Category: CPS Weeknotes (Page 2 of 3)

Week 20: 16-20 January 2023

I was relentlessly positive this week. I could guess about the reasons. I was motivated by addressing the results of the People Survey. I was excited about a couple of important procurements that we’re starting. I was looking forward to the inception workshop for the Technical Design Authority. But it was also because I decided to be positive. I nearly slipped back. There was a moment in bed on Monday morning. But even when something didn’t go well it didn’t knock me off my stride.

I also felt the gentle pressure of important and imminent deadlines this week: on Wednesday preparing for our pre market engagement event on the application support contract for the case management system (CMS); on Thursday to prepare for our market engagement event on the service desk as well as the frequent pull of the inbox.

The Service Desk event was really well attended, though we shared a recording for suppliers unable to attend at relatively short notice. The feedback will help us unblock one of the issues we’d been grappling with which had delayed us initiating the bidding process. Generally I think more, smaller engagement points with suppliers will help us learn more and adapt.

Despite all of that, I still had time to do things well. I thought carefully about how we’d do the inception workshop. I needed a format that would support us being user-centric and fit the findings from the book reviews into the design of how we’d work together. And it needed a bit of movement in an otherwise sterile basement room. I realised I’d asked everyone else to read something and not prepared anything myself and was worried that might seem unduly hierarchical, so worked my way through The Habit of Excellence by Lt Col Langley Sharp – which reinforced a significant number of the key messages from the other texts.

I also began the process of digging in to our People Survey results through some good conversations with colleagues to explore what we need to stop and start doing differently.

With a different shape and size portfolio previously I felt I didn’t have the chance to invest the same level of effort; that I was constantly doing things ‘just well enough’.

I also tried to do some smaller things differently. A meeting on Monday was scheduled to look at the strengths and weaknesses of managing our hosting contract directly. Rather than meet and then draft a doc, I asked us to develop a document in realtime. Not everyone experienced that in the same way, but it was good to show people how a different approach can have benefits.

I didn’t do enough to move forward the tech strategy and roadmap this week. Whilst it’s not one of my four priorities for next week, we are beginning a set of engagement strategies for colleagues within the department so that’ll give me the excuse to find more time ahead of an event that TechUK will be hosting for us in February.

So my four priorities for next week are to:

1. Use the feedback from the Service Desk to initiate the procurement
2. Help the first substantive meeting of the TDA work in the way we’ve co-designed
3. Identify a Product Owner to support the development of our Future Casework Tools proof of concept
4. Enable our leadership team to design the response to our People Survey results

Week 15: 12-16 December

It would have been easy to let this week slip away. When you look at the diary it’s tempting to assume not much more can be achieved until the New Year. So I had to push that little bit harder to make sure I got things done.

As I watched the snow fall on Sunday night it was beginning to look a lot like Christmas. And so when I walked up the steps of the crown court on Monday morning for my first visit to court since joining the CPS, I didn’t have high hopes for a busy day.

I spent the morning listening to a set of procedural hearings. I marvelled at the logistics involved and at the power of video conferencing. It was helpful to see how much more iterative the process of bringing criminal proceedings is than I assumed. I learnt over lunch that there’s an intention to reduce the number of hearings that occur before a case reaches trial. In the afternoon I saw a jury trial and whilst the case wasn’t directly relevant to some of the more complex technology issues we’re grappling with, the judge was a fan of digital jury bundles and had some useful observations about how they needed to work.

On Monday evening I did a briefing note for a colleague that was coming back from leave. It grew to 11 subheadings covering the things that I’d seen since they’d been away, and I forgot to include one topic so amongst other things, it made me feel like I’d been busy at the very least.

The main event on Tuesday was a prioritisation session for our Future Casework Tools programme at the Digital and Major Projects Group. One of the challenges we’ll need to explore through the programme is how we make decisions with colleagues, reconcile different ways of working whilst moving at pace. So the prioritisation session was an important starting point to ensuring the programme meets people’s expectations.

Wednesday was my best opportunity to make progress with my goals for the week. We worked with our partners, NTT Global, to ensure we had a clear scope for the discovery for our proof of concept and then to introduce them to some problem-owners to understand how we can add value. Separately, we also developed the terms of reference for our technical design authority and discussed how we could ensure it was meeting colleagues’ needs. I also had a catch-up with commercial colleagues so that we could move ahead with the procurement of a team to develop the technology platform.

