Weeknote: 12 to 16 June 2023

What did I enjoy?

Five days in the Leeds Wellington Place office. The hot weather brought many office workers onto the boulevards outside and I enjoyed a couple of lunchtime wanders, including a bagel and a chat with Pete up on the new Monk Bridge Viaduct urban garden.

My calendar seemed more relaxed this week. I had time to keep on top of my email inbox and to move a couple of things forward. It also meant that I got to join in real time for the NHS 111 online teams’ show and tell (I usually end up watching the recording on catch-up). Topics included:

• Applying user research, content design and interaction design to a proposed new design for our national phone service IVR. This reminded me of the very first usability lab I visited, in Bristol way back in the early Noughts, when colleagues used “Wizard of Oz” testing to refine the design of the Orange Answerphone.
• What we’re learning by placing a link to 111 online on the NHS App homepage for a subset of users. This important piece of A/B testing will inform what we do next to improve navigation to services through the NHS’s national digital channels.

What did I learn?

On Thursday, I hijacked the regular delivery leads meeting for Digital Urgent and Emergency Care (UEC) to talk about several interlinked changes in the way we plan, govern and assure our work in the new NHS England.

• Simon from the portfolio office gave an outline of the move away from previously programme-centric ways of funding work to better match the reality of our products and services. It’s a work in progress. I am encouraging my Digital UEC colleagues to embrace this by using product strategies and agile business planning to meet the governance needs previously filled by a programme business case.
• Imogen shared the latest on some work she has been doing with Laura to develop a prioritisation process for the whole portfolio. This is intended to complement what already goes on at the individual team and product level, so that we can get better at responding to new NHS initiatives and changing priorities. Last year, we lost a whole piece of work to in-year funding cuts just as it was about to move into alpha, yet ultimately ended the year under-spent as a portfolio. I’m hoping the new process will make things smoother and more responsive.
• Marie shared a paper that is going to our assurance board next week to review our overall governance. This started out as a “light touch” review of governance, but the realities of the merger, and the appetite from colleagues for change, have led to some significant opportunities to simplify things. Among the proposals are a new cross-portfolio show and tell, an increased role for our multidisciplinary leadership team and Product Board, and retiring a couple of boards that once served a purpose but don’t really make sense now our teams have merged.

This meeting for my portfolio was followed by a call on Friday with colleagues talking about our overall Product and Platforms team operating model, which picked up on similar themes at a higher level.

I reflected that sometime agile teams come across as if we’re demanding autonomy without accountability, which is quite wrong. I’m optimistic that we can improve the operating environment for our teams, even though we won’t get it all right in one go. That requires product managers to get really good at telling the stories of their products, thinking strategically in the open, and over-communicating with stakeholders so there are no surprises by the time we come to ask for spend approvals or need bring forward changes to roadmaps.

What was hard?

Another important step in our re-organisation this week did not go smoothly for some colleagues. I really feel for my HR colleagues who are having to deal with a significant volume of change affecting thousands of people from three organisations each of which had different processes, different administrative tools, and different approaches to job titles and descriptions. I really hope we get it right because people’s early experiences on the merger are likely to shape how engaged they feel with the new organisation for years to come.

I am also trying to help colleagues from another part of the new NHS England to navigate a technical process that would unlock efficiency in the reporting of some important ambulance data. Despite thinking I know my way around the organisation quite well, it’s hard to know what to do when something just seems blocked and there’s no named person with the ability to move it forward.

What do I need to take care of?

• More re-organisation processes, where I have a role to play for colleagues finding the role that’s right for them.
• A senior colleague’s leaving date is approaching and we’re still working out how to cover their responsibilities.
• I’ve got some annual leave coming up, and need to make sure nothing will stall or get stuck while I’m away.