything he needed to do the work. I think I maybe overdo them with too much info; looking at stories written for another project recently I could see they were far more focused on the function than the need for lots of background information. So more I can improve on.
Communicating agile development to people outside of the organisation is difficult and leads to frustration on their part. There’s an expectation of things being clear from the outset and delivered as a whole, rather than an incremental evolution of a product, subject to change iteration. They also struggle to ‘see’ a project overall and where it is currently, so I’ve recently created a Miro Board to show all the tickets for it, their dependencies and their current status (big love to the Jira Cards app for Miro!). If nothing else, it helps me focus on the big picture too.
And on this subject, my recent experience on the Low Code Waste phase 2 DHLUC project have given me a much better insight into how to approach agile working than our day-to-day product work. Doing larger batches of development work with a common theme, starting from clear designs based on user journeys and research, writing initial stories and refining them with tech colleagues, articulating them to the team — it all feels far more cohesive. It also makes for great team working
Having said that I’ve now worked on two projects where translating designs into stories needed more careful thought on my part and more technical input to help me spot the issues they may create. Sometimes what looks nice on Figma could be achieved another way with a small compromise, saving a lot of work creating custom components and actually creating a better user journey. Sometimes the journey in a design doesn’t/can’t show all the permutations of a journey, so we’ve ended up creating these too late in the process.
One thing I still find hard is resisting the push to deliver on all requests or expectations. What may sound like it solves a problem, may actually cause 3 more, or be an attempt to have technology solve a process issue. But I’m getting better at is as I get more confidence and talk those requests through with others.
Finally, estimating. Just….WTF?
How have we changed as a team?
As with any organisation, a lot can change in a year. We’ve had a few departures and some new starters, each bringing a new perspective and new ideas.
From my perspective it’s felt like we’re all moving closer together. Our new Head of Engineering has been brilliant in finding the pain points and working on solutions to make the Product/Technical sides of the organisation feel more cohesive. Our Service Delivery Managers now get more involved in deployment discussions so we make better decisions and everyone hears the same thing at the same time. We’re also more involved with supporting implementation (still may favourite thing talking to web teams about ways to use out platform effectively)
Strategically, we had a great couple of days in Bristol recently as a team looking at the big ticket stuff; analysing feedback from our customers and our trainer, and identifying developments that would make the biggest difference. Lining up everyone to point in the same direction has helped me take a longer-term view of where we want to be, and to ensure the tactical decisions we make are just that.
To avoid that Jira backlog mountain we’re also working on using ProdPad far more than we did. Collectively, we broke the back of the feedback glut to make sure what was moved into the backlog was better tagged, any completed work was archived, and feedback we don’t understand is marked for follow-up. We’re working on improving our existing initiatives so we can start publishing our roadmap automatically with better info in it.
What else happened over the year?
Ooh, lots of lovely things:
- I started weeknoting again after moving jobs, which I’ve enjoyed and have had nice feedback about
- I got to attend three Local Gov Camps and meet people that totally rock
- I did a mad journey to Glasgow and back for one of those, all by public transport, and with no overnight stays
- I took off for two days to work with a customer on the other side of the country on my own initiative (could never have done that while in the public sector)
- I got my first official Placecube blog post published and got to work with our lovely marketing gurus
- I tried out Daily Notes, got a bit obsessed, then dropped it like a stone and never looked back
- I tried and failed to get a national thing going on collaboration principles
- I did a batch of training and documentation work until someone better came along to do it all
- I’ve come to realise (finally) that I really don’t have a poker face at all and every thought that goes through my head is visible to everyone. Camera off
- I got properly headhunted, for the first time ever, and while flattered was pleased I turned it down for all the right reasons; I love my role, I love my team, I have no respect for the company in question, and chasing money doesn’t bring happiness