The most significant feature of Thursday was a P1 incident with our network. We’d also had intermittent issues for some users accessing our core systems. The combination of the two meant it was helpful that I had an introductory session with trade union colleagues already in the diary. Both were resolved – and it’s the first P1 since I’ve joined the organisation. I was impressed by how colleagues responded to the incident. When it doesn’t happen frequently it can be harder to have those incident management practices in place. But it does mean that we need to spend time next week to ensure we understand the root cause. Any outage will feel frustrating for colleagues who are already working under pressure and they’ll expect us to do whatever’s needed to reduce the likelihood of it happening again.

At the end of the week I joined my first cross-government CTO Council. Whilst we’re theoretically all doing a similar job, each organisation is a different size and at a different state of maturity. It was interesting to hear from some perspectives very different to my own but also to understand the importance (and limitations) of collaboration across government.

Next week

I’ve got three goals for next week:

1. To support the team in publishing the IT Service Desk requirement before Christmas. We’ll be ensuring there’s enough time for suppliers to bid and are hoping that publication before Christmas will help people prepare their plans in January
2. To understand the critical path for going to market for the team to help develop the Technology Platform
3. To ensure the proof of concept product team has all the tools and support they need to make rapid progress in the New Year

Depending on time, I’d also like to spend time on our roadmap. Fortunately, despite a slightly unstructured approach, it’s starting to take shape. But it would benefit from a day’s proper focus.

Week 14: 5 – 9 December

I achieved two of the three goals I set for this week. Our senior leadership team agreed to creating a Technical Design Authority and provided good feedback on the vision and strategic objectives to guide our technology roadmap. The best contributions pointed to the importance of explaining why the goals would be useful for colleagues. But the categories received positive engagement and the value of meeting each goal was largely recognised.

We haven’t quite agreed a plan to go to market for a team to help develop our technology platform, but I’m optimistic that will become clearer on Monday/Tuesday next week.

Despite that, I didn’t feel particularly positive as the week drew to a close. I started feeling a big under the weather on Tuesday, which involved a relatively early start to get to an event in Birmingham. Whilst I was a bit better on Wednesday I was still operating in second gear and even by Friday didn’t quite have the freshness or crispness to feel energetic and positive. It’s the second time I’ve been slightly unwell since the summer, which is unusual for me. I blame my lack of resilience on how infrequently it happens.

However, on Friday afternoon a group of us gathered to discuss how we work. I’d drafted five attributes of ‘good work’ (below) to start a conversation about where and when this was true for us and what we could do differently to make it more true, more often. We’ve identified a couple of things that we could do together to set a standard for how we work.

The conversation was necessarily private, but I’m sharing not to showcase my poor drafting per se but in case there are resources or tools you can point me towards which would help our thinking.

1. We maintain a high level of motivation with regular sustenance provided by seeing the importance and impact of our work
2. We deliver value to users regularly and work at a sustainable pace which keeps us healthy
3. We are inclusive, embrace diversity and engage in radical candour
4. We are psychologically safe in what we do and how we work, and can harness innovation thanks to our awareness of privacy and security issues
5. We are open, well-networked and situationally-aware which supports our ambitions

Anyhow, it was a good conversation which did well to acknowledge the odd challenge but stay positive and constructive, although I was a bit disappointed with my am-pro efforts at facilitation at various points. So I ended the week feeling better.

I’ve got three clear(ish) goals for next week which follow on from this week’s:

1. To design the programme to set-up the Technical Design Authority
2. To draft the next version of our strategic objectives and put the next level of detail onto the roadmap
3. To develop the stakeholder engagement programme for our Future Casework Tools proof of concept

But one of those weeks where the vast majority of my time is going into other things. On Monday I finally get to go to court to see the impact of our work and speak to some of the colleagues involved and at the end of the week I’ve got a couple of networking opportunities across central government. So I’ll need to use spare bits of time at the start and end of the day really well if I’m to head into the last week of the year knowing that we’ve got everything in place to make a good start to 2023.

Week 13: 28 November – 2 December

I took my uncertainty and doubt into the start of this week. I was resigned to the fact that it was the calendar was against me and it would be unlikely to get anything moving this side of Christmas. By Monday afternoon I could not only feel short of energy but didn’t really care if I showed it.

But a conversation on Tuesday morning with Michael to design our proof of concept for our Future Casework Tools programme had me fired up. We went straight from that to sharing our draft document with our partner, NTT Global. In the afternoon I had a meeting with Tony from the Police Digital Service. He’s a former Police Officer rather than a technical expert but we have a similar perspective on the importance of inter-agency collaboration, done right. I’m planning to bring together some people from across the sector in early 2023 to discuss their user needs from our technology roadmap and see whether there’s interest in aligning our work.

