17th Century map spotted on weekend visit to Hatfield House Objectives and milestones I spent quite a lot of time this week thinking and talking about objectives - clarifying and wearing smooth some goals we set for ourselves, share with our colleagues, and intend to deliver for NHS staff, patients and the public. One set … Continue reading Weeknote: 21 to 25 June 2021
Sunday afternoon visit to York Gate Garden, Adel Listening to users Thanks to digital urgent and emergency care colleagues in NHSX and NHS Digital for responding rapidly to my request to observe user research this week. It's great to see how users are involved throughout design and development. This week in user research, I heard … Continue reading Weeknote: 14 to 18 June 2021
The cat has taken to obstructing my desk when he thinks it's dinnertime Deep dives Diane led deep dives on four initiatives in the Urgent and Emergency Care digital portfolio. I think I'm allowed to play the new kid card for a little while longer, and as an introduction to the key issues in each piece … Continue reading Weeknote: 7 to 11 June 2021
Never been a football fan, but delighted to make a second visit to Elland Road on Monday A 4-day working week, fully back in the world of urgent and emergency care (UEC). I've been at NHSX for 2 months now, and am starting to get a sense of the portfolio and how things get done … Continue reading Weeknote: 1 to 4 June 2021
Sunday bike ride around Wike and Harewood Making progress There are 3 things I identified quite early on in my time in Urgent & Emergency Care (UEC), and this week, I saw progress on all of them: Connecting our activity to the UEC system priorities: A couple of good catch-ups with team members to work … Continue reading Weeknote: 24 to 28 May 2021
Drawing on my recent experiences with different delivery teams, on Tuesday morning I posted a thread on Mastodon and Twitter about two different responses to team interdependencies in software products. I like one much more than I like the other. On initiative A, the team learned that a "strategic" solution to their needs would not … Continue reading Code is cheap; ignorance is costly
It's been a while since I posted my weeknotes here. At the end of March, I moved to a new role at NHSX, a joint unit of NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care. My starting date coincided with the pre-election period, and then I was asked to help out on what … Continue reading Weeknote: 17 to 21 May 2021
The run-up to a new role gives me a privileged few weeks to start some habits the way I intend to continue. One that’s high on my list is to ask better questions. Asking questions has to be more than a matter of once-and-done induction to a new domain. I will never close my mind … Continue reading I’m curious: 3 questions I’m asking right now
What was hard? A lot of my colleagues are experiencing the combined effects of the third national lockdown, home-schooling, pressure to deliver, and the freezing cold weather. Sometimes we need to have some hard conversations about priorities and team behaviours, and doing these remotely doesn't make it easy to read how people are feeling. What … Continue reading Weeknote: 8 to 12 February 2021
What was hard? I struggled with procrastination a few times this week, perhaps accentuated by prospect of continued home working stretching out ahead of me. There are some things on my to-do list that I meant to get done in the working time between Christmas and New Year, didn't quite get to them, and now … Continue reading Weeknote: 11 to 15 January 2021
What did you experiment with? A new weeknote format for 2021 What did you enjoy? Working with NHSX colleagues and some of my other favourite people on a new piece of workAn intro call with Laura, our organisation's new chairA walking meeting through the snowy woods near our house What was hard? Struggling to strike … Continue reading Weeknote: 4 to 8 January 2021
If I'm going to live in a filter bubble, it might as well be one that I have intentionally constructed for myself. For a few years now I've been using tools like proporti.onl to keep a check on the gender balance of the people I follow. nonbinarymenwomenno gender, unknownPeople you follow1%50%49% Guessed from name0537464443Declared pronouns14130188 Proporti.onl results … Continue reading Using Twitter lists to balance my attention: a slow motion self-experiment
An autumn lockdown treat: we cooked Saturday evening dinner over an open fire in the garden What inspired me this week? This brilliant video featuring some of my NHS Digital colleagues... https://youtu.be/SOfkWR9I-XM Tero’s post on Apolitical: Design is the strategy More workshops with colleagues from Primary Care. This week it felt as if the team … Continue reading Weeknote: 9 to 13 November 2020
View from my Monday morning desk at Trevelyan Square What leadership teamwork did I see? On Tusday, senior leaders from 3 NHS organisations came together to kick off an intensve period of work on a knotty service transformation problem. I felt the first workshop went well, with everyone agreeing how we wanted to work together. … Continue reading Weeknote: 2 to 6 November 2020
Ther River Aire outside Leeds on my Sunday morning bike ride What connections did I make? An introductory call with Fran, a new director in NHS Digital's Data Services area Peter joined the user-centred design team as associate delivery manager. I'm looking forward to having some help as a team to focus on our objectives … Continue reading Weeknote: 26 to 30 October 2020
Matt Edgar writes here 