Weeknotes — 2 August 2024
Keep the tone light, the content clear.
This week it’s been retros week
One full team retro on agile, and one smaller one that I led on some discoveries work.
Some reflections:
- if the scope of the retro is too wide, it makes it harder to spot themes and identify improvements
- there’s always more to say, but sometimes sticking to time and moving things forward helps
- even when you set out with the best intentions of openness and honesty, you can still get defensive about comments on your own work or approaches
- discussion is good, but how do we make sure everyone contributes effectively in a large room
- it’s not always easy to see and prioritise consensus over the loudest voices* or the hottest takes
*spoiler alert, this is me
I’ve also been in the Jira weeds. Andy and I have continued our planning delivery work, writing lots of content plans and delivery tickets. Hopefully the final step in a long journey before we start drafting some actual content.
It’s a big piece of work pulling these together, but it means the work we’ll be doing will be clearer, and the tasks we hand over will be easier for other content designers to pick up.
It means we’ll be able to hand over lots of discovery insights for content that we don’t have enough time to work on ourselves. It hopefully helps everyone work consistently, and improves some of our existing working processes. I hope what we’ve produced are clear about the ask, but still leave room for flexibility and different designs.
This week I’m trying to just be sound
Andy and I are about to start work with some policy colleagues, and I clocked that many of them were in the office yesterday, so I made an effort to go over and say hello in person. Sticking to my stakeholder principle of “just be sound”.
It helped that they were all lovely, friendly people, but it was nice to do. Hopefully it will lead to some in person collaboration, as well as our Teams based work. Hopefully it didn’t just look like I was angling for an invite to their team lunch out…
Content designers against emails and tracked changes.
This week I’m conscious of my own jargon use
A risk of working in (and enjoying working in) a digital role is you can start spouting absolute drivel like this.
Married over 14yrs been together 20+. Both of us are quite senior at large corporations. Wife told me let’s “circle back” later when our son interrupted us looking for a holiday. First time I’ve considered we should split.
Andy and I need a swear jar for the word “refine”. I keep saying things like “ways of working”, “adding value” and “move forward”. It’s an absolute riddy. I need to check myself, before I need to check myself into agile rehab.
This week I’m listening to
I’m still obsessed with the Sam Wilkes, Craig Weinrib, and Dylan Day self-titled number that I was punting last week.
And of course, Charli and Billie.