I carried that optimism and positivity into Wednesday. I had a discussion on cloud readiness and devops with one of our partners before our technology leadership meeting explored our technology strategy, how we might form a TDA, and what we wanted to do differently to role-model making decisions with data. I made some progress towards one of my objectives by discussing how we could create opportunities for colleagues and suppliers to get closer to our users. I spent the afternoon getting up to speed with the design of the Digital Case File project. It’s our major investment over the next two years so I wanted to understand all the moving parts and to what extent it aligned (or could be changed to align) with our Future Casework Tools strategy.

Thursday was a bit less productive because so little of my day was allocated to meetings. I had a similar pattern on Friday. With a bit more planning I could have cracked through a couple of really big things but with a bit of tiredness after four days in Petty France, and too little running, I wasted the opportunity.

However, I had Friday night to myself so managed to crack through a couple of the things on the to-do list that required a bit more concentration

So in terms of my goals:

1. I facilitated a discussion amongst our architects and designed a survey to help determine what things might constitute the MVP of our technology platform
2. I drafted a brief for the work to run discovery and build a prototype platform, which is currently with colleagues for comment (I’ve also started drafting a business case)
3. We have an agreed brief for the proof of concept

I’ve managed to squeeze a couple of items onto the agenda for next week’s Senior Leadership Team meeting so by the end of next week I plan to have:

1. A proposal to establish a Technical Design Authority, using the Service Standard and Technology Code of Practice as our initial frameworks for decision making, ready for consideration by one of our organisational governance boards
2. A plan to go to market for support to develop our Technology Platform
3. An agreed vision and strategic objectives for our technology roadmap

I’m also leading a set of conversations to try and iron out a commercial issue with one of our projects, which will take up some time and energy – but is even more important to get right.

That notwithstanding, I’m also particularly excited by a small discussion group that’s meeting at the end of next week to explore our ways of working. I’ve an open mind about what emerges but have a rough concept of using it to form an action learning set to explore how we can build our culture. It’s not an exclusive group (but I did try and identify a diverse group of people in the initial invitations) so if you’re in the department and want to get involved, do let me know.

I don’t know if that’s sufficient to make me feel like I’m on track to accomplish something, but it’s certainly a better position than a fortnight ago.

Week 12: 20-25 November

I’ve been inadvertently inflating my length of service this week. I told our Executive Group that I’ve worked for the CPS for 14 weeks and told someone else that it was 15 weeks. I guess that’s because I feel like I’ve settled-in. It’s also because I’m becoming a bit anxious about how much I’ve actually achieved.

I achieved the goals that I set out this week, yet that doesn’t feel like the most important thing.

We’ve identified a shortlist of some pertinent questions we could ask of our data to support operational recovery and got a meeting booked in with a wider set of colleagues to probe these and prioritise how we take it forward.

I’ve got a more detailed set of user needs for the technology platform, and am now fairly sure that this could be a useful tool across the service. I also developed a bit of a vision statement, though that needs work, and a very simple prototype to get more user feedback.

Finally, our senior management team workshop went well and not only introduced people to Wardley Mapping but also started to gather some data for our technology roadmap (and in doing so, tested the value of the approach as an output from the roadmap).

But there were a couple of things that were much more important about this week than hitting those goals.

A group of colleagues have been working intensively, using some of the tools of the GV Design Sprint method to identify our requirements and supporting documents for the tender for services to support our mission critical business application from 2025 onwards. I’m really chuffed that they took my suggestion to timebox the work and made it much more creative. The approach will teach us some really interesting things about how we work and help us assess which bits we can apply to other procurement activities.

In other news this week we also gained approval for the tender of our IT service desk from the investment committee and for our continued use of Service Now – which is the culmination of lots of hard work by Ric, Wayne, Julie, John and others.

I was also pleased to find time to continue the conversation, and act on some of the issues that emerged from last Friday’s software development workshop. I’ve got a bit of a habit of getting to the end of an event like that and then being sucked back into all the other things that had to wait whilst I did the event; rather than being able to use it to build momentum.

Goals for next week

1. To gather some insight into what combination of things might form the MVP for our technology platform
2. To have an agreed brief, which reflects users’ feedback, for the discovery and prototyping of our technology platform
3. To have an agreed scope for the proof of concept work on transforming the database of CMS to enable development of user-centred services on top

I’m hoping that’s a recipe to end the week feeling as though I’m on a path to achieving something.

Week 11: 14-18 November

My goal this week was to do something every day to move forward my three priorities. And I’ve done it! Ok, so not the most ambitious goal. But here’s what I was able to do:

• Monday: Michael and I started preparing for a senior leadership team workshop on the technology roadmap. We’ve got a format that will help participants develop a view of the maturity of the main components of our existing technology
• Tuesday: I got a good challenge from Mark on my draft guiding principle for our roadmap (namely that ‘fast to change, fast to learn’ might encourage too much short-termism)
• Wednesday: I developed a shortlist of questions we could ask of our data as we explore the opportunities for predictive modelling and machine learning
• Thursday: I explored the technical design of our ‘Digital Case File’ project in order to assess how it fitted into our technical vision for the Future Casework Tools programme
• Friday: we had a really productive workshop to begin exploring how to make the CPS the best place in the sector to develop software

Some of those things are evidently more meaningful than others where progress is, at best, symbolic. Nevertheless, after a few weeks of ‘general busyness’ it feels good to have inched forward on all fronts.

I’m again on a train back from York on a Friday night (although I found the more trendy pub on the station forecourt this week). It’s given me a couple of hours to reflect on the software development workshop. After a tricky start due to equipment shortcomings and document sharing permissions I was really pleased by how everyone joined in with the spirit of the event. I wasn’t sure how familiar colleagues were in using workshop techniques like personas and future visioning, and there was a significant disparity of perspectives and expertise on the topic. However, we produced a really strong, comprehensive set of outputs and didn’t shy away from some of the tougher issues.

I’ve tried to distil the discussion into an open welcome note for new software developers. At the moment it’s a set of aspirations and assertions but I’ve got a sense that it’ll help us focus on the outcome we’re seeking and can use the tension between the organisation we are and the organisation we want to become to inject urgency into closing the gap. It’d be interesting to hear thoughts to the contrary.

Our business continuity exercises on Tuesday helped me achieve one of the final objectives from my induction period: I understand my role in business continuity issues. It answered lots of my questions, which was reassuring. But it also reminded me how reliant we are on the knowledge of a relatively small number of people.

I also supported colleagues from HR to interview for a data analytics role. It was interesting to be on the other side of the table (and helpful because the civil service uses a common approach to interviewing across different levels of seniority), Even more than that, it was a good opportunity to build relationships with colleagues.

I also benefitted from working as part of a broader community this week. I tapped into the experiences of the Ministry of Justice using Backstage which was a shortcut for learnings that otherwise would have taken months, and had really energetic conversations with colleagues in the police and at MOJ about collaborating on data science.

For most of the month I’ve been taking detailed notes in each meeting I’ve attended, inspired by Mark’s note-taking. I don’t know how helpful it’s been (the notes tend to be ‘they said’ rather than reflective) and I’ve not had reason to read the notes back, yet. But somehow it feels like the right practice to adopt.

In amongst all of that, I’ve fallen behind significantly on my running targets. Trips to Petty France on Tuesday and Wednesday, together with the early start for York meant that I’ve just not run often enough. I’m going to struggle to hit 25 miles this week.

Next week, I’m going to set more focused, delivery-oriented goals:

1. To develop a means of testing and validating our hypotheses for how data analysis can support operational recovery
2. To identify a more detailed set of user needs for the technology platform
3. To build an assessment of our current key software as a key input to the technology roadmap

Week 10: 7-11 November

On Thursday and Friday I went to Yorkshire for a cross-civil service induction for Deputy Directors. The event combined inspiring speakers, an introduction to some of the tools of systems thinking and time for reflection and planning. There was a reasonable level of diversity in the group, although it felt like I was one of the newest civil servants. The Deputy Director role is challenging because it’s just operational enough to offer plenty of opportunities to get stuck in the day-to-day (plenty of opportunity for plans to be derailed by requests for ‘things’ by a particular deadline) but is also expected to be strategic and cross-organisational.  

I left, buzzing with all the things I want to achieve. And the event also reminded me what a privilege the job is, and of the determination to deliver great public services that unites so many of my colleagues.

Tuesday feels like a particularly long time ago but it was one of the more interesting . I met Mark to discuss my objectives for the remainder of the financial year and had a wide-ranging discussion with a strategic partner to explore opportunities to modernise how we approach technical development (clue: it’s largely about how people work, rather than the tech we use).

The two things feature so strongly in my week because they came together nicely into my emerging mission. It maybe that these change shape a bit, but the last fortnight suggests that this will be the majority of my focus for the next six months or so.

But I’ve also spent a couple of weeks grappling with how to develop a guiding principle for our technology roadmap. And then, at some point on Thursday evening after drawing a 2×2 grid for what felt like the 78^th time, I finally got it. Or think I have. I’m looking forward to exploring it more with colleagues over the next fortnight.  

I haven’t had a day like Wednesday in a little while: 10 meetings about 12 different topics, packed into seven hours with a 30 minute break. I was beginning to feel like I was too old for this, come the end of the day. And then had to carry-off my impersonation as a rugby coach for my son’s team in the evening.

I’d like to remember what the rest of the week entailed, but as the packed train hurtles back to Kings Cross it feels like a very long time ago.

Next week involves 7 meetings which are all opportunities to move forward my objectives. That feels like a real luxury. It also means I need to prepare really well. I’ve learnt that the event itself doesn’t just need to be successful but my capacity to follow-on from it needs to ensure it doesn’t have a rapid half-life.

Week 9: 31 October – 4 November

My week made sense by the end, I think, thanks to the third Playback and Feedback session I did with the team. I was ill on Wednesday and Thursday. The sort of ill when you can’t really not work. One of the upsides of working from home is that you don’t begin the day exhausted by the commute. Another is that you can summon up enough energy for a video meeting which is probably slightly less than being ‘always on’ as you are in the office.

On Thursday evening I went for a run – mostly because I’ve set a target to run the same distance this month as last and I can’t have two days off. I knew I wasn’t quite right because you shouldn’t sweat that much in five degree heat. I was trying to work out how to make the story of my last month coherent and pose some good questions to the team for the session.

I’ve been dabbling in a whole bunch of things over the last few weeks. Some of these have been chosen intentionally and others chosen by my inbox. But it felt slightly dissatisfying to not have anything to show for it. And I was starting to feel inadequate for not being able to communicate a clear purpose to my new team.

The idea I presented on Friday was that we’re builders of a technology platform. The platform already provides tools and some guides. But we can increase the notion of self-service, bring together the decisions we’ve made and provide access to data. I showed examples like Spotify, Kraken, Alibaba and the GOV.UK Design System. And I talked about the anti-patterns of a platform: depending on conversations, running a closed-ecosystem, having data everywhere, for example. My goal for the day was to get interest from members of two different teams. What was particularly noticeable about the feedback was that it all came from women; the number of women at all parts of the organisation is a real strength of the CPS.

I was quite excited by the idea and inevitably pleased with myself for coming up with it. Part of me wondered whether I was getting carried away in my ‘fever from a run’. The presentation wasn’t met with acclaim and adulation but nor did it land on stony ground. So it’s an idea that I need to develop further and probably would benefit from ‘showing the thing’. But we’ll also need to work out how it fits with our intranet and Service Now to avoid creating a knowledge silo.

Another feature of my week was some ‘getting to know you’ sessions with one of our strategic partners. I also completed the Mid Year Review process. The combination forced me to think about my priorities for the next 6 months or so, now that I’ve largely completed my discovery phase. I haven’t yet got into the drafting but am testing the following areas with team members:

1. User centricity
2. Technical governance
3. The efficiency of our software development lifecycle
4. Building our brand
5. Leading the team

Of course, all of this meant that I went nearly another week without making a material impact on our project to develop our technology roadmap. The big question that I’ve been working through is how to identify the ‘guiding principle’ that needs to underpin the approach. I woke up on Wednesday morning thinking I had a good way forward but the more I worked with it, the less clear it became. So it’s back to the drawing board next week.

Next week

The biggest feature in my next week is the Deputy Director programme in York. Being out of the office for two days with people from across the civil service will be a real privilege, but it has a dominating affect on the diary and limits the number of things I’m able to pursue. We’re finalising the business case for our service desk tender, which then clears the ground for the work towards the end of November to define our requirements for the hosting and support of our mission critical systems.

I’m also wondering about how to design a workshop to explore how we might use data differently to help with operational recovery. I have some really simplistic ideas of what we could do, but need to tap into the core daily challenges faced by colleagues – who might not understand the art of the possible. And do all of that without it seeming too conceptual.

So I’m not going to be short of things to do . . .

Week 8 

Week beginning 24 October

I bought a journal this week. It’s got a template which enables you to summarise things like your goal for the day, what you’re excited about and to reflect on your productivity. It was a well-timed distraction to help me avoid dwelling in the football results at the weekend for longer than desirable. I had visions of sharing each entry on my weeknote. But I hit too few of the goals, so I’ve changed tack. 

The story of my week was seeing slightly too many opportunities to get stuck in and being excited by different ideas for how to do it. And whilst I did lots of different things it came at the cost of the stuff that’s already underway and a clear focus on making a big impact.

So here’s some of the stuff that I did, in addition to the day-to-day meetings:

• Refine the proposal for a technology blog, responding to feedback from colleagues in comms
• Contribute to our thinking about how the CPS can become a better client
• Started to design a session for our senior leadership team about Wardley Mapping: what it is and how we can use it
• Designed a piece of user research to help us understand what an excellent ‘Developer Experience’ would look like
• Worked through the financial options for replatforming our Case Management System (CMS)
• Design the high-level requirements for our tenders for partners to help us replatform CMS
• Contribute to the spec for the tender for our service desk contract
• Develop proposals for how we govern CMS and (not particularly relatedly) our technical governance

And of course that meant that I didn’t make progress on some important stuff. In particular, I failed to make much headway on the tech roadmap. Michael is on holiday, which is a handy excuse, but if I’d really got my head down and denied myself the distractions above, I could have done.

Next week, there’s the opportunity to open-up even more strands. I’m looking forward to exploring:

• How we could explore the opportunity for machine learning models to support our operational recovery
• What we’d need to do differently to accelerate our WiFi rollout
• How we can explore the different groups of people that could benefit from our victims transformation programme
• The scope and capacity needed for our applications rationalisation project

I’ve also been thinking about how we can learn more about the user experience of working with our teams. That theme has come up a couple of times but as yet, I’ve not found the opportunity to take it forward.

But I will need to find a way of framing these enquiries so that I can qualify various opportunities without creating too many open-ended threads; and do so in a way that makes it easier for the work to be picked up again when the time is right. 

Week 7

Week beginning 17 October 2022

I began this week with some really clear goals but contrived not to meet them all. I wanted to hold a successful first show & tell for our technology roadmap (just hit; engagement was good but from a small group) gain agreement to create a technology blog (completely missed) and develop a better understanding of CPS operations (hit).

The benefit of having these goals at the forefront of my thinking was to provide a focus in a week that could easily have been full of distractions. It would have been easy to spend longer refreshing Twitter than focusing on the job at hand. I deleted TikTok over the weekend, which was also sensible.

On Tuesday I joined the Service Management away day in Manchester. Debbie had done a lovely job of designing the session which felt very professional but also had enough space for people to connect and build relationships. About half of the team had joined the CPS in the last two years which underlines the value of getting people together. Ric did a lockbox exercise which ends in everyone getting a personal note of appreciation, which was really thoughtful.

I gave an intro and reproduced my talking points from the intro to the event below because it felt like a useful way of summarising some of my thinking so far.

On Wednesday I went to Eastleigh, near where I spent my teenage years, to visit our Wessex office. Most of the time was taken up by the operational delivery meeting which gave me a really good feel for the sorts of issues that our areas grapple with. I also enjoyed meeting one of our paralegals and seeing how she uses our systems. She was in the process of producing a bundle for a forthcoming trial which involves evidence spanning 75 lever arch files. And we need to provide one for each juror, one for every advocate as well as for the judge and witnesses. The trial of digital bundles can’t come soon enough.

I spent a bit of the week feeling slightly short of confidence. Spending two days out of the office was certainly informative, and I saw how quickly you can become distanced from the day-to-day activities of the business. But I haven’t really got anything to show for my time in the organisation yet. And I’m not confident that I’ve found a concerted or sustainable way of delivering value.

However I had a useful conversation with Jon Ayre on Friday, who I’ve long followed on Twitter, learning from his time at the DWP. It gave me a bit more resolve to focus on finding opportunities to ‘show the thing’ and a bit more confidence that’s the right thing to do. I’m also surrounded by people telling me that I need to be patient.

Next week is incredibly varied and with a couple of earlier starts, I’ll do well to keep my mileage up. So setting some clear goals again feels smart, although we’ve got a couple of key people taking well-deserved leave and these aren’t entirely within my gift but:

• Our mid year reviews enables us to have a shared understanding of the objectives to the end of the year and the support we need to get there
• We have valuable feedback from a small number of colleagues about early thinking of the goals for our technology roadmap
• We have identified the activities that are needed to setup our applications and hosting rationalisation project